Maria’s Guides

The video is out and selling briskly.

Last month, I flew to Vancouver to record a training video for macProVideo. I was there a week and I needed all five workdays to get the approximately four hours of video they needed for their newest product, Microsoft Word 101.

macProVideo’s product is interesting. It combines a full view of a computer screen with narration to explain what the viewer is seeing. My job was to come up with an outline that broke each topic into 2 to 5 minute lessons. I’d then record each lesson by performing the tasks while I verbally described what I was doing and why. It reminded me of the days when I led hands-on computer training sessions. But I had to get it exactly right for the recording, which means I often had to do the same recording several times. In my computer classes, if I made a mistake, I could talk my way through it or just ignore it; I didn’t want people to replay my boo-boos over and over on their computers.

When I was finished and went home, the editing folks at macProVideo took over. They edited out long pauses and other undesirable bits and pieces. They fine-tuned the sound. And they used their special software to turn the dozens of individual lessons into a finished product that ran smoothly from start to finish or could be accessed at any point. The result: a highly professional training video featuring…well, me.

A couple of things set macProVideo’s product apart from the others. First and foremost, this is not a low-resolution video. It was shot with the screen set to 1024×768 and that’s the size each video appears on the viewer’s screen. To make it easier to see the mouse, the mouse has a translucent red circle around it. You won’t need to lean into your screen or don reading glasses to see what’s going on.

The audio is good, too. macProVideo uses state-of-the-art recording equipment and software. We started each day’s recording session with an audio test. There aren’t any popping P’s, like there are in some of my podcasts.

The video was released two days ago and is selling quite well. It’s available for download or DVD purchase from the macProVideo Web site. One buyer (who has submitted a favorable review) has already requested an Excel video. So there might just be another trip to Vancouver in my future.

And if you’re a Windows user reading this, don’t feel left out. Although the video is for the Mac version of Word, it’ll run on a Windows computer, too. And since Word 2003 for Windows and Word 2004 for Mac are so similar, about 90% of the material (at least) applies to both platforms. So you can learn something from it, too.

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