Guidelines for Preparing Instructional Video

Guidelines for preparing Instructional Video for Web Delivery

Shoot well...

Use a tripod. No matter how steady your hand, the slight shake introduced by hand-holding the camera makes web video files larger than necessary and hurts playback quality. Minimizing unnecessary motion keeps your file small. Smaller files mean more people can see your movie sooner.
Use a microphone on your presenter when shooting in a classroom situation. A 25 foot wired lapel microphone that plugs into your camera's minijack costs less than $20 at Fry's. Failure to use a mic. allows all the ambient classroom noises that our brains tune out to overpower your speaker or performer. When voices are too soft, raise the volume in your video editor.
Manually expose the shot when shooting against a white or bright background. Your camera's autoexposure function will render video of work done on a whiteboard too dark. Set the exposure gain to +3 or +6db, or put the camera in manual exposure mode and iris open until the scene is bright without text and other dark objects fading.

Edit well...

Keep it short! Show just enough to make your point. Video's ability to communicate is diminished by overkill, dead air, prolonged clips, or information that has no direct bearing on the message. In a dynamic presentation, the image before the viewer should change in some manner every few seconds.
Don't get too cute. Too many fancy transitions and wild effects can detract from your message and make for a larger file.
Respect copyright. Using music cuts off of a commercial CD means we can't post it on the web - no exceptions. Use original music or free music. FreePlay is available to iTools users at no charge and contains gigabytes of MP3 tunes for all purposes.
Export appropriately. Use Sorenson Video codec at 15 frames per second for full-motion live action video. Use Graphics or Animation at 5 fps or less for slide shows that utilize line art and no live action. These are the extremes. Contact Mike Johnson at I&TS (619) 644-8252 for more info.
Save your original miniDV footage. You may wish to repurpose the movie for another delivery method. Recompressing previously compressed video looks and sounds terrible.