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Ask HN: How do you create high quality how-to videos?

14 points by joshdotsmith ↗ HN
I'm working on a product that's going to require in-house video content creation. This is way outside my wheelhouse since I've only really worked on user-generated content before. I know little to nothing about video production.

What's the fastest and cheapest way to go about creating high quality how-to videos? What kind of people do you need to find, etc?

9 comments

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lutusp
> What's the fastest and cheapest way to go about creating high quality how-to videos?

Very simple:

* Watch a lot of highly-rated how-to videos.

* Take copious notes about structure and content.

* Imitate them.

Remember that video production is an art, not a science. There are some common-sense guidelines, but a good video is usually good for intangible reasons, reasons that cannot be scheduled or controlled, reasons that require experience and expertise.

WestCoastJustin
This is exactly it. I run http://sysadmincasts.com/ and this is the system that I have used. Also, expect that high quality audio/video takes time, each minute of video takes me about 1-2 hours (research, planning storyboard/transcript, recording, editing, transcoding, review, etc) to produce.
rk0567
I like it. I think, you using ubuntu. Would you care to share what screencasting softwares/tools you use in Ubuntu ?
janeglendale
Definitely check out http://voicebunny.com -- it's amazing how much higher quality anything sounds with a professional voiceover. If you don't care about the specific voice (and just that it's professional-sounding), it's not too expensive and the turnaround is quick. They also have something called bunnycast.com, that turns your blog posts into audio for $19/each.

That being said, it's not exactly cost efficient for long how-to videos.

dholowiski
As you said - not really cost effective. But I had an audiobook recorded by someone I found on a similar service for a lot more than $19 and it was worth every penny. If I was a startup producing howto or advertising videos I would absolutely do this.
rizwanj
I was facing the same situation when I needed to create an demo video for an app I designed. I had never done any type of video production before. Luckily I found this course on Udemy that lays out all the steps needed to create a demo video http://bit.ly/1bUkHSV

I was then able to go step by step from brainstorming ideas, creating a script, finding artwork, finding music and effects and then optimizing for the web.

Hope this helps.

dholowiski
> fastest and cheapest high quality

As the old saying goes, pick any two (or sometimes just one)

I used to produce high quality video tutorials. I used "Screenflow" from Telestream. I had a professional quality Shure microphone and an audio mixer, as well as a USB sound card. Probably the most important component is your audio, much more so than video quality, so spend some money on good quality audio equipment.

I pre-planned my tutorials, recorded the tutorials and then edited them. For editing, I did most of it in Final Cut Pro, although I was eventually able to do it all in Screenflow. I spent a huge time editing - synching audio and video, recording parts where I messed up.

All told, for a 20 minute tutorial I would probably spend an hour planning, 40 minutes recording, 3 hours editing, and 2 or 3 hours encoding the video. The encoding part would probably go much faster on today's hardware, but the 2 or 3 hours editing was the result of many hours of learning - it was probably 8 or 9 hours to edit the first ones.

If you're recording screencasts, I wholeheartedly recommend screenflow. Without a doubt it's the best screencast software there is (not an ad, just a happy customer).

wikwocket
Wistia has a lot of great how-to videos for people new to video content: http://wistia.com/learning

I believe they also have a newsletter where they share good tips.

revorad
Check out http://hadoopscreencasts.com/ and contact Rohit Menon (the creator of the site). He told me he did a lot of research before starting his site, and also got some very good tips from Ryan Bates of Railscasts.