As a technical support staff, a question that I am asked a lot by my customers is "Can you show me the solution of the problem step by step?" I try really hard to state the operating steps to them by the words in the email or on the phone, but they don’t get what I mean for most of times. In fact, the 80% questions have been asking again and again, but I still have to answer them one by one. Now the solution is clear for me: Creating the step-by-step video for troubleshooting.
Why create a video for technical support?
- It is an easy way to explain your solution process
- No continual stop/start grabbing screenshots and typing instructions
- Easy to follow along and reproduce steps
- Friendly to users
- Reduce service costs with online customer self-service
To make a troubleshooting video, there are 4 steps to go: prepare your script, record screen activities, edit your recording, and publish your movie. There are some applications available to record what happens on your computer. A few of them are free, but with little editing feature. Some editing is necessary for making a compelling step-by-step video. Here I will focus on the editing feature of DemoCreator.
The advanced editing features enable you to edit the recording and add details to your video. Because the recorded movies are shown as a slide format in this screencasting tool, you can readily modify the pace and control the timing of objects such as visual components on the timeline editor for each slide. There is a library of available objects to decorate the recording, such as Flash animation, mouse movements, text box, edit entry, zoom-n-pan scale for specifying specific details for selected area, highlight boxes for spotlighting areas in a slide, and clickable buttons for directing users to a different slide or URL page. You can enhance the video by adding the objects to make the illustration explicit. Besides, you can rerecord the narration or import the music file to the video if it is in need. Furthermore, the existed project can be imported to the current recording project. It means that this screen recorder supports project reuse, and the multiple videos can be integrated as one.
To make a good step-by-step video, there are some useful tips:
- Prepare your recording script: Be familiar with the software you are going to demonstrate, and know clearly of the operating steps. If you want to add the narration to the video, you’d better write down the script or prepare it in your mind.
- Capture only the minimum screen area that you need. This will reduce the file size. And you can emphasize the important part by zooming and panning.
- Adjust the screen resolution and color quality: To improve your computer’s performance during the screen-capture session, especially if you plan to capture the entire computer screen, reducing the screen resolution and color quality is good for the recording performance.
- Be aware of your mouse movements: When selected the Taking screenshots recording mode, avoid the unnecessary clicks; when selected the Full motion recording, you may hang the mouse to the area which need to be selected or clicked for a second or two. For a video with audio, the synchronization is very important.
- It's OK to pause. If there is a long video or if you have to pause when in recording, it is all right. And you can resume your recording by capturing additional slides.
- Save your recording in the shareable format. To put the video on your websites, publish the output as Flash movie with Html page is nice. To share it on video sharing website like Youtube, you can publish it as Avi.
Well, have a try and make the video of screen for technical stuff. You may enjoy doing that.
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