User:Torley Linden/Vidtut ideas

Headline text

This page is for scribbling ideas for Torley's Video Tutorials, including the omnifriendly "Tip of the Week" series. Feel free to add your own suggestions — if this page gets too long, we may need to organize it better, but for now, go wild using the format below:

== [TITLE OF SUGGESTED TIP] ==

* [FINER DETAILS]

* [MORE FINER DETAILS]

Here we go!

How to use streaming parcel media

• Cover music + movies.
• Show examples of playing .MP3s and .MOVs.
• Video capture of web browser and URLs.
• Make the very strong point that Linden Lab does not store what's streamed, we merely pass it along from an external webserver.
• Specifically useful would be the ability to watch youtube videos in SL --> how to convert .flv to .mov or .mp4 (or how to directly stream youtube - though I guess converting and storing on own webserver is more likely)

How to login with multiple accounts

• Explain command line parameters briefly.
• Show Second Life shortcut on desktop. (This will be Windows-specific, but in the text part of the blog post, there should be a link to Mac + Linux info.)
• Also show how to login automatically but if I do this, BE VERY SURE to explain security risks involved.
• Launch two viewers and show them both running momentarily.

How to terraform

• Useful for landowners and showing the benefit to those interested in land.
• Explain the somewhat-confusing UI and show what each tool does on a blank patch.
• I reckon I'll wait for Gigs' VWR-2331 to be added first, it'd add a lot of nuances to the art.

How to start your own wiki page

• This would primarily be web-based and showcase usefulness that most Resis don't know about. For example, User:Tid_Kidd.
• Show simple wiki editing. (I should look for a richer, easier editor tho.)
• Emphasize that it acts as an extended profile and can be linked to from inworld.
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:User_page has good ideas.

Explain how deeded land works

• Explain how one deed's land
• Advantages and disadvantages of deeding land to a group
• What the "Owner Makes Contribution With Deed" button means checking vs unchecking when deeding.
• How to recover land from a group.
• Warnings on making multiple owners of group owned land

Statistics Bar

• View > Statistics Bar (Ctrl-Shift-1)
• This could easily be a multi-part series
• Most important, Simulator tab, understand why your lagging
• What are all those pesky times (ms) ?

SL Etiquette

• Teleporting. Explain why blindly walking around too soon around after tp is bad idea (pushing others etc).
• (I always fly straight up after TPing to an unknown landmark/place until everything is rezzed.)
• Excessive attachments, prims, and scripts. Explain how each impacts others' experience.
• (Torley, I will add more to this short list as I think of more etiquette topics!! Others, feel free to edit!)
• Flying or standing too close to a stranger--or their homes.
• SHOUTING way too often.

More land options

• Showing land borders and the meaning of the different colors red/orange/yellow/green
• These land borders can be very useful for your SL experience. Can't script/rez on a piece of land? go to the neighbours. Looking for a nice plot to purchase? Look for those yellow borders! How big is your land, and how far can you move that wall? Look at landborders again!
• Setting land options. I often run into people who complain about running into lots of garbage that others leave on their land. A quick run through the various land options usually solves their problems.

How to get help

• Cover mentors and the support portal
• Show examples IMing mentors, lindens or using the support portal..
• Video capture of web browser and URLs.
• Make the very strong point that Linden's are VERY BUSY.
• This would be useful to show at newbie friendly areas.

Useful Debug Settings

• Cover some of how to activate some of the more useful debug settings
• ImagePipelineUseHTTP - which give a noticible speedup of texture rezzing on lower end PC's
• FolderAutoOpenDelay - which will slow down how quickly the inventory folders open when you're dragging and dropping (which is very irritating, btw).
• Any others?

Cover Other Ctrl+Alt number screens

• Cover the other statistical/debug screens.
• CTRL+SHIFT+2 - look at all the pretty colors.....what is this all telling us?
• CTRL+SHIFT+3 - Textures Downloading, what it all means, why there are so many showing downloading even when everything appears to be rezzed already.
• CTRL+SHIFT+4 - The console, why you might want to look at it when there are problems, what kind of information is there for the young and geeky.