Question

Topic: Other

Training Video's - What, Where And How???

Posted by Anonymous on 1/5/2011 at 5:19 AM ET 150 Points
Hi friends,

I have a rather tough question...We are currently looking into the possibility of making DVD's of our Christian training material - this way, we can send them to a student, without him requiring a lecturer. This will also be used by pastors, who will play the DVD or their classes (of about 20+ students), eliminating the need for them to teach...

What I would like to know is this:

1. We have a limited budget, so we have to do this ourselves (at least until it picks up and we can generate the funds to do it professionally) - are there any free tools or resources available online?

2. Should we record someone giving class, or will it be fine to have the info on screen and only have a narrator? But it will still be visual - due to the info being displayed on screen...

3. What things should we consider before embarking on this 'new adventure'?

Please shout if you need more info...

Thanks so much
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by sbracco on 1/5/2011 at 9:45 AM Accepted
    Hi, Kevin.

    We provide online training to our customer and actually have recorded conferences and meetings for later viewing by using https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

    We are looking into purchasing Adobe Connect which will enable us to record trainings and give live demos. Here is a link to a video that explains its capabilities.

    https://pgi.preview.adobeconnect.com/p37017633/

    Also, we use https://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/webinar and https://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/online_meeting to hold trainings and demos. I've used this service in the past at my last job and was able to provide training sessions that were live to 1 up to 1,000 people. We recorded the sessions and posted them on our website for later viewing.

    While gotomeeting/webinar offers a great service, we are really thinking about switching to Adobe Connect because it offers more than gotomeeting/webinar - live video stream - and is available at a fraction of the cost.

    Good Luck!
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 1/5/2011 at 10:11 AM Accepted
    There are free tools for creating/editing your own video/DVD on both PCs and Macs. But to make the video watchable/engaging, you'll need a good microphone (for crisp audio) and likely 2+ cameras (to mix/match the visuals - since watching a single person speak for an extended period of time isn't engaging video). Doing a voiceover (for your slides) is likely to be much simpler for you as well, but much less engaging for the viewer. You might also consider putting your lectures online (you can make the local of the lectures "private" so that search engines won't find them) - thereby saving you the time/money to send out DVDs.
  • Posted on 1/5/2011 at 11:43 AM Author
    Thank you for the replies...

    The problem is, we work in Africa and 99% of these rural villages have not even heard about the internet, yet they do have video projectors and DVD players (due to it being so cheap these days)...So putting lectures online and having Live webinars is not an option at all, simply because our 'students' do not have access.

    The plan is to make DVD's and then distribute them to the coordinator of that area - they will then arrange for the 'classes' to take place and then watch the video when everyone is available.

    So, we know we need to make DVD's, but we do have the equipment (cameras, microphones etc.) to make the DVD's...

    Is there any way to make 'voice over' narrating with slides engaging? This will make it much cheaper for us to produce...It's important to remember that the students will have training manuals as well - the DVD's will therefore simply be an addition to the manuals, as this will basically summarize the specific study...

    We have used Camtasia in the past and it did work quite well...We just haven't used it for training videos before...

    Thanks again...
  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 1/5/2011 at 7:21 PM Accepted
    Voice-over narration works well if you script it out -- but don't use a narrator who SOUNDS like he's simply reading aloud! You might be surprised how inexpensive it can be to hire professional voice talent. I've "auditioned" people from https://voice123.com/ before.

    I use Audacity to record narration and make edits to the audio. Then I produce the finished product as an MP3 file. I import that MP3 into Camtasia, where I "synch" the slides/images with the narration. When it all looks and sounds perfect, I export the whole shebang into a Flash video file -- but you can choose whatever file format works best for DVD.

    Hope that helps!
  • Posted on 1/15/2011 at 5:06 AM Accepted
    Kevin - the cheapest way to do this is to simply put the info onto the DVD in steps and have students follow the program while watching. It is best to have a narrator in the classroom to supervise.

    You would need to upgrade the DVD to include instruction if you want the students to study alone, and that would take extra technical expertise. But it would be best to have a narrator plus visual info, rather than just record a lesson.

    Best of luck,

    Peter
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