I have lamented about editing the videos, for the courses. I have been working on them for like forever. I am now using Camtasia on my desktop and that allows me to zoom in when necessary, and add comments and graphics etc. But still the videos are awful! I do offer Parkinson’s as my excuse but even then I am too ashamed to publish them.
So I plead for your patience. I am going to redo them. I remembered that my friend Doug used a mouse with his phone so that there would be a pointer in the video. I believe that would make the video easier to follow. So that’s part of my new plan of action. I am charging my blue tooth mouse as I type this.
The sound is still terrible but hopefully the mouse pointer will guide me what to say. I notice that Camtasia in their training videos on how to use Camtasia, would have both a short video to show how but also a text description of the process. That seems to be something to explore.
Another possibility is to use text the speech software to create the voice over. These voice overs sound quite robotic but they are used extensively and people don’t seem to mind. They are getting better. I can’t justify the cost at the moment.
May be the focus should be on using a totally new set of tools as most courses are consumed on smartphones, often while commuting. Hmmm, it is something to think about.
I have so many projects floating around in my head that I am eager to share, I really must resolve this problem with making videos soon.
Editing videos and posting them on YouTube is very time consuming under normal circumstances. Then there is the uploading to YouTube, creating the thumbnail images and preparing the video meta information such as title, description, keywords and so on. And it is all repetitive work, it is not as if one is presenting the viewer with new information, it is just laborious behind the scenes work that, if well done, the viewer should be unaware of. When you add to that the extra delays due to Parkinson’s then it can run into hours even days.
My objective then is to get the process running as smoothly as possible so that it takes the minimum time possible. If I can’t achieve that, I will have to rethink the role of the courses. We are not in the business of proving that we can make course videos but rather encouraging the wider use of smartphones.
