Torley Lives

I surf (archaic?) a tremendous amount of websites, and one important thing I've noticed is more and more of them are including video tutorials for several reasons, two of the foremost being (1) teaching new users and (2) teaching existing users. You may argue those are the same, and there's a big overlap, but grabbing someone who's completely fresh to your product is a different shade than educating customers who are already onboard: the former calls for a type of tour, a brief showcase of what your product/service is and why it matters to the viewer — "What's in it for me?". With the latter, the viewer likely already knows (if they haven't stumbled upon your vidtut by serendipitous means) why you matter, but wants to gain greater value, get more out of it.

Some time ago, I blogged about FontStruct, which has a superb video tutorial which didn't just show me why it appeals, but told me how to start making fonts in a few minutes. I doubt I would've invested the next stretch of hours exploring the site and playing with their font editor if it weren't for such an entertaining intro. Video tutorials can tell engaging stories. People love awesome stories.

Lynda.com is a longtime video training site, sort of the evolution of those old VHS tapes and CD-ROM instructionals. Right now, Lynda boasts almost 29,000 video tutorials on a variety of popular products, from Photoshop to iTunes to Word. They've got dozens of instructors and it sounds like from their success and testimonials, of which they've publicized almost 1,000, that the market is hungry and there're many people whose appetite for knowhow cannot be sated.

Just about every so-called Web 2.0 site worth its salt and/or peanut butter has a video tour of some sort, although most don't have an extensive "after you sign up" library to teach more advanced skills. (Which is exactly why I'm working on that @ Linden Lab.) I noticed even photo-sharing site Zooomr has been highlighting their video tutorials, starring a picture-in-picture (PIP) of company founder Christopher Tate.

PIP is fun. PIP puts a human face to a product/service, gives it personal warmth. I've done it myself to connect the gap between First and Second Lives.

Sometimes, computer video tutorials are called screencasts — sites like Lifehacker prefer this terminology, altho it's not as popular. But they're basically the same thing, showing (and telling — some say "show not tell" but I disagree because I'm more of an AND person) what's happening on your screen.

Big and smaller companies sharing forward-thinking sharing have video tutorial champions. I'm Linden Lab's representative. I'm also convinced job opportunities will grow for those who possess the skills to document, energize, and "memorabilize" their experiences, so others may benefit from the displayed knowledge. Two of my favorite success stories are Photoshop maven Russell Brown (who's advocated PS since version 1, check the early About boxes for his name!) and Video Copilot lead Andrew Kramer. Russell's extraordinary, because he shows that with such a creative product, you can be enthusiastic and even crazy in the best of ways. With his wild eyes, dramatic voice, and masterful style, he's quite a character. It's hard to imagine a world without the product or even verb "Photoshop", but Russell's done a lot to get the word out, both in-person at conferences and through his video podcasts. As for Andrew, he recently announced a DVD compilation of many of his After Effects vidtuts. He's an amazing visual effects artists and the waterfall of comments on his blog show how much passion there is for his tutelage. He, like me, uses Camtasia.

Over time, I've grown from someone who's admired well-done vidtuts to someone who's made nearly 200 of them, focused on the virtual world of Second Life. I've become a part of the video tutorial community at large, and my work even won the Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week — thanx to Betsy Weber for the heads-up, she's a fantastic evangelist for TechSmith. And yes, I'm a big Camtasia fan.

In coming years, I'm sure there'll be video tutorials innovations only hinted at today: I'd love to have commonly-supported (non-proprietary) branching paths and greater interactivity, as well as temporally-placed hyperlinks and widely-portable Flash support for user-editable closed captioning. (There must be something to this — if 2channel's chaotic video commentary can have time-specific comments scroll all over them, then similar principles can be applied.) I've seen some innovations in the aforementioned like Asterpix, but they're presently not vastly-used. I always welcome word of coming developments, so teach me something useful!

Plus, the rise and proliferation of broadband only makes the possibilities more delicious. Second Life wouldn't have been possible without broadband, and neither is video. As bandwidth increases and tools to generate quality content in less time become more available, I severely encourage more multimedia efforts in this field, including the fictional brethren of video tutorials: machinima.

Video tutorials, as an evolution of worthwhile programming on that oft-maligned "idiot box", the television, also extend broadly beyond the computer realm. There're how-to vids on cooking, paper engineering, and sites like HowCast and 5min.com (both of which who've graciously reached out to me) are dedicated to teaching via video.

Time is scarce. Attention spans continue to be, well, in short supply. Internet-savvy humans have grown wise to some tricks, and non-enlightened marketing is often impotent and a turn-off. Showing a product as it is — I don't believe in bullshot or false glossying-up but I do appreciate using transitions to highlight — is here to stay and rise, and if you can't be over someone's shoulder in-person (or in-avatar), what better way than a video tutorial?