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Using the Simplified Approach with Video

2/22/2019

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Imagine that you're trying out a new technical product. You're excited about the possibilities of how this product can solve a problem for you. You know that there will be a learning curve, but you hope that will be less of a pain point than the problem you are trying to solve.
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But when you get into the product, you quickly get overwhelmed by a busy interface and too much noise on how to use it. It's so complex that it loses that shiny excitement you felt at first. You end up never really even getting started.
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On the other hand, what if you get something like this on your first visit?
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This video isn't an exact representation of the Camtasia interface (i.e., it's not a "screen recording"). But watching this "video" introduces you to the basics before you ever even open Camtasia and can make the interface feel less overwhelming. This is an excellent example of using the simplified user interface (SUI) in video.
I'm fascinated with using SUI for various customer education content, and have previously written about SUI images and animated GIFs. But where does SUI fit into video?

The above example is a recording I grabbed (with Snagit) while my latest Camtasia upgrade installed. The "video" is similar to an animated GIF, but it's a little longer and shows more than one task, though in a more conceptual, rather than in a step-by-step way.

I've been thinking about SUI for a while and wanted to find ways that I could incorporate it into my content. But the trick is that while grabbing a screen recording is fairly easy, a more simplified version is actually more time consuming to plan and produce. I wanted to see how SUI could have a place in my videos and still remain affordable. 

I know there are a number of benefits to using SUI in video that might justify the higher cost for development anyway. The SUI helps focus the viewer's attention on the simplified contents and reduces cognitive load. This means the viewer is more likely to remember important aspects of the video later. (Though I'm not aware of any studies that have specifically asked this question - yet.) 

Another benefit of using SUI in video is that sometimes it's just not practical to screen record an example. It seems counter-intuitive, but sometimes it really is simpler to simulate the environment and the exact pieces of content that you want to illustrate than to try to get an environment perfectly prepared for a screen recording. And in some cases, you may only get one shot at a recording. 
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Using a SUI approach reduces the stress of having to get the recording right with only one take. And you can use SUI elements to cover up personal or localized details. In the example below, some of the details are in Swedish, but since those details aren't important to explaining this concept, I just masked them.
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This example brings me to pointing out a difference between SUI images and video. Sometimes, the motion is a really important ingredient for explaining a concept. 
The use of SUI in videos seems to be limited to small snippets of a larger video, like in this example, or with micro-videos of less than a minute long.

I talked with Matthew Pierce, Learning & Video Ambassador for TechSmith. He's got a number of suggestions when planning to use SUI in video. First of all, you have to approach the building process for a SUI video differently. It's more like creating an animation, rather than a screen recording. You'll want a good storyboard showing the basics of what you want to include, perhaps with some instructions on how to approach the movement of each individual piece of the visuals. It might be helpful to do an actual recording to help you understand everything that's happening in the procedure you want to illustrate, and reverse-engineer to the storyboard to help with building the animations.

On the other hand, you want to keep the animations as simple as possible and limit the number of things shown at one time. Remember the goals of reducing the viewer's cognitive load (to help them better remember) and making the video more immune to future UI changes. It's not a time to get fancy and show off all of the cool things you can do in Camtasia.

Matt says that at TechSmith, they use art from UX designers, make some images based on UI designs and graphics provided, and have some basic interface elements available as Snagit Stamps. (It sounds like they have quite a library of images to reuse in different ways). There may be 15-20 image pieces for a simple Camtasia animation. 

We talked a bit about a problem I'd come across in my early attempts to "cover up" in Camtasia screen recordings. In a basic recording, you get the screen and cursor both - they are somewhat separate, in that you can control the opacity, scale and some other features separately, but they aren't truly different layers. So you can end up with an annotation (whether text or shape) masking the cursor movement. Matt says that at TechSmith, they solve this problem by using a separate cursor image, which is animated to look like it's pointing and clicking. Another benefit to taking the few extra steps of animating a cursor is that you don't have any of those inevitable mouse wobbles that I don't always notice when I'm recording, but that become super obvious when I'm editing.

Let me know in the comments if you have any of your own applications, benefits or tips for using SUI in video.

For more on Snagit: https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html 
For more on Camtasia: https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
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Simple Images in Action

12/29/2018

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In the last post, I discussed simplified user interface (SUI) images as a potential solution to one of the biggest challenges that technical communicators face - keeping content up-to-date in the face of frequent product updates. While I've seen some examples of SUI in images, I've noticed far more examples that take it a step further by adding action as animated GIFs.

Here's an example from the Tips & Tricks in-product help for Dropbox Paper. The in-product help provides structure and context for the task being demonstrated (I realize the GIF doesn't make as much sense here), and there is just a small amount of text with this moving image that explains how to assign a to-do.
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I'm fascinated by the SUI GIF for the same reasons I love SUI static images. According to TechSmith, "a simplified user interface graphic can often sustain multiple software versions...before needing further updates. The simplified design is more forgiving to minor interface changes and additions, as it is already an abstract representation of the interface." 

A 10-15 second "video" or GIF takes this benefit a step further by illustrating the basics of a single task. From a user perspective, it's much easier to see how to do a task in a glance rather than reading an article or even watching a video with narration and annotations. In other words, with a reduced cognitive load for learning the new task, the user gets some quick success.

Though I recently completed TechSmith's Camtasia 2018 Certification, I've been making screencast tutorial videos since 2011. When I started seeing these GIF images, I knew they could be valuable for my clients. I've started seeing these appearing not only in help centers and in-product guides, but also in nurturing email campaigns when trying out a new tool. 

Process for SUI GIF Creation

Even though a GIF may only last 10 seconds, it takes quite a bit of planning, as well as some extra time to create and produce if you want to make a quality image that communicates a task well with professional production quality. 

In order to get clear on the process for developing something like this in Camtasia, I borrowed a sample from Unito, which is a tool that I'm testing for automating Trello cards from one board to another (that's not all it does). Reverse-engineering to build this image from one I already had is a little different from building a GIF from scratch, but it will serve the purpose for defining the process. 
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Here's the overall process for designing and developing an animated GIF: 
  1. Just like with any instructional content, the process starts by identifying the task you want to teach. Don't try to show too much at once.
  2. Next you'll need to plan the visual assets. Each piece that moves needs to be a separate shape or image. You could start with screen shots (especially for the left side) and simplify them using Snagit's simplify tools, but I found that this was such a simplified version of the real screen shot, it was better to make it with shapes and small screen clippings either directly in Camtasia or in PowerPoint. 
  3. The animation design is next. There are about 15 custom animations in this 10-second clip, plus a few additional transitions and built-in behaviors. Before you start developing the GIF, it's helpful to have a clear plan of which parts of the image move and in what way, including handling the looping effect.
  4. Now you're ready to add assets to your canvas.
  5. Add the animations and transitions, testing as you go to make sure everything moves smoothly and in synchronization.
  6. Once you're happy with the result, you can publish the result as a GIF from Camtasia.​
If you'd like to learn more about the simplified user interface, Techsmith has several blog articles, but this is a great one to start.
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Screencasting with Camtasia 2018

9/18/2018

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​I've been using Camtasia to create screen recording videos since 2011. I learned much of what I know by trial and error, but also got to be a beta tester before the release of Camtasia 8, which included training on some features I'd never thought to use. Fast forward to 2018, and TechSmith has released their first Camtasia Certification process. ​
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Camtasia Certification™ Process

For certification, you have the option to go through 10 separate courses and their quizzes - all related to various aspects of screencasting. You can also skip all that and just take the certification test without going through the courses. 

​I opted for the video courses - just in case I might pick up a few new tricks. The courses include some 15 hours of video content. Thank goodness for watching at double-speed. The narrator does get a bit long-winded at times, and not being a beginner, I didn't need to dwell on every explanation. Overall, the certification courses were very helpful and on point (and I did learn a few new tricks). 

The course author's process is much like my own. We'll take a quick look at each of the courses, which walk through the process of creating a screencast.

Preparing to Create Screencasts

No matter which tool you use for screen recordings, you'll want to prepare accordingly - not only with a script and storyboard, but by making sure the environment you plan to record is ready. Turn off notifications and clear your computer desktop of clutter.

Recording Audio and Narration

While Camtasia does offer voice narration tools, like the course author, I find it more efficient to do the bulk of my narration recording outside Camtasia in Audacity. Camtasia's audio editing tools are passable. The one thing in this area that I learned the hard way is that Camtasia does better with WAV files rather than MP3 (as of mid 2018).  

Recording Your Screencasts

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When you start a new recording in Camtasia, you have the option to control what you capture with this toolbar. You set your area, as well as controlling whether to include the webcam and audio. I find it much more straightforward to leave the camera and audio off (unless you need to record system audio). But recording audio as you go through the recording process has its merits for some situations. 

There are some handy menu settings you can use before you start recording, including:
  • Capture>Lock to application (resizes the window to record to the selected dimensions)
  • Tools>Options>Hotkeys (set your own shortcuts for many recording actions)
  • Tools>Options>Program (control the recording area appearance and workflow, as well as what happens after stopping the recording

One of the tricks I picked up in the certification course is this option "Restore cursor location after pause". It means that if you pause the recording, move your mouse in the process of whatever you do during the pause, Camtasia will restore the mouse position when you resume recording. I wish I'd known about this time-saving trick sooner!

Editing Screencasts

Once you finish recording, the editing environment allows you to use a number of tools to edit the recording - along with other types of media - into a final video. ​This course/part of the process focuses on cutting and trimming the screen recordings and/or audio or other media. The timeline helps you understand when a particular item begins to show and when it ends. This course also explains how to manipulate items on the canvas.

This course of the certification process is the longest at 3 hours 12 minutes. Part of the reason is that the author chose a really long sample video (about 10 minutes) for the example and practice.  Maybe for version 2.0 of the course, they'll use a shorter example.

Visual Effects

Visual effects include things like annotations, scale, opacity, rotation and position of your media.

​There are six different types of annotation tools. Between the captions, lines and shapes, you are only limited by your imagination (and time you want to spend) to create everything from a speech bubble to a scene with multiple moving shapes - such as a truck driving across the screen. Note that you won't get sophisticated animation possibilities like you could in an animation tool, but annotations are great for conveying conceptual information and adding visual interest. The blur, highlight, and sketch motion tools are great for enhancing screen recordings. And you can easily show that you are pressing a key in your video by adding keystroke callouts. Just select the type and press the keys you want to show.

This course is super short - these items are generally used in conjunction with editing and animating items in the video.

Animating and Moving Elements

We could play with these tools all day, especially the transitions, behaviors and animations. Suffice to say, there are lots of possibilities. What's important to remember is that you can do more than one change with each animation and you can layer multiple behaviors on objects or text to achieve a different effect. Plan some time to design your animations, because this can get time-consuming, depending on what you want to accomplish. ​

Audio Editing

No matter how great the audio is from an external source, you may find the need to add an extra pause or otherwise manipulate the audio. It's a super-short course in the certification process.

Captioning Your Videos

I haven't done much with captioning yet (but I probably should). ​Now I know exactly how to add closed captions or create an SRT file to upload for YouTube.

Effects, Quizzes and Interactivity

Transitions and cursor effects offer more options for editing and enhancing your videos.

I've avoided quizzes and interactivity in videos until now. ​Many of my clients host their videos on You Tube (where these features aren't available), but when the video is hosted on a website, adding interactive elements like quizzes, a table of contents, and interactive hotspots are really great ways to add engagement.

Producing and Hosting Your Videos

The last course in the process is of course discussing the options for sharing your videos.

Now, you've completed all of the courses, and passed each of their quizzes with at least 80% (it's easy to retake a quiz - I did have to retake one because I'm no longer a Mac user and I skimmed over that part). You can now request your certification, which doesn't take long. And you can get the correct settings to use to add it to your LinkedIn Profile.

Camtasia for Customer Education

Camtasia is my tool of choice for creating screencasting videos, although sometimes I use it in conjunction with other tools. And screencasting videos are my favorite form of customer education. They are short, practical, and thanks to Camtasia's updated tools, full of possibilities.

Resources

If you'd like to watch my sample video from which the opening image for this post was derived, you can find it here: ​http://bit.ly/2xKGu24. I'm not the world's best narrator, but it gets the job done.

The Camtasia Certification courses are only available if you have a Camtasia 2018 maintenance plan.  Find out more at TechSmith's site. You can take courses in their new TechSmith Academy (that don't lead to certification) for free. 
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Software Simulations and Video Demos in Captivate 2019

8/31/2018

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Captivate has always been an option for recording your screen and automatically generating different types of eLearning based on those recordings. But did you know that it also records video demos?

As a freelancer, I often have some flexibility and discretion on which tool I use to do a project. I have used Camtasia for screen recording videos since 2011. I've also created videos with Captivate for some projects, when certain aspects of a project suggest that it would be a more efficient tool for the job. But I hadn't ever tried the video demo functionality until recently.

Let's take a look at the different demonstration and simulation options before detailing the video demo option.
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Demonstrations and Simulations

Captivate includes four different modes for recording software demonstrations and simulations. Each of the first three options build on what the previous option accomplishes:
  • Demonstration - does not include interactivity, but creates slides for each "step" in your recording
  • Assessment Simulation - adds automatically generated click boxes, with options for success and failure captures, as well as text entry fields to check the learner's ability to perform the task
  • Training Simulation - adds hints for when learners aren't sure what to do
  • Custom - choose from the text caption, mouse movement, highlight, click box, and text entry box options from the other modes

Before you record a demonstration or simulation, you can set Global Preferences to customize your recording and resulting slides.
  • Language for automatically generated captions
  • Sounds for camera (as a cue while you record) and keystrokes (included in the audio of the produced project)
  • Automatically moving new windows inside the recording area
  • Smoothing the mouse movements

​In addition to these global preferences, you can set the style of objects to use for text, success shapes and captions, failure shapes and captions, hint shapes and captions, highlight boxes, text entry boxes, rollover areas, and smart shapes. These work in conjunction with your Object Style Manager to set the type, font style, size, color and other aspects of the items that will be generated in addition to individual screen shots. Use these options to save lots of time in getting the project to look how you want it to look.

Captivate makes it simple enough to start recording with just a few clicks, so even beginners can get a successful recording right away. However, as a robust tool, there are many nuances and steps to finessing a recording process that we're not going to cover in this blog post.

Video Demos

​When you create a new project in Captivate, one of the options is to record a Video Demo. New to Captivate 2019, is the ability to add recording a webcam so you can quick picture-in-picture and add that personal connection. While talking and recording both yourself and your screen actions is an ambitious undertaking, there are several options for recording and editing.
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The Video Demo option in Captivate records a smooth motion video rather than individual slides like it does for demonstrations and simulations. 

Unlike some aspects of Captivate, there's not much need for addressing complicated settings before you start recording. You choose the working folder location and whether or not to record mouse movements. In the recording window, you select the size and whether to snap to the application window, region or a custom size. You also choose whether to include panning, audio, and the webcam. (So you don't have to be talented enough to record yourself and the screen at one time after all.)

But Captivate doesn't exactly record what you do in real time, which provides some interesting options for modification. 
  • You can add a simple pan and zoom, controlling the scale, speed and size/position of the zoom. You also have some limited options for moving these effects on the video timeline.
  • You can add transitions to the intro and outro. The transitions include cross stretch, push, spin, split, dissolve, fade to, wipe and page turn, with direction options on each effect. You can also split the video to add the option to include transitions in other parts of the video.
  • There are options to trim and mask selected areas of your video. 
  • If you included mouse movements, you can edit them by changing the pointer or doubling the size, showing or hiding the mouse through different areas of the video, and smoothing the mouse path movements. You can also reduce the speed of the mouse movements before the click and choose a visual indicator for the mouse click.

For the separate recording from the webcam, you can resize and re-position it, but you can't crop it. If set up before you start recording, you can pick a different background, though I found it didn't do a great job of cutting me out from my office surroundings. Maybe if I had a backdrop with greater contrast or a green screen, that would look better.

When you end your recording, it plays automatically, with a tiny button labeled Edit to access the editing features. You can also process and upload the video to YouTube directly from here if you don't need to edit it. 

However, in addition to the editing options listed above, you can add text, shapes, highlight boxes, images, animation and characters to the video. You'll publish it to your computer with options for controlling the video quality (like frames per second). You'll end up with an MP4 file that you can use just like any other MP4 file. Or you can import the CPVC (Captivate Video Composition) project directly to a slide, working it into a bigger eLearning project.

The Interactive Video options to use overlays and return to a position in the video from elsewhere via bookmarks (such as for quiz remediation) introduce some great possibilities for learning. These are new as of Captivate 2019, but that's a topic for another day. 
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A Customer Training Primer

1/4/2017

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As the ideas of customer onboarding and customer success gain traction, I hope you are thinking about how to help your customers be successful with your product.

What kind of training are you going to offer?

This infographic details the five main levels of customer training. Note that they build on each other, although you could do a phone call or webinar without having the supporting base underneath. And I would argue that you can get rid of the one-on-one and maybe even group training as being too inefficient if you've put some resources into the other three methods.

What types of training is your company offering it's customers? Let me know in the comments section.
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Why Tutorial Videos?

12/11/2016

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This week I attended a session of the Virtual Summit on Advanced Practices in Technical Communication, well-timed in relation to this topic. The session was “How to Start Small with Video and Get Big Improvements in Customer Support,” presented by Martin Ceisel, technical writer for ESET North America. For Martin’s team at ESET, videos enhance their knowledge base and product-specific online help, as well as providing “customers another way to troubleshoot on their own.” You can view his presentation here. 

Technology and internet speeds have made videos more accessible than ever. In the Cisco® Visual Networking Index™ (Cisco VNI™) forecast from June 2016, the prediction is that global IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2020, increasing threefold from 2015 to 2020.

On their TechSmith® Blog, the makers of Camtasia (my preferred tool for creating tutorial videos) provide several reasons your company needs video on their blog, including:
  1. Building customer rapport with personal touch points
  2. Retaining institutional knowledge
  3. Streamlining internal communication
  4. Demo products and offerings
  5. Reaching more customers.
Videos can be a great way to reach more customers, and Martin Ceisel’s presentation discussed how the ESET team has used YouTube and a regular plan of releasing new videos to go from about 2500 views a month to over 30,000 views a month and getting about 75 new subscribers a month.

Of course, you can do one-on-one or larger group webinars to demo your products and offerings and teach your customers how to perform the tasks they need to get the most out of your product. But having a video to demonstrate a task allows customers to view it whenever they want. It also frees the time of one person (or a few people) repeating demonstrations multiple times.

The short answer to the question of when to use tutorial videos: anytime that viewing a task in action is better than (or an important supplement to) reading about it.

There’s no need to be overwhelmed by the thought of the task of developing a video library. Videos of an ideal length of 1 ½ to 3 minutes each can usually be done in just 2-3 hours. And I love the ESET strategy of releasing 1-2 new videos a week, growing their audience and their subscribers.

Let me know in the comments how your organization uses tutorial videos!

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"Show Me" Tutorial Video Design and Development Process

11/7/2016

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I started creating demonstration videos for my software company clients in 2007 and have since created many of these "show me" type tutorial videos.

This week, I thought I would explain the process that I use for designing and developing this type of project.

Videos are a great way to explain how to complete a specific task in the software. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. 
For this particular sample, I am working toward a comparison of two different types of projects. I'm using a more advanced feature of Microsoft Word to illustrate the two different types of projects.  Because of the comparison aspect of this example, I did things a little differently than I have in the past. But the overall process is basically the same. 
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The first step is determine the scope of the video. This involves analyzing the task that you want to demonstrate and think about every single incremental step to get you from point A to point B.  It's important not to leave anything out, so think like a technical writer.

As part of this step, you'll want to think about what data will appear in your recording and set that up now. You'll also need to handle any pre-requisites that must be done in the software before you can get to the screen you want to record.
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Next, I always write a script. This may or may not include programming instructions for what I want to show on the screen along with the narration, but it always includes the words that will be said in the video. Some people may be able to wing it when recording audio, but I don't recommend it unless you have lots of time for do-overs or don't care about the "umms" and other filler words.

I also read the script out loud before recording to make sure that it sounds smooth and that it isn't too long. Generally, if you start going over about 3 minutes, your audience will start tuning out.
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I use the script to record the narration separately. I've tried recording both audio and visuals at the same time for screen recording videos. Trust me when I say it's more efficient to record them separately and time them later. So the third step is to record and edit the audio. I won't go into any details of audio recording here, but I use Audacity and a Blue Snowball microphone with a table stand and pop filter, and DIY foam surround for the microphone to dampen external sounds and echos. If I make a mistake while recording, I just keep going, reading the start of that phrase or sentence again. It's fairly easy to edit out the mistakes (usually). This process takes about two or three times the length of the finished audio. For example, a three-minute video will take me about 10-15 minutes to record and edit the audio.
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Once I've finished the audio, it's time to get the screen recordings or screen shots. It helps to have a scripted plan for what you are going do while the "camera" is on, although when I'm just needing to click a few times, I may skip it. It is also VITAL that you've considered any data requirements or software pre-requisites before you start recording, as I mentioned in step 1.

I normally use Camtasia for the screen recordings. But for this particular example, I used Articulate Storyline's screen recording and exporting capabilities so that I can realize efficiencies of scale for the next part of my comparison. There were pros and cons to this decision, which I'll discuss more at length in a week or two.

I've even created entire videos from still shots. Adobe Captivate handles things like this well, and I can even add a simulated mouse to make it look like a recording.

This recording process can be quite quick, with some variations among the different tools. Sometimes I just record a step or two at a time. However, recording can get time consuming, if as the recording progresses, you realize that you've forgotten something important and need to revisit steps 1, 2, and/or 3. This is one of the reasons that the task analysis step is so important.
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Now comes the juicy part - putting it all together. I almost always use Camtasia for editing the video and syncing the timing. This post isn't meant as an in-depth tutorial for using Camtasia, but the basic process is:
  • Add the audio to one track.
  • Add the screen recording to a second track.
  • Cut or extend frames in the video so that the narration matches what is happening visually. Sometimes I also need to add a little time here and there to the audio track.
  • Add title slides and callouts.
  • Produce final video
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Once the video has been produced, it's ready to share. Since my clients all have different needs and processes, this can vary quite a bit. You may post it on YouTube or Vimeo or host it on a website.
There are also SME reviews along the way, depending on the project. 

If you didn't watch the sample video from the image above, you can view it here.

​And good luck with your videos!
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