It was suggested to me that the other trainees might be interested in what I am planning to do for my project and to hear about my progress so far. So here it is the trials and tribulations, so far, of my graduate trainee project!
For my graduate trainee project I have decided to do a video guide to help our readers with reserving books online. This will hopefully be the first of several different videos aimed at helping readers at the Sainsbury Library access the full range of facilities available to them. Although the video guide should be useful to all our readers the main focus for the videos is to help those readers who may learn visually or those who have a learning difficulty such as dyslexia who might find traditional guides hard to access. The most important aspect of the graduate trainee project is that it will be useful to existing readers. So it was important that I made sure that I discussed my ideas with my mentors and supervisor to insure that this was the case. After having done this it was decided that I could go ahead and start planning my project.
Coming up with my initial ideas was perhaps the easiest part of the process so far. What has been much harder is deciding on the exact format and therefore the software to use to create a video guide. I did quite a lot of research into formats used by other university libraries before settling on my final idea. At first I thought that I might use a YouTube style video but after looking at several I realised that they often had more of a promotional feel rather than being used for user education. Also it was apparent that for them to look any good a professional videoing team would have been needed. I really wanted something that would look professional but was feasible for me to do. I went on a Podcasting course at OUCS and some free software called ‘Screen Toaster’(http://www.screentoaster.com/) as mentioned ( see my last post) however after a discussion on the blog I decided not to use this as it didn’t have the professional feel I was looking for.
After discounting several formats some of the other trainees suggested I look at some video guides done by the library at Warwick University(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/tealea/sciences/chemistry)They have combined traditional screen capturing with the use of video, input via a webcam. This seemed the perfect solution to my problems so I set about discovering what software they had been using.
They had used ‘Screenflow’(http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/screenflow.html)which unfortunately is only available for Mac and not Windows. So it was time to look at the options that were compatible with the Windows operating system. There are a surprising number of different screen capturing software out there both which are free to download and ones that aren’t. I came up with a short list Adobe Captivate, Camstudio, Camtasia, Wink and Jing. However after some more research into each of them I discovered that not all of them allow you to insert webcam footage into your screen capture project.
Also I was advised that some of the free software although it is great for screen capturing the ability to edit the results it not very good.
So I decided to use Adobe Captivate 4 as the Sainsbury Library had a copy of this and it had been recommended by our Web/digital library assistant.
Luckily there was also a course at OUCS(http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TILB) about screen capture for education and the software that they demonstrated this on was Captivate 4. This enabled me to gain the basic knowledge I would need to create my screen capture project. I had also discovered in my research that on the Adobe Captivate website there was a widget which you could download to enable you to insert webcam footage:http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1857023
I have not yet downloaded this so I am hoping that it all goes smoothly.
I have decided to record the screen captures without the video first and then insert this afterwards. I hope that this will increase the chance of it looking as professional as possible. This is because I will be able to concentrate on explaining what to do rather than try and speak and record the screen captures at the same time. However until I try to combine the two I won’t know if this will have been a mistake.
I have been finding it difficult to get each slide to look as crisp and professional as I want them to be and to get it to flow from one slide to the next smoothly enough.However as I am still only in the very early stages I hope to smooth out any problems soon.
This week I discovered that our website has been changed so after spending last week trying to perfect the project I have discovered I will have to redo a lot of it. This wasn’t as bad as it could have been as I had been experiencing problems with the software capturing parts of the screen that I didn’t want it to. However I discovered that if you tell captivate only to record the Application region it then allows you to define exactly which part of the screen you want it to record. This gives each slide crisp well defined edges without any black lines around the edge, which I had been struggling to remove previously.
So now I have made a start on a new version with the updated library website included in the slides. The result is far more professional so know I am just trying to get it to flow better. I had been having a lot of trouble with recording being scrolled down. I had found that if I tried to do it too slowly the results were very jerky. So I tried to scroll down slightly faster and in one single motion. This has produced a much smoother result.
The next stage will be to record the webcam element and combine it with the screen captures. In order to do this I have obtained a webcam from our IT department at the Said Business School and hopefully before Christmas I can make a start on recording the video element of my project. Before I do this I need to finalise the script and get hold of a good microphone and find a time and place to record the video.
I hope you have found this interesting, if you have let me know and I will continue to keep you up to date on my progress.
That sounds great – really interesting! I’d quite like to be kept up-to-date on how you’re doing, as one idea for my project was the possibility of re-doing our ‘online tour’. It’s out of date and still refers to the ‘National Library for Health’ (rather than ‘NHS Evidence’), so was thinking of re-making that (although am not sure whether that on it’s own is ‘large’ enough for the project, so will see!)
Really interesting post, thanks for sharing Charlotte. I’m currently investigating software for this kind of thing as my project has some similar elements. I love the Warwick video guides with the webcam video element, it’s a really nice idea.
Hi Charlotte, you project sounds very interesting. We are thinking of doing a revamped video tour of our library too as our current video is a few years old. The SSL video is normally played during the inductions at the start of the year for new students. How do you plan to use/publicise your video?
Hi Alice
I was planning to publise it through our twitter and facebook pages as well as perhaps sending emails out to the students and putting posters up in the library. However I haven’t really decided what will be the best way to publise it. Initally I had planned to get something down earlier in the term so that it could have been mentioned during inductions but the start of term was far too busy to get it done. I guess that it could be mentioned in next years inductions. I was thinking that there would just be a link to the video guide in the same section on our websites as our other online guides.
How were you thinking you would publicise the video you are thinking of doing or were you thinking it would just be used during inductions.