User:Torley Linden/Vidtut process

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How my video tutorials reach the world. A behind-the-scenes glimpse at the step-by-steps:

Creation

  • Record raw footage inworld using Camtasia or FRAPS. Current hot key to start/stop is F8. I usually:
    • Set Second Life screen resolution to 1024x768 in Sizer.
    • Scale UI to 1.200.
    • Raise UI sounds to full volume.
  • When recording is done, gather raw footage into a folder and rename it with the title of the tutorial.
  • Load "Video Tutorial Template" in Sony Vegas, containing basic outline and track setup. (Continues to be revised over time.)
  • Drag-and-drop movie clips on master video track. Trim ends and crossfade into each other as desired.
  • Move around ending bumper to fit.
  • Use "Video Event Pan/Crop" at appropriate places in the timeline to provide zoomed-in focus on UI elements.
  • Ctrl-drag to copy text media template to appropriate places in timeline and customize it. (Sometimes I customize start + end titles at this point too.)
  • Reword captions as I go along. Stretch text media if some needs to last longer. Other settings, like Placement, can also be changed to provide optimum visibility without impairing other stuff.
  • Solo stereo audio voiceover track, export as mono WAV.
  • Open audio in Sony Sound Forge, open "Torley's Video Tutorial processing" setting and process the WAV in the Batch Converter.
  • Drag-and-drop the WAV back into Vegas in the "MASTER" voiceover track, mute original (non-processed) voiceover.
  • Add MP3 music (often one of my own compositions so I don't have to worry about licensing) to the -21 dB (I found this provides a good balance, audible without being too intrusive) audio track.
  • Fade and trim ends as appropriate.
  • Add some extra gloss (transition effects) — I like to experiment, sometimes obviously, sometimes more subtle, with different techniques in each vid.
  • Re-watch vid a couple of times to make sure everything's in its right place. Polish anything else stray I find.
  • Render vid to "QuickTime 7" with these settings:
    • Project tab:
      • Video rendering quality: Best
    • Video tab:
      • Frame size: 640x480 (square pixel, meant to be played back on computer screens)
      • Frame rate: 24
      • Field order: None (progressive scan)
      • Pixel aspect ratio: 1.000
      • Video format: Animation
      • Compressed depth: 24 bpp color
      • Quality: 100% (lossless)
      • Keyframe every (frames): 150
    • Audio tab:
      • "Include audio" checked
      • Audio format: Uncompressed
      • Sample rate (Hz): 44,100
      • Bit depth: 16
      • Channels: Stereo
    • Streaming:
      • "Prepare for streaming" checked
      • Optimization: Fast Start
  • When rendering's done, upload it to page. Keep in mind YouTube reduces resolution further, drops frame rate to 15 FPS, changes audio from stereo to mono (ugh!), etc. so I like to have a higher-rez version to distribute. Remember, you can easily degrade quality, but it isn't so easy to upsample.
  • While uploading's happening, work on accompanying blog post or fill in other info that could usefully be multitasked.
  • Shortly after uploading's done, I sometimes watch the vid to make sure things turned out alright, then I post to the blog or otherwise further communicate about my new vidtut.

The above is subject to iteration, but hopefully provides a wealth of insights into how I do what I do. :)

Sony Vegas

  • Export video as

Publication

YouTube

  • After vidtut is rendered to .MP4, upload it to YT.
  • Fill out Video Upload form thusly:
    • Title = "Second Life TuTORial - " or "SL TuTORial - " (if tip title is too long), followed by tip title.
    • Description = Some minimalist variant pointing to http://torley.com
    • Video Category = Howto & Style
    • Tags = second life secondlife tips tricks school tutorial knowledge base learn education teach online world tech community love (in the future, I may want to vary these further).
  • Click "Upload a video" then select the .MP4 and upload it. Video usually goes live several minutes later.

Blog

  • Open up template, craft blog post in Windows Live Writer, and set it to publish in the future on Thursday (when Tip of the Weeks tend to show up).
  • Include supplemental pictures, word explanations, and other relevant content addendum that didn't make it into the video. Related resources links always a plus.
  • Test pre-published link to assure quality.

Showcase

  • Log into blog-like tool.
  • Copy-and-paste earlier blog posting into this, and publish it. NOTE: This tool can't publish in advance yet, so this is done nearer to the time or shortly after the aforementioned blog post appears.
  • Check for any significant content inconsistencies, most notably that embedded videos don't work, so I'll need to replace them with links like this:
Watch the Tip of the Week video here

Wiki

  • Update Video Tutorials with the newest, most likely a new "#" under all the previous TotWs.

Afterwards