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A simple process for recording your product demo videos

October 1st, 2009

imageSomeone recently asked me how I created the Telligent Community 5.0 demo video that you can watch here.  The thing that made this the easiest was TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio product.  Using their fine software as a base I was able to use the following process…

  1. Created the rough outline “on paper” of the scenes I wanted… like white boarding a real movie.
  2. Used the Camtasia Recording tool to capture clips with audio notes… not final audio.  The key point is that I didn’t have time to try and do it all at once in one smooth 10 minute demo. 
  3. Then I laid the clips out in the camtasia project, trimmed, and inserted the transitions/zooms, etc.  I had a time limit in mind that I didn’t want to go over and had filed too much.
  4. I did the transitions because I didn’t want to try and fake like it was one smooth demo.   It’s a series of stories that are cohesive.
  5. I recorded the audio.  Camtasia lets you do this one snippet of video at a time and has a great tool with keyboard shortcuts to pause the video on certain frames for callouts if you need to add more content. 
    1. Each section was tightly scripted audio content so I didn’t stumble much.
  6. Finally Camtasia lets you output in any number of formats depending on the need. 

Other Important Tips

  • Find a good Mic.  I went through 5 before I found one with minimal static and background noise.  Camtasia has filters for this, but they can only do so much.
  • Send dogs, kids, spouses, etc away or give them fair warning you’ll be grumpy if they ruin an awesome take.

Finally, show it to other people and watch it frequently yourself until you are convinced the points you whiteboarded come across.  You’ll find that some stuff just doesn’t work well.  What’s your process? Do you have any tips?

Josh Ledgard Software , , ,

  1. Rick
    October 4th, 2009 at 23:12 | #1

    Camtasia also produces SCORM content if you’d like your presentation to actually be courseware to be used in an online Learning Management System.

    It’s a terrific tool and I use it frequently myself.

    -RB

  2. October 25th, 2009 at 03:27 | #2

    Camtasia also produces SCORM content

  3. October 28th, 2009 at 09:14 | #3

    Thanks for all the useful tips josh, and Linda and RIck for that matter! GOing to give it a go tonight when get home! Thanks, G.

  4. November 3rd, 2009 at 06:15 | #4

    Interesting article! Thanks a lot for the detailed description…I am going to try all this process tonight!

  5. November 4th, 2009 at 09:13 | #5

    Camtasia also produces SCORM content if you’d like your presentation to actually be courseware to be used in an online Learning Management System.

  6. November 4th, 2009 at 10:41 | #6

    thank you for tips

  7. November 11th, 2009 at 05:16 | #7

    Hey , thank you for that, Im gonna try right now!

  8. November 16th, 2009 at 10:33 | #8

    Camtasia is a terrific tool and I use it frequently myself.

  9. December 9th, 2009 at 07:26 | #9

    Thanks for all the useful tips josh, and Linda and RIck for that matter!

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