Re: Professional how-to videos - links for critique

[Shawn <shawn -at- cohodata -dot- com>]

Oh my gosh, I just realized that you posted this back in January. :)


On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Shawn <shawn -at- cohodata -dot- com> wrote:

> Hello Erika,
>
> Thank you for sharing your videos and opening yourself to critique. I am
> also always looking for improvements to my work.
>
> A little bit about my background, I have done video training production
> for about 10 years... using a variety of tools, such as, Camtasia (for
> simple quick/dirty projects), Captivate (for interactive and quiz based
> training), and Premier (for professional marketing content).
>
> In my opinion the most frustrating and difficult component to videos is
> finding a natural and engaging voice for free or cheap.
>
> Now, my critique:
>
> RADview Service:
> - Video work is nice and simple with no distractions.
>   I'm not a big fan of stock avatars (the smiley face people) but they
> actually work for you. :)
> - The voice...ummm.... it is too deliberate, too much reading from
> script... The person's voice is excellent. He has the perfect tone for this
> type of work
>   but obviously not a trained voice actor.
>   Suggestions for improvement:
>   - Flatten your sound a little bit more (there is a slight echo - but you
> did pretty good overall). Perhaps a blanket behind the speaker might help?
>   - Do a little more noise filtering to get rid of the slight white noise.
> Again, not a serious problem.
>   - Get your voice actor to stand and read without a script (or perhaps
> only just glance at the script)
>   - Do not play the video while recording audio. Edit the video to match
> the voice afterwards. That will help with a more natural voice cadence.
>
> Megaplex-4100/4
> - Again, video work is good... nice professional splash.
> - The voice has good cadence (in some ways it is actually easier to listen
> to than the human voice of the first video)
>   * BUT * it is synthetic. Oh, how I wish synthetic voices were
> indistinguishable to human voices. :(
>   Some of the technical words are difficult to understand but still pretty
> good. BTW, is this a Nuance (or TextAloud based) voice? If you have access
>   to phoneme customization.
>
> Zero Touch
> - Same comments as the above
>
> RADview Perform
> - OMG, get rid of that TTS voice. LOL
>   Way too mono-tone. The male voice is much better. :)
> - Again, video work is great!
>
> RADview: Working with...
> - Here I noticed some inconsistency with call outs (I don't think you used
> deep yellow on the others??). I'm running out of time now so I'll have to
> stop.
>
>
> Bottom line, nothing you produced is "bad", in fact, you did better than
> some video work I have seen produced by much larger corporations. Kudos!
>
> Hopefully, at least 1 comment, is useful to you. :)
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the many useful tips. We are always writing a script before
>> making a movie and use Captivate, sometimes with text-to-speech and
>> sometimes with a real narrator. Some of the movies have been uploaded to
>> YouTube, and in the process, the size got changed, some resolution was lost
>> and the closed captions were lost as well. The movies below were made at
>> different times and our guidelines kept evolving.
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHO-VHeGkRE&feature=youtu.be
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyLHc_OLaGI&feature=youtu.be
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5uk9DfTO_w&feature=youtu.be
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbWMDxN5H8&feature=youtu.be
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mniiGoHpMGg&feature=youtu.be
>>
>> Do you get the "cheap" feeling? What would you improve?
>>
>> Erika
>>
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>> Doc-To-Help: new website, content widgets, and an output that works on
>> any screen.
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Shawn Connelly*
> Technical writer
>
>


-- 
*Shawn Connelly*
Technical writer
shawn -at- cohodata -dot- com
<http://www.cohodata.com> <https://twitter.com/cohodata>

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