User:Torley Linden/Vidtut process

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

Capture

Record raw footage inworld using Camtasia or FRAPS. I usually:
- Set Second Life screen resolution to 1024x768 in Sizer — the actual dimensions are 1032x802 due to window UI chrome.
- Scale SL UI to 1.200.
- Set audio volumes.

When recording is done, gather raw footage into a template folder and rename it with the title of the tutorial.

Production

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.

Encoding

Render vid to "QuickTime 7" with these settings:
- Project tab:
  Video rendering quality: Best
- Video tab:
  - Quality: 100% (near lossless)
- Streaming:
  - Optimization: Fast Start

When the render's done, open in QuickTime Player and export with these settings (NOTE: I switched from "Main" to "Baseline" profile because the latter works on iPods):

Upload to YouTube

Free streaming, cheap 'n' cheerful. I may soon be transitioning to TubeMogul.

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 = Education
- 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", select the MP4, and upload it. Video usually goes live several minutes later.

Upload to Amazon S3

These are the high-quality downloadable versions.

With S3Fox, go to http://vidtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/ and drag-and-drop the MP4 into the uploader.
Right-click the "vidtuts" folder, select "Edit ACL", enable Read for all (green checkmarks), check "Apply to subfolders" (useful for multiple vidtut uploads), then click "OK".

Update the Second Life Podcast

Refresh "podcast.xml" with a new item. (I still want a better RSS editor, text-only is cumbersome.) Use this template:

<xml> <item> <title>Tip of the Week #23: Using SLURLs for easy travel - Second Life Video TuTORial</title> <itunes:author>Torley Linden of Linden Lab</itunes:author> <itunes:subtitle>Video Tutorial</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:summary>Learn Second Life in a fun and fast fashion! Whether you're a newcomer or experienced Resident, you'll benefit from these video tutorials. Watch more @ http://torley.com/vidtuts</itunes:summary> <enclosure url="http://vidtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/SLTotW-23-Using-SLURLs-for-easy-travel.mp4" length="75154554" type="video/mp4" /> <guid>http://vidtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/SLTotW-23-Using-SLURLs-for-easy-travel.mp4</guid> <pubDate>Thu, 21 Feb 2008 4:44:44 PST</pubDate> <itunes:duration>0:10:17</itunes:duration> <itunes:keywords>Linden Lab, secondlife, second life, video tutorial, tip, trick, game, world, 3d, online, virtual, avatar, screencast, help, machinima, love, sl</itunes:keywords> <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit> <description> Learn Second Life in a fun and fast fashion! Whether you're a newcomer or experienced Resident, you'll benefit from these video tutorials. Watch more @ http://torley.com/vidtuts </description> </item> </xml>

Ping it.

Blog about it

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 it

Log into blog-like tool.
Copy-and-paste earlier blog posting into WLW (to strip font irregularies), then 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 VIDEO

Wikify it

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

Afterwards

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.

Embrace incoming feedback from my beloved community and use lovely ideas to fuel future vidtuts .

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