OK folks, honest opinions ...

I've been wanting to set up some how to videos for a long time, and I just set up a channel on YouTube for just that.

Now ... it takes a lot longer to create a tutorial video with narration, because you have to clean up the audio (all those lip smacks and um's and sniffly noses and all that). And it's a lot easier for me to do this on the fly if I don't have to talk during it, I just fly through doing what I have to do and then adjust the timing of the video afterward to make it easy to follow.

So what I decided to do was just add captions.  And unbeknownst to me, you can turn the captions on and off on Youtube (using the little CC icon in the lower right corner). They are also working on automatic translation which is kind of cool and might be helpful down the road.

It's probably the best way for me to approach this as time permits, because there are times that I am working on things and I think "One of these days I'll have to show that in a video."

But ... the main feedback that I'm looking for right now is ...

Without music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJELLhQicPw

Or with music?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHiwO45XQxg

With the music at least I would know there is nothing wrong with my connection.  The silent one leaves one wondering if I am missing something.  Plus I can always turn down the volume if I do not like the music.

I would go with the non music version, the reason why?

The music track takes up space and that could be used to make the tutorial longer.

Keep the captions etc. and the style as that works for me.

I look foward to seeing mroe.

All the best.

LORG

I prefer the silent one, but I wouldn't be bothered too much by the music.

I like the captioning. It makes it easier to follow and it leaves time to comprehend of what is being written/said. I also like the bordering of the tools you are using.

Good and easy to understand tutorial!

Quote - With the music at least I would know there is nothing wrong with my connection.  The silent one leaves one wondering if I am missing something.  Plus I can always turn down the volume if I do not like the music.

Good point!

Yeah the audio is controllable too.  But the main thing that I liked was that they are beta testing translation for the closed captioning, which is something I didn't expect.

If there are any things you might want covered, this is just as good a place as any for me to add them to my list. 8-)

Wim ... it's a lot easier to show it than to write it, that's for sure. 8-)

With music, can always turn it off, and I immediately know that you are not speaking.

If it helps I had to buy a good microphone for video tutorials.  Initially I bought one that was too sensetive (Samson Meteor), but then I got a Yeti Blue which is awesome for that kind of thing.

You can set the recording capsule directly on the mic, as well as the gain.  All you get is my voice now :)  Including some ums and ahs, for some reason people seem to like them, shows I'm human or at least organic :)

They aren't cheap I'm afraid but they do save a lot of post processing time :)

John.

If you ever watched some other poser tut's they have kids and family talkin in the background, but it really is fine anyway.  Most people are their own worst critic. 

You could be in the mall, and if you are explaining something we all don't understand, and you are explaining it well, all the background noises, "um's" and "uh's" just seem to disappear.  :)

Quote - With music, can always turn it off, and I immediately know that you are not speaking.

Yup, I'd agree with this... but no music is fine for me.

I will tend to be watching these with the sound down, when my 10 month old is asleep in bed, so the captions instead of voiceover is good for me too.

I use a Microsoft Lifechat headset for recording language lessons and have never had a problem with too much noise interference. But it's possible that when you're recording English for people who do not yet speak the language, you tend to be extremely careful with your diction (so there are no um's and ah's or sniffs or whatever).

For a variety of reasons, I often find myself working on a machine that has no sound. So captions are fantastic. I wish everyone used them.

Of course, I really very much dislike the trend toward video tutorials (and podcasts) because I end up spending 30 minutes searching for a simple answer that I would otherwise find in 15 seconds of scanning a written document. There's no real way to know until you've watched the whole thing whether the info you need is even there.

Even if I need to pay attention to the whole thing, it's way, way, way faster to read a tutorial than to listen to one. Yet videos are so popular. Strange. Makes me wonder if in a hundred years, people will still be able to read.

ETA: Having said that, some things are just way better on video. Yours is probably a good example of that.

People have different learning styles I think, I don't think any one style will win over another.  Some people will prefer to read, others watch and or listen.  I think written tutorials will always be about, probably more so than videos.

My dyslexia makes reading and understanding tutorials difficult, I do much better with a video.  Consquently when explaining something, I do better recording a video than I do writing it down.

Sound recording quality is also down to the soundcard in your machine.  I found this out early on when I got too much hiss in the background, I researched a bit and bought an external USB Soundblaster Platinum and kerpow :) it cleared up my recordings a treat :)

John.

Some good feedback here, thanks!

I'll check out some of those mics. Need a better one anyway.

Ooops .. just thought of something. I need something that is mac/win compatible, as I'm on a Mac Pro and dual boot between Windows and Mac.  It's an occupational hazard. 8-)

The Blue is awesome, it is huge though :) it's about a foot tall on my desk.

Quote - The Blue is awesome, it is huge though :) it's about a foot tall on my desk.

I'd probably prefer something that is on a headset. Any ideas? I did look at the Microsoft LifeChat, but can't tell if it's Mac/Win compatible.

Now it might not be that big of a deal, because I'm on Windows 80% of the time anyway, and will probably do most of the videos in Windows anyway. I did have a nice audio interface and condenser mic, but my musician brother stole it. LOL

Hmmm ... the Sennheiser PC 350 looks kind of sweet 8-)

The swine, chase him down and pinch it back :)

I haven't found a headset mic I liked yet, but my buddy Ironman13 says her Logitech Wireless headset records really well :)  It's hard to say though, it's going to be a combination of soundcard and headset/mic.

I got over my soundcard being a bit pants by getting a usb mic, which bypasses the soundcard thing.

John.

I want to add one more vote for non music. Reason? People have different tastes in music. I find that most music on tutorials is distracting, and I usually turn it all the way down.

I want to add one more vote for non music. Reason? People have different tastes in music. I find that most music on tutorials is distracting, and I usually turn it all the way down.

Understood.  It's one of the reasons I asked.

Been using Sonic Fire Pro, which has all sorts of different styles, the reason being you can make the music to the exact length you need. Very sweet.

But if you like head banging stuff, you won't hear that on my tutorials. LOL!!!  I do have some good rockin' stuff though.

im not a fan of adding music to videos:

1.  its just wasted bandwidth for those of us that are paying per meg. 

2.  audio is less costly than video, regardless you are still wasting bitrate that could be spent on more video instead. 

3.  youre not going to find music that will please everyone, or even the majority of people.

So right now there are more "no music" than "music."  Yes you are correct that audio does add more bandwidth ... wonder what the difference would be between that and a full narration? That's something I'd have to compare.

Quote - So right now there are more "no music" than "music."  Yes you are correct that audio does add more bandwidth ... wonder what the difference would be between that and a full narration? That's something I'd have to compare.

Here is a good example of the difference. Since one of my many hobbies was home recording, I have a some pretty decent software for mixing my songs. I just rendered a song to 128kbps mp3. The song is 21 tracks, rendered to 2 stereo tracks, with the song being about 5 minutes long. Total size was 4.15MB.

I then rendered a vocal track by itself from the same song to 128kbps mp3. The file size was 4.16MB rendered in mono.

It would seem to me that they are pretty much the same, and it would probably depend on what settings you use to record and render the soundtrack. With a vocal narration, I am pretty sure you can set the quality pretty low and still get workable results. With a music soundtrack, most people won't be able to tell the difference between 128kbps and 320. Only an audiophile would be able to tell the difference. You can experiment with this. I just did a quick test to see what would happen.

That's what I suspected ... the difference between adding a music soundtrack and adding a voiceover is pretty negligible. So if I am going to consider adding narration instead of just captions, it will increase the size of the video by the same amount anyway.

So it seems the most economical delivery would be just to have captions, and no sound at all.  If I add narration, it the download size won't be any different than it would with a music track.

Interesting.

OK .. the difference between a "no audio" version, and a version with 96KB/sec audio at 1280x960 resolution, for that 6 minute video, is about 2.5 MB.

It's 16.5 MB with no audio, and around 19 MB with.

i think the logical solution to this dilemma is that you sing the narration, while playing the tambourine.

Quote - i think the logical solution to this dilemma is that you sing the narration, while playing the tambourine.

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Edit ... I'm still laughing five minutes later.  LOL You goober!)

Quote - i think the logical solution to this dilemma is that you sing the narration, while playing the tambourine.

Well, that would definitely beat any written tutorial, any time, hands down!

Quote - i think the logical solution to this dilemma is that you sing the narration, while playing the tambourine.

Hahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!

Instant YouTube Classic! Viral video of the year!

"Of course, I really very much dislike the trend toward video tutorials (and podcasts) because I end up spending 30 minutes searching for a simple answer that I would otherwise find in 15 seconds of scanning a written document."

Ditto. I'm not sure what's possible with interactive video but it should be possible to have some kind of menu or index. Even if it were only a plain list telling you that 'Render Settings' starts at 10:52, that would be helpful.

Put my vote in as music off. I find it rather distracting and if I need to play back a step a few times, hearing the same music points over and over, it gets very annoying.