[Typo3-doc] Creating demo/howto videos with Flash

[Michael Stucki]

Hello Michael,

>> I think this tool could be very useful for the TYPO3 project. Not only
>> it's much flexible than video recording, it's also much (much!) smaller
>> compared to a video.
> 
> Thanks Michael for the input here!! I installed Wink a month ago or so and
> I also like it very much. Its one of dozens of Flash based screen capture
> apps.

Did you see the headline news on typo3.org? That's made with Wink, too!

> Michael Stucki wrote:
>  > Sylvain Viart wrote:
>  >>About sound ?
>  > Not available but also not needed! You can attach text boxes. Saves a
>  > lot of bandwidth, by the way!
> 
> This is a point I totaly disagree. The text boxes offers *very* limited
> possibilites of expression and can not be compared to real speech. I
> started writing transscripts of Kaspers videos, so that translations could
> be made more easyly and have to say there is really a *huge* amount of
> information in there, which would be almost impossible to be put into text
> boxes.

I think I really don't need it, however you're not the first asking for that
feature. In the Wink forum I've read that the next version will contain
sound support. (First he should release the Linux version, tough... :-))

> Here my 2 cents:
> Pro:
> + Flash players are available on all platforms.
> 
> + Wink offers you a nice way to create non-linear presentations, where
> user input is possible to show different parts of the movie.
> 
> + Mink offers a really nice user interface with a nice workflow and is all
> in one. I guess many people like this workflow to create a tutorial video
> much more than using Camtasia or Windows Media Encoder.

+ Wink presentations are far smaller than videos

+ Text boxes are easy to be translated

> Cons:
> - The resulting flash movies are *very* large.
> I tried Create_a_page_TV.html, posted here, which is ~540kB. I measured
> the time, it took for me to watch the flash anim and read all the conent.
> It was ~3 Minutes. This means we have a movie with ~24 kBit/s, which
> consists only of some screenshots. WMV/XVID Screen capt. movies have
> ~30kBit/s and offer much higher quality - of course you can also make
> soundless videos using WMV/XVID, so thats no argument. Textboxes can also
> be included into WMV/XVID movies.

At the end it's still much smaller than a video. However the compression
could maybe be improved in next versions. I don't know...

> - Using the textboxes, it might be *very* much work to produce videos with
> the same quality and content like Kaspers videos

Why? Check the new "Minute page" tutorial on typo3.org. Doesn't need any
translation at all ;-)
After all I don't see the downside compared to videos(?)

> - Multilanguage videos are not possible. We have Danish, German and
> English versions in one File @typo3.org.

Yes but that's no problem. Then we had 5 presentations with 5 times the same
images but different textes. I could live with that.

> - We dont know, how long WINK will be free.

Good point! There are not mentions of it to become open source. I don't
know.

> So - I think it depends on the project you want to document. Flash movies
> can be nice and would be a nice addition to the video collection we have
> on typo3.org.
> Making soundless videos might be an interesting point - I have to say,
> that I sound very stupid, when I try to speak into a microphone, so that
> would be a possible solution to this ;). This is the reason, why I never
> released any dupped or self made video public...

Come on! Everybody thinks so of his own voice (except me, of course ;-))

> Anyway - I dont know how many hours I (we) spend discussing the right
> video standard (remembering late 2003, where we started this all...) and
> since then almost *no* video was added and all people, who offered me to
> produce some videos and translations didnt send me anything.

It's always the same problem. However I think that Wink presentations are
much easier to create (just create some screenshots, draw the mouse button,
etc.).

A video has to be recorded in one step, and if something doesn't work you
cannot skip it without cutting it afterwards - seems trickier to me, but I
never tried it since there's not good video recording software on Linux.

> BTW: There is a document, written by me and Kasper at typo3.org
>
http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/doc_creating_video_tutorials/
> Might be interesing to include the Wink stuff into it.

Yes please do so! The big goodie is that there will be a Linux version
shortly. I think it wasn't easy to produce any kind of presentation/video
on Linux so far...

Regards, michael
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