The Joys of Video Production

One of the most powerful selling tools for almost every business and every website is videos. They let anyone who wants to receive advice, training, support, or even a laugh do so at their convenience. It comes as no surprise that having high quality videos will convey that your company, product, service, and reliability are also high quality.

Creating high quality videos is no easy task, but you can make the job infinitely easier with the right tools. The professionals all use Final Cut Pro, the Mac-only industry standard for any serious video production. I mean, they made Napoleon Dynamite with it so it must be legit.

Tina! Final Cut Pro is teh shiz!

Of course we make software that plugs into Microsoft Office so Macs are in short supply here at Windward. I love my MacBook to death, but iMovie just doesn't cut it for screen capture (although it does rock for Cubicle Wars 2010 Trailer Epicness, created by yours truly). Which leaves us with Camtasia. Oh, Camtasia…

A whole bunch of piss you off, in a box!

Where to begin? I suppose Camtasia does work well for screen capture. It's taking the screen captured footage and doing something with it though where the troubles begin. Let me break down my typical Camtasia experience.

For any work videos I start with a script. I DO use my Mac and Ableton Live to record and edit voice narrations. Once I have a working version of the narration, I take two or three trial runs while recording the screen and listening to the audio recording. I've had pretty decent luck with this in my opinion.

Occasionally I'll go crazy and use Camtasia for something other than screen capture. Beware that this is a LONG process. This 2:00 minute Introduction to AutoTag video took me more than a full day to do. Probably because I used the ghettoness known as Microsoft Paint to do all the image editing, but you still have to admit it's pretty awesome.

Creating a video is only the beginning here at Windward. Once we produce and publish the video, I would say that on average we go back and reproduce the video at least five times. Our boss in notorious for sending us an email response within five minutes that says something like this:

Great video!   Love this… Awesome at 1:30 when you do thing… Love that…   Nice job. Oh, can you make it say this? And do this other thing? And while you're at it just redo the whole thing?   Thanks - dave

 

Getting it past the critics is the first part. After that we test the videos on every computer, every operating system, and every internet connection we can get our hands on. Then we usually get another email like this a few days later…

 

Just tested (insert video name here) at home while I was downloading a few gigs worth of files and compiling our entire enterprise reporting package. It skipped for 1 second. Redo the whole thing.   Thanks - dave

 

And they wonder why we hate doing videos. This ensures we get to spend about two hours on the phone with Camtasia until after another eight versions we finally get one that doesn't skip. Oh and we took out every effect, transition, and zoom-and-pan so now it sucks.

So what's the lesson here? If you're creating videos, don't kill yourself trying to win an Oscar. You won't. James Cameron beat you to it. Instead, go for something functional that gets the message across. Like always, the KISS method definitely applies here.

 

Do you have nightmares about some of your video production projects? Got some tips to make the video production process smoother? Fire away in the comments.

 

A special thanks to my boss, David Thielen, for having a great sense of humor and for not firing me after reading this blog.

Comments

[meowkins]

lol! this is great! i know your pain all too well. I wonder if the newer releases of camtasia are any better.

[Gina]

Love the Paint comment. Back in 1995, before they had all these great, easy programs, I put together a 15 minute animated training demo - using only PowerPoint and Paint. (I can't remember how many hours went into that one 'cause I quit counting!) From that point forward, I also referred to "its ghettoness" as "Pain".

[Dan Cook]

Jack: If you audience is truly after something that's got a quick learning curve for making and editing company videos, lightweight and professional looking, you might want to have them take a look at Pixetell. It has plenty of features for those who want to do longer, more complex videos, but you can also hit the ground running with more focused communications like tutorials, directions, personal messages to a group, and sales pitches. Free trial at www.pixetell.com.