Rudaí 23 #thing9: Video

For this task, I went with Screencast-O-Matic to record my screencast as the instructions on the Rudaí 23 blog seemed pretty straightforward. The site is set up to encourage you to download the newer version of the software but I had a look at both options and preferred the layout of the older version, which you don't have to download. I had to update my Java  software and found that the "Old Recorder V.10" version worked better with Internet Explorer rather than Chrome for some reason, but once I'd figured that out I was good to go and started my recording.

I went with a simple 'How-to' video which shows how to add speech bubbles to an image using the GIMP graphics editor. I wrote out a script for the tutorial, figuring that would make the Youtube transcription easier, but after a few false starts I abandoned the script and just spoke as I would giving a regular one-to-one tutorial. Uploading the video itself to YouTube was painless too, I just saved the screencast to my laptop and dragged and dropped the mp4 file from there into YouTube.

High on my success so far, I decided to add subtitles to the video but this part of the task was trickier - I found the automatic transcription option frustrating to use. With this option, YouTube generates blocks of text from your video which you can then click into and edit. I did this but found that YouTube had missed out on over a minute of the text in the middle of my screencast. I added this text manually and published the video with the subtitles but the text didn't synch properly with the video. When I went back in to adjust this I found that if you go back to correct text generated using automatic transcription you can't simply add to the edits you have already made - you have to start again from scratch. I finally abandoned automatic transcription completely, transcribed the video manually and clicked to set the timings. This worked a lot better for me and is the option I'll go with from now on.

Here's the link to the finished product: How to add speech bubbles to an image with GIMP

I definitely think that library-produced video tutorials could be useful in the academic library I work in. We do a lot of tutorials based on the Refworks reference management software package for example and it would be ideal for this. It would be especially suited to our online and part-time students who can't easily avail of our one-to-one consultation service. The Refworks tutorials supplied on the official Refworks website are comprehensive, but there are specific guides to its compatibility with our electronic resources and IT systems that we could produce ourselves.

While I did find some of this task frustrating I know it's important to recognise that this frustration is all part of the learning process - indeed success is all the more satisfying once you finally figure it all out!