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Chapter 1 - Planning Your Project

In Chapter 1 of the workbook we look at the things you need to think about before you start recording your screen or importing files into your project. We examine:

  • the target audience,
  • preparing your computer's desktop so that it is not cluttered,
  • the merits of writing a script,
  • why it is important to practice before you start recording,
  • knowing what type of video you intend to make,
  • deciding how long to make the video, and
  • including sound in your video.

Introduction

Chapter 2

  

Chapter 1 - Thinking About Your Project Before You Start Recording

In Chapter 1 of the workbook we look at considerations that need to made before you start recording your screen or importing files into your project. These considerations are summarised here.

It is important to spend a certain amount of time planning your project before you start recording or importing anything. Although it is often tempting to dive straight in and start capturing or importing video, you will probably save yourself quite a bit of time in the long run if you sit down and think your video through in as much detail as possible as a first step in the project cycle.

Who is Your Target Audience?

I know from years of writing user manuals for software products that, before you write anything, it helps if you know who your target audience is. The same is true when creating videos. The more you know about your target audience, the more appropriate and, therefore, successful your video is likely to be.

What I mean by this is, will your video be teaching people how to do something or will it be telling people about something? Corporate videos often tell people about a company or some aspect of a company, and will often involve importing video into Camtasia Studio that has been produced using a video camera. Corporate videos need to be of a very high standard as they are normally used to advertise a company in some way, and quite often involve several people during the design and production process.

Training videos and video manuals are in general more straightforward to create as they do not (normally) require such a broad range of skills as corporate videos do.

Writing a Script or a Video Outline

Whether you decide to produce a complete script at this stage or just an outline detailing the various stages of your video is really down to personal preference. Personally, I prefer to produce the script after I have completed all the screen recording as I'm never sure what I want to say until I've got the recording in front of me.

Run Through the Video Sequence Before You Record Anything

Running through the video sequence before you start recording is a useful thing to do as it will highlight any problems or uncertainties. It is extremely frustrating when making a video if, for example, you get almost to end of your recording session only to find that the file you want to open doesn't exist.

What Type of Video Are You Making?

Don't Have the Book Yet?

If you don't have a copy of the Camtasia Studio 8 Quick Start Workbook, you can download one from Amazon.

Will your video be teaching people how to do something or will it be telling people about something? Corporate videos often tell people about a company or some aspect of a company, and will often involve importing video into Camtasia Studio that has been produced using a video camera. Corporate videos need to be of a very high standard as they are normally used to advertise a company in some way, and quite often involve several people during the design and production process.

Training videos and video manuals are in general more straightforward to create as they do not (normally) require such a broad range of skills as corporate videos do.

Preparing Your Desktop

Unless you intend to capture video content in full screen mode or you will be filming an application that covers everything else on the computer desktop, it's probably worth spending a bit of time tidying up your desktop. Personal background photos of your children may well be nice for you to look at, but they will not present a very professional image when someone is viewing your video.

How Long Should the Video Be?

How long you make your video really depends on the type of video you are making, but as a general rule, a video of two to three minutes is often about right for a promotional video; training videos can be longer if necessary but you may need to consider adding a table of contents to make life easier for your viewers to find parts of the video that are of interest to them. If you make your video too long you run the risk of your viewers losing concentration, but if your video is too short you might not be able to include all the content necessary in order to say what you want to say.

Recording Sound

If you plan to record sound through a microphone, make sure that you are in a quiet environment before you begin. It is really frustrating to have the sound of someone shouting in the background telling you that your lunch is ready, or the sound of a car driving past the window, or a door shutting, or birds singing in the background. Find yourself a quiet room, set your computer up there, and listen for a while to see if there are any background noises. If there aren't, you're ready to go; if there are, try to eliminate the noise if you can.

Introduction

Chapter 2