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online tutorials - screencasts rule over static pages?

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nudone:
i'm going to do some tutorials on how i put the recent Cody wallpapers together as i believe they'll provide a good source for Adobe Illustrator users. the original idea was to do these tutorials as static web pages but i've now remembered just how long it will take to create a single page - what with all the screengrabs and writing it all out.

so, it seems pretty obvious to just do screencasts instead as they'll be loads quicker to make and will actually be easier to understand.

i'm thinking that i could do two versions for each tutorial:

one version would be for youtube for obvious reasons like availability and free access - but the image quality would be pretty poor (mainly because of the small movie size).

the other version would be at a much larger image size - large enough to make the video actually worth looking at. this could be downloaded rather than streamed. i'd be aiming to keep the file size below 10 or 20 meg. 20 is probably more realistic.

now, of course, bandwidth issues arise with this kind of video downloading so maybe it's a non starter. something else that might make screencasts less desireable is that i'll be wanting to submit these tutorials to the popular tutorial sites that cover Adobe Illustrator - and they don't deal with screencasts as far as i've seen.

so, i'm wondering what you think. i know i'd rather make a screencast. i know i'd rather learn from a screencast. but if i'm doing this to promote myself (which is really what it's all about) then i wonder if screencasts are not going to be as useful as using static web pages. i know, i know, it would be best to do both types of tutorials but i'm hoping to hear that the majority would really just like to see screencats.

thoughts please...

tinjaw:
I'm just shooting from the hip here, nudone, but maybe shot a nice screencast in highres and plenty of commentary. 1) Edit this to be high quality. Put this up on your site for a small fee. 2) Edit it down in size and length with enough info left in it to be useful to an average user trying to get the basics down of what you are showing them and put that up on YouTube etc. 3) Create a written howto that pretty much follows the video and grab single-frame screenshots from the video. Make that pretty and put that up on the tutorial sites.

This will allow you to leverage your work, create content for all of your potential audiences, and provide a way to recoup some costs from those people who want the high-quality version that will burn up your download quota.

nudone:
that's a good idea, tinjaw. it will probably take a bit of experimentation but if done nicely then that would produce a very consistent looking product across the different media versions - very professional looking hopefully.

not as quick as just doing a single screencast but it sounds like a worthwhile thing to spend time on.

mouser:
I think you've made the case convincingly that you should go with screencasts. And the two version idea sounds good to me.

The only thing i would suggest is make a very brief but nice looking static web page (or blog entry) to go with each screencast, which has a screenshot or two from it and some text explaining what it is a screencast of, and maybe some bullet points.  Enough to let people know whether it's something they may want to watch before they click play.

I would forget about charging -- it won't work.  Better to just get an audience at this point.

mouser:
I would also highly recommend a series of short screencasts (part1, part2, part3, part4) rather than one big one.
Segments of 2-3 minutes are probably optimal in terms of viewability.

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