ANTS provides people with Guidelines for Designing Animated Tutorials. These guidelines work to ensure that each tutorials is (a) substantive enough to be useful to all, (b) highly viewable, and (c) easily exchangeable. Many have commented that their usefulness makes them a good starting point for anyone who wants some clues to better design.

This screencast examines how to track usage statistics of your .swf tutorials using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that allows you to track usage statistics of your entire website. However, to track use and downloads of non HTML files requires a small amount of programming and modification of source files. This screencast details how Google Analytics works, and describes the necessary steps needed to track .swf files (the most common output of screencasting software). Examples for Adobe Captivate 3, Qarbon Viewlet Builder 5, and Camtasia Studio 5 are included.

Most video hosting services, including Youtube, do not accept the .swf file format. This quick overview explains how and why you need to convert your .swf tutorials to digital video for optimal performance using a third party video hosting service. Note: The ANTS project members handle all .swf to digital video conversions for tutorials submitted to ANTS. This allows our volunteers to focus on creating tutorials and minimizes the time and work requirements placed upon them. The ANTS project is continually exploring new ways to deliver screencasts, and will soon offer access to a variety of source files, .swf, and digital video via our multiple web interfaces.

A good way to see how effective a tutorial is, is by adding a survey at the end of it. You can get viewers to give you feedback, so next time you design your learning object it is more effective. Richard Baer - of the ANTS team, demonstrates how this can be done in his CINAHL Alerts Tutorial. You will see a link to the survey at the end of the tutorial. If you follow it, he provides a password which can be used to take the online survey. The survey software is free, so it is both effective and affordable!*

"This page lists examples of library tutorials on a variety of subjects - catalogs, databases, internet searching and more. Many were created with screencasting software, while others have been created with Flash and other graphics tools that require more technical and graphics expertise." It also lists information on the software used to create Screencasts, as well as a list of other resources.

Demonstrates how to create specialized playlists from sites such as LION TV and Youtube and mount them on a web page, blog, (etc) so you can create point of need videos specific to a course, your home page, a databases page (or whatever you feel is appropriate.) It also links to our How to Embed section so you will know how to use embedding code for this purpose.

I've just started with Camtasia 6.0 and want to pass on a few ideas.
Camtasia Studio 6.0 has many new features that make your life much easier.

** HD production preset. The HD preset produces your video to .mp4 format. It is not necessarily HD format. You have to change the settings in the preset so that it always produces in HD. Techsmith has put two videos and screen caps with text on this page that show you how to do it.
http://visuallounge.techsmith.com/2009/02/camtasia_studio_and_the_hd_opt.html
.

This video was produced in HD. Clicking on the HD link changes it to HD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24tXgPAa5Pw

Compare the visual quality to this version of the same video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ3heTm97k4

You can now modify the URL that plays the tutorial so that it automatically plays the HD version at Youtube.
To do this, add the string &hd=1 to the end of the URL if you are embedding the video or using the link from one of your pages.
This link demonstrates how it works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24tXgPAa5Pw&hd=1





**Editing for your audience and for universal distribution.
When you make a video for your own library audience, its content may be completely local, quite generic or generic with some local content.

That last category is one that I've been working on as I wanted to explore creation of content that is useful for local purposes - and is easy to edit into a shareable version stripped of local content.
As an example, I have done two versions of the same tutorial.*
Blip.tv version for my library.
http://blip.tv/file/2117761
At 1:02 a section starts about logging in to Camosun databases, ending at 1:23.

Youtube version for anyone to use:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TLMvrilTDc
This version skips Camosun and goes from Google to the welcome screen for ASP at about 54 seconds.

When scripting it for my own library, I needed to ensure that the local content occurred in a block that could be easily snipped out of the file. When you are showing databases, local content is usually the navigation from your homepage into the database.

The best practice is to either be silent when your mouse is doing local navigation - or have narration connected to the local navigation only. Then you have one edit, i.e. cutting out the local navigation section. If you leave a one second pause at the beginning and end of the local section, then it makes it easier to cut. When you upload it to DSpace or other repository, then another library has an easy to use insertion point. They can split the timeline at the insertion point and insert their own local navigation recording.

This Jing video http://screencast.com/t/FzncOkmUw8 explains what I mean. I left a silent section at beginning and end to aid editing. I would produce this as it is recorded, then snip out the short Camosun bit, then produce it again to a different directory for uploading to DSpace, etc.

The same principle applies at the end of a tutorial. At the end of the demonstrated search we often want to show how to access the article through our journal list. If you pause slightly, then you can cut out the local content at the end.


** Those pesky ums and ahs and dead air.
Even when you use the F9 key to pause while the machine works away to load a page, you still have sections of 1 to 4 seconds when there is nothing happening. Through a lot of error, I discovered a trick to editing those out.



Put the right hand editing bar just before (.25 second) the place where you want to resume. Then start backing the the left editing bar backwards to just after (.25 second) your last complete and useful sound. You should then have a section of dead air that can be snipped safely. Check that the flow is smooth because it is much easier to undo the cut just after you have made it.