By now we know how to use a teleprompter from the point of view of a content creator in front of the camera. But remember, that’s not all we do in our world of limited resources. We’re also the audio engineer, cameraman, lighting director, and so many other roles. So today instead I want to…
Read MoreWelcome back to our continuing series on budget-friendly methods for making video tutorials. With today’s post I’m going to start a 3-parter on Teleprompters. I’ve previously described Teleprompter hardware and setup, but today I want to talk more about usage recommendations now that I’ve been using one for several years. Also remember that a teleprompter…
Read MoreWelcome to part 20 in our series on creating effective tutorial-style videos on a budget. Today: Screencasts! Let’s start off with just our basic assumptions: There’s nothing wrong with the informal style, but it takes experience and skill to pull off well, while the style presented here can be done even by beginners, because it…
Read MoreIf you make a lot of videos, and you don’t have a single dedicated space where you can keep all of your gear permanently set up, connected and oriented properly, you most likely spend a lot of time setting up and tearing down before and after a shoot. Of course, “a lot of time” is…
Read MoreIf you’ve followed this thread for awhile, then I hope by now you’re making great videos. Let’s assume your content is instructive, interesting and well-written, all of your equipment is working the way you want, and you have a good on-camera presence. It’s still possible though that you’re making boring videos. The main reason is…
Read MoreLast year I wrote about how to create a great animated GIF by first creating a video. In fact I used the procedure described there to generate animated GIF banners for some of our website pages. Another similar problem, whether building a website or creating graphics to go in your videos, is converting SVG files…
Read MoreWelcome back to our ongoing series on creating online IT tutorial videos. The last two times we talked about speeding up your graphics, and how the entire workflow works from writing all the way to the final product. Today let’s do a deep dive on just the Editing process: once you have your digital resources…
Read MoreMany people already are. Whoa, whoa. We need to back up a bit here. Really good GPT-based text generators have now been generally available for 3 years now. And they’ve now been adopted by a large number of corporations, especially IT-centric ones. I shouldn’t even say “adopted”. They’re being “pushed” because of worries that employees’…
Read MoreWelcome back! Last time we looked at some concrete examples of animations where you can use math to animate large numbers of objects, field-like effects, or complex behavior. Today let’s look at the principal barrier to using an animation you make (if it’s not a filled rectangle and if you want to put it in…
Read MoreHi again! At the end of my last blog I left you hanging. I promised some concrete examples of useful animations you could do in-house, using just math. And here I am, examples in hand! Although they could be finished animations in specific situations, they’re more likely to be parts of a larger picture, so…
Read MoreHello budget videographers and user guide writers! Have you ever looked on with envy at some of those fancy animations in online videos and wondered “How can I do that?” Well, I can’t solve all your problems, but I can give you some examples, pointers and resources to get you started. For your videos you…
Read MoreConfession time. I can easily spend between 1 and 2 weeks creating a 5 minute long video. 3 weeks if I’m being a perfectionist. Of course, those videos are awesome, and are highly tailored to a specific audience. They say what I want to say. In this blog I’m always looking into efficiency and productivity…
Read MoreHave you ever finished filming your video segments, inserted them into your video project, and thought “Now I just need a few hours to add the graphics, and I’ll be done!”… but you actually wind up finishing 3 days later? Then it’s time we talked about cutting that time down. There are several aspects to…
Read MoreIn this series I’ve given you lots of advice on making your own tutorial-style IT videos for YouTube as a single DIY “maker”: writer, lighting, director, cameraman, editor, audio specialist, etc. But these posts weren’t written in the order of my “workflow”, i.e. the sequence I actually go through when making a new video. So…
Read MoreSo how’s your website doing? Did you set it up, and then leave it alone? It’s not that I’m trying to shame you, but we should all be thinking regularly about how to stay at the top of our game. You know, be agile. I was updating one of our websites last month, and we…
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