Here is a place to talk up your software of choice for making Tutorials.
Tell us about what you use to make tutorials, what the pros and cons may be and where possible show us examples of tutorials created with those tools. Of special interest are those tutorials that demonstrate use of Animation:Master.

For the record Hash Inc's preferred software for video tutorials is Camtasia.
For freeware the Tutorials Forum currently suggests Wink as the standard for .swf tutorials.
Please note that the forum can generate HTML tutorials based on discussions here in the forum via the 'Print this Topic' option. See THIS TOPIC for more information.

Formats of interest:
.doc (this includes other similar formats such as .rtf)
.htm, .html
.pdf
.mov
.avi
.swf

What did I miss?

Thanks!
Rodney

CamStudio 2.0 is a freeware screen recording application--A 2003 PC Mag review. If anyone goes this route, it's important to get Camstudio 2.0 and not 2.1. CamStudio was bought by a commercial developer and CamStudio 2.1 has some features disabled that competed with the commercial product (including Flash output.)

CamStudio 2.0 works great, it can output avi or Flash, it can record a voice-over track or, if you have the software, the VO can be recorded separately and combined with the video in an NLE.

Curtis

I like Snapz Pro X for the Mac,
by Ambrosia Software.

I do Photoshop, InDesign, and Final Cut tutorials for my students
and this little program has never let me down.

I haven't tried it in the newer versions of A:M,
just with 10.5 -. It had a problem that caused the
slider tab near the frame indication area
to duplicate itself everytime it was touched.
It worked great on any other part of A:M though.

I'll have to check it on the newer A:Ms
and get back to you.

Edit: Just checked it with 11.1i and it works without a hitch.

For video tutorials, I have used Camstudio with the framerate set at 5 frames per second to conserve file size. I went with 720x480 so that it would be standard television size and also to save file size from the 1024x768 full screen capture. I found that there was a problem with the audio while capturing, so I went with Audacity to record audio at the same time. I then used Virtualdub to combine the audio and video and edit down the captures...which I did in segments to reduce audio drift and to reduce the amount I would have to re-do if a problem occurred. Once I had the tutorial like I wanted it, I used GIMP to make the title graphic and used Virtualdub to edit it in. Lastly, I took the final uncompressed AVI and imported it into Quicktime Pro to save it as a Quicktime MOV so that it would be more cross-platform friendly. The final product is not as clean as some other tutorials because I was mainly concerned with keeping the file size down. I ended up getting just a little over 1 MB per minute...I think it's around 1 hour and 50 minutes long and weighs in at around 120 MB for both parts.

For Adobe Acrobat (PDF) tutorials, I have used just a notepad-like HTML editor to make the pages (it's called Quikpage, but I don't think you can get it anywhere now), opened it up in Open Office and exported as a PDF out of there. The original HTML could also be used as a straight web page. For a free HTML editor, you might try something like HTML-Kit...you could probably do it all from within Open Office though.

An example of the video tutorial is here and an example of the PDF I don't have anywhere online except that I used the same method for the installation instructions for the Squetch Rig, here.

Total cost of software is $30 for Quicktime Pro...so that's a plus.

Thanks everyone!

Those are some great resources for putting tutorials together.
I've learned a lot too here. For instance, I didn't know that Open Office could save out to PDF format. That could be quite useful. The utilities I've used for printing and saving to PDF do the job but sometimes just barely**. I'd love to standardize on Open Office for the Tutorials Forum administrative work but I fear that would leave our Mac tutorial gurus out of the loop.

What software do Mac Users prefer when making tutorials?
I know Quicktime Pro is pretty much standard on every Mac.

Rodney

**I plan to try Go2PDF as it looks like a pretty good one stop utility for creating PDF files.

There's a Mac version, Rodney...actually, Open Office is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Audacity is also available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Windows only software I listed would be Virtualdub, CamStudio and HTML-Kit.

I've been thinking about trying Cinelerra for video editing by way of a "live" CD like dyne:bolic...it's a lot more of an editor than anyone would need for making tutorials, but for hardcore projects the practice might pay off. With a live CD, you wouldn't have to install it or the operating system (Linux). You would just boot using the CD...I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be able to access Windows drives. I'll let you know how my experiments come out.

As David suggested, one of the problems of using a raw screen recording for a tutorial or other purpose is that you can't be sure that your video will fit on someone else's display. These are the steps that I've used to convert a full screen, high res clip to 640x480 or 720x486. This process requires a NLE that accepts the HD 16:9 format on the timeline.

In display properties:
1) Set computer screen resolution to 1280x960.

In capture application:
2) Set capture region to 1280x960. (I've been using CamStudio 2.0)
3) Capture screen action

In display properties:
4) Restore computer screen resolution to your preference (unless it's less than 1280x960)

In your non-linear editor
5) Create a new sequence
6) Set new sequence preset format to "Custom Format"
7) Set new sequence frame rate to "30 fps"
8) Set new sequence resolution to 1440x1080 - 16:9 (non-square)
9) Set new sequence interlacing to non interlaced
10) Import footage from capture application to new sequence
11) Insert source into timeline
12) Apply 2D Editor to clip
13) Open 2D editor, expand size function, unlock width and height and expand clip to fill 1440x1080 inlay (probably 150%x114%)--it will look a little squashed.
14) Export sequence using custom size of 640x480, non-interlaced, 30 fps
15) To get out of the resource intensive HD mode, import clip into 640x480 timeline (frame aspect should look right), edit clip, add transitions and VO, etc.

Curtis

Thanks guys! Even more great info to absorb.

I guess its settled for me then... I'll have to look into Open Office.
I personally use MS Office but having Open Office installed too shouldn't be a problem.



Great info Curtis.

On a slightly different but related note I've found that editing the HTML height/width to make them automatically adjust to 90% of the window on the web page makes .swf tutorials display pretty good.
The exception of course is text. If the text was created in too small a font it wont be readable on larger resolution screens. My recommendation is to keep Fonts fairly large in tutorials.

While I haven't really explored the world of sound and music for my animation I selected Audacity as my personal choice for sound editing quite a while ago. I'm glad to hear its also available on the Mac.

Keep the info flowing.
As I find time I plan to post a few example Wink projects that people can pick apart and explore.
I'd like to do some Tutorials on Making Tutorials one of these days too.

Never enough time, especially to explore all the programs and utilities available.
Thats one reason I think its good to standardize from time to time.

So the list of recommended software for creating Tutorials includes (but not limited too):

Camtasia ($) - Flash movie making/screen capture Freeware alternatives include Wink and Camstudio (only v2 recommended)
Open Office (F) - Freeware word processing, database and spreadsheet applications for administration
Audacity (F) - Sound Editing

Rodney

Microsoft Producer 2003
Here's one I just learned about.

It's free, but you need at least Powerpoint 2002 in order to install it.

Maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but still interesting aspecially since somewhere in the feature list it claims to be able to create and use screencap movies.

Another tool I use at work is Macromedia's Captivate. It's more of a pro tool though.

Nice thread here Rodney, and thanks for all the suggestions everyone,

Michael

Rodney,

You asked for some examples, so here are two tutorials I did today that show a couple ways to create targa decals in Photoshop and Illustrator, and how they look when applied in A:M.

5 minutes at 7.2 MB
http://homepage.mac.com/nimblepix//01PSalpha.mov


3.25 minutes at 4.6 MB
http://homepage.mac.com/nimblepix//02illalphademo.mov

Produced with Snapz Pro X on an iMac (screen reduced to 800 x 600 during recording) with no post editing.

Dan!
I'll check those out just as soon as I can get them downloaded. Slow/intermitten connection here w/ firewall blocking out the free world.

Thanks for the MAC voice!
Rodney

TRY THIS SOFT
Presentavid

or look at geovid.com for the info

Oh please please... this must be from now on the "go to" demo to show how alphas SHOULD be done in PS and how they work!

I have always tried to explain this concept for avoiding "fringes" and for some reason it seems hard for people to understand... this is very very clear and simple and very quick.

(p.s. a shortcut for creating the alpha is to, after opening in photoshop, just drag one of the RGB channels to the create alpha dohicky. No flatten or cut and paste! Then you just fill the RGB channel. All channels of RGB are 100% black when the RGB is black... great "premade" alphas built right in.)

----

I had bought an ancient copy of SnapZ pro ages ago... I wonder if I can still upgrade it?... hmm... completely forgot about it when I changed jobs... and computers... I will need to pull that old computer out of the closet and fire it up to find my license.

I definitely need this on OSX... definitely.



Vernon "!" Zehr

Thanks for the strokes Vern!
Glad you liked the tuts.

I love Snapz Pro.
When my students e-mail a question to me
about doing something in a particular program,
I usually just record the solution with Snapz Pro and e-mail it right back,
then drop a copy of it in our folder for that week.
For me, many times its a lot easier than trying to type out the instructions.

If I talk too slowly,
they can push the fast forward button.
I also usually half size it and it's still very readable.


I did post them on your A.R.M.site in the beginners section. : )

Dang! I really should use that site more often.



Vernon "!" Zehr

Just a heads up for anyone using Quicktime Pro to convert video files to MOV files. I forget if this happened with previous versions, but, with Quicktime Pro 7, the video file you are converting can't be just sitting on the drive by itself, it has to be in a folder (any folder) or you get an error. I had a hard time finding out what was wrong and I thought I would save someone else the headache.

I was responding to Jody Krivohlavek's cylinder decaling tutorial thread when I decided to visit the Wink site.
We've been waiting for the release of Wink 2.0 for quite awhile now.

...and I missed its recent release!

Here are some of the new features and updates:



To Satis (Wink's creator) who doesn't even know we exist over here in the A:M Forum yet... many thanks!

The Link:

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/download.php

Woo Hoo!

I see UCL in the UK has an MS Word document detaling making tutorials with Wink available on their site:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/learningtechnology/content/tools/wink/

They apparently also offer a course.