Step-by-step Guide Video - Tech Support Solution

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.

Get Exposure - Increase Your Business Sales

No doubt about that, the one thing that any company, corporation or business wants is exposure. Exposure shapes and molds a company or an idea to formulate a process in the potential customer’s mind. If you can get them to think it, perhaps you can get them to buy it. In other words, more exposure, more money. But how to get more exposure and make it work? A convictive demonstration of your product and service can be good.

Advertising on TV is a good way to get exposure. But the budget is not affordable for everyone. When the internet became available for business and consumer consumption, now the truth is that: no matter what the size of a company is, they can create visibility for themselves, especially online. Online demonstration can be more effective to spread your business and increase your business sales. A stunning demo is helpful to show the features and functions of your product and service. And it could be a way to attracting more people to learning about your business. Statistics shows that offering your potential customers a product or service they can actually see will help create a massive increase in your sales.

Here is a story from Marketing Your Business on YouTube.

Charles Smith, a pottery artist from Mobile, Ala., thinks about the tens of thousands of people worldwide who have clicked on his videos to watch him create works of art on his pottery wheel only to break them up at the end.

“You’ve got to have a gimmick, so I broke up the pots,” says Smith, who says about 90 percent of that traffic is students, but 10 percent is actually generating sales.

To make a compelling demonstration video, you don’t have to find a professional advertising company. There are plenty convenient devices for you to get it done, what you need is creativity.

Camcorders come to be prevalent in making personalized videos. If you don’t feel comfortable to speak in front of the machine, creating a PowerPoint presentation can be the way of your demonstration, but it is not the right format to share online. Converting the PowerPoint presentation file into a Flash movie or a video for wide distribution sounds flexible. For that, PPT2Flash Pro or PPT2Video is available. Another Screencasting tool like DemoCreator provides a highly effective way to guide people through a complicated operating task: it records the onscreen activity to generate the step by step videos for software and website system demonstration.

The video demonstration can better illustrate your business than text with pictures, not matter products or service, in an unconventional way. When the information of your business can be delivered clearly to people, they will respond very well. The video demonstration enhances their experience. They feel a connection because they can visually see and hear how the products and service work. This will help them to make the purchase decision.

The predominately used publishing media for online demonstration are Flash movie and video. This makes it easy to share on product websites, podcast websites, blogs, social sites and more. As far as you know, YouTube, Blogspot and Myspace are all popular all over the world. So, you are getting mass exposure advertising to reach out to the masses. And it may transform them to your future customers.

More benefit you can get from the step by step online demonstration videos…

The demonstration video reduces service costs with online customer self-service. It could be the solution when users meet the trouble using your service and products. If they can find the related solution demos on your websites, users can get the problems done by themselves most of times.

When you want to drive more traffic to your website, you can put your company logo with the site link in the movie. This will remind them to go immediately to your website for additional information. For example, you are making a video demonstrating a software product. You can add the URL at the downright corner of the Flash movie to direct the viewers to your product page and they may immediately buy.

What can you or your company do to create more visibility and exposure for your service or product? What creative ways can you find to share what you want to share?

Screencasts - Effective Technology Training in Enterprises

We had the rapid technology development of new mobile devices and platforms, virtualization, cloud computing, and more. But we also met the serious financial crisis in 2008. In enterprises, more and more people are upgrading their OA systems and products with new technologies. Nowadays high quality and low cost training of new technology is what enterprises looking
for.

When an enterprise is going to adopt the new software product or a new system to provide them higher productivity and greater functionality, training is the must-have item before the technology is widely used. The traditional way of sending your employees or users to a training center costs a mass of money and time, and it means that you lose productivity from your
employees. And the truth shows that, usually they don’t learn much in the training classes. When they start to use the new software application, they meet difficulties everywhere.

In this recession period, the inexpensive solutions which can achieve the effective result are the choices for most enterprises. As e-learning and knowledge management come to be popular in enterprise training, the task-oriented screencast presentation is a good solution for technology training in enterprise.

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate technical tasks, or to illustrate technical concepts that are hard to explain in words with screen recording and slideshows.

There are two ways to do the training screencast: have someone done it or do it yourself with screencasting tool. There are some professional companies like AotoDemo that makes software demo and website demo for enterprise, but the cost is beyond some enterprises’ budget in this difficult time. To make it yourself, there are many software applications available to produce screencasts. What software you need depends on your computer platform and the content you want to make. The screencasting tool I suggest is DemoCreator for Windows. Some free solutions such as TipCam or Camstudio can also be your option. The main downside is that the free applications are almost with no editing features.

To make a screencast with DemoCreator, you have 4 steps to go: prepare your script, record screen activities, edit your recording, and publish your movie. Here we will take a look at some special features of DemoCreator:

Record the onscreen activity as slides for easy editing

DemoCreator record video tutorials with audio by screen capture, and show exactly how the application (such as PowerPoint, Photoshop and website) or system runs. The screen recording is saved as slides. This enables users to save the desired slides and discard the unwanted slides for their presentation.

Edit the recording tutorial with interactive objects for explicit illustration

There is a library of objects to decorate the recording, such as Flash animation, highlight boxes, and clickable buttons for directing users to another slide or a URL page. Users can enhance the
presentation by adding the objects to make the illustration explicit. And it allows users to rerecord the narration or import the audio for the training content. Furthermore, multiple tutorial projects can be integrated as one.

Publish the presentation for online training

To make interactive training presentations, the predominately used publishing output media type in DemoCreator is Flash movie and Html. Trainers can provide the video tutorials compliant with SCORM or AICC. The screencasts are available through both commercial and open source learning management systems for school education and enterprise training.

The screencast training is clearer and more engaging than traditional teaching; the training tutorials can be played as many times as needed; the tutorial videos are for "anytime/anywhere" learning… These advantages make screencast an outstanding training method, especially in this tough economic time. For enterprise, the training content can be put on the Knowledge Management System like SharePoint or Learning Management System like Moodle for knowledge sharing and technology training. Then the trainees and employees can learn the technology on Internet freely.

Related Links :
Get start with DemoCreator

Show website with Demos

DemoCreator - Screen Recorder for Learning

Screen recorder is the software for recording screen activity and mouse movement to create movies and interactive demos. It is useful for creating training materials, software tutorials, presentations, and product demonstrations. As a powerful presentation tool, nowadays screen recorder is widely used in teaching and learning.

The research about screen recording suggests that screen recordings increase teaching presence and thus improve students' learning experiences.
- For teachers, they can perform demos in an online learning environment; the tutorials can be edited with multiple interactive elements before delivery, the demos support reuse...
- For students, the presentations created by screen recorder is clearer and more engaging than written instructions or static screen shots; the demos can be played as many times as needed; the tutorial videos is for "anytime/anywhere" learning...

Using screen recorder to create presentations for online teaching becomes more and more popular in edu 2.0. DemoCreator - is widely used in universities and institutions, DemoCreator is a nice screen recorder for creating electronic learning presentations. It provides friendly interfaces and powerful editing features. No need of multimedia and programming skills to make interactive tutorials. We will take a look at this screen recorder in details.

Record the onscreen activity as slides

DemoCreator record video tutorials with audio by screen capture, and show exactly how the application (such as PowerPoint, Photoshop and website) or system runs. The screen recording is saved as slides. The slide format makes it easy to edit. For example, the mouse curse is recorded as an editable object in the timeline of a slide, users can change its clicking area, clicking effect, movement route and time. A mass of slides for a lengthy presentation could be a disadvantage for some users, but this enables users to save the desired slides and discard the unwanted slides for their presentation.

Edit the recording tutorial with interactive objects

Because tutorials and simulations are shown as a slide format in DemoCreator, users 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, highlight boxes for spotlighting areas in a slide, and clickable buttons for directing users to a different slide or URL page. Users can enhance the presentation by adding the objects to make the illustration explicit. Users can rerecord the narrations for the tutorials, or they can import the music files to their tutorials. Furthermore, the existed project can be imported to the current presentation project. It means that DemoCreator supports tutorial reuse, and the multiple tutorials can be integrated as one.

Publish the presentation for online learning

To make interactive presentations, the predominately used publishing output media type in DemoCreator is Flash movie. The main drawback is that lengthy presentations can result in a large number of slides that can be time consuming to publish and result in a larger file size. And DemoCreator enables teachers to provide students with record results through Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) or Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee (AICC). SCORM and AICC courseware are available through both commercial and open source learning management systems for school education and enterprise training.

"Teaching is a performing art."
— Bob Ross, professional speaker and humorist
Easy to make your presentation with screen recorder. But remember, to make a good presentation, instructor enthusiasm and creativity are the key.

Related Links :
Get start with DemoCreator

Record Computer Screen with Audio