Re: Integrating movies into documentation

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I did this around 12 years ago as part of an "experiment" for work. For the
most part, these were not animated screen captures, but actual narrated
video footage of installation and repair procedures for communications
hardware. These were avi files embedded in PDF. The project management team
declared them "sexy" but too expensive to pursue (the fact that this company
no longer exists says something, I think).

Your feelings that the videos that belong in chapter "Duh" would be better
presented as one line of text are correct. It shows a lack of understanding
of the subject matter and the learner. If the first batch of videos showed
me information that I could get from reading one line of text, I wouldn't
bother checking all the other videos that may show me something complex or
useful. I also find that videos with a thoughtful and well-written voiceover
track much more useful than silent movies with subtitles. Those take a lot
more effort to develop, but I think they are worth it. (the Lydia.com
instructional videos for Adobe Creative Suite products are good examples of
what I'm talking about).

Personally, I think the videos showing menu paths to dialog boxes are done
either in response to some project manager declaring that all documentation
must me done in video for some reason (perhaps for "consistency"), or maybe
the person developing the documentation is in love with his/her capture
software. Or these were "proof of concept" videos that got tossed into the
final documentation product.

-Wendy

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 7:41 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I've recently started to look into this and I need your collective wisdom.
> Do you integrate video captures/demos into documentation and if yes, why.
>  Is it considered more user-friendly than text? Do you replace existing text
> with video or you provide the video in addition? What type of explanations
> are best provided in video format?
>
> I saw a few examples and must say that those examples that just show menu
> paths to a certain dialog box are useless IMHO as they can be replaced by a
> simple text line. Or am I missing something?
>
> Do you embed videos in PDF or another online format?
>
> TIA
>
> Erika
>
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