Make a Global Impact. Become an Author

By timing we mean not only the duration of a lesson itself but also how much useful material you "pack" in this lesson. It's not enough just to cut a two hours long webinar into 15-20 minutes bits. The point is to re-edit this webinar in such a way as to filter out the most important things that actually help your client to solve their problem.

Usually, if there is enough practice, your viewers will absorb about 60% of the information from a video lesson. They won't remember or attach special importance to the remaining 40%. This means that if your lesson is diluted with information that is not essential for the advancement in the topic you risk your audience focusing on it while the important information will get into the 'grey zone'.

We recommend to:

• prepare a detailed lesson plan;
  
  
• create artworks that can be used as examples to cover the lesson's topic to the fullest extent possible;
  
  
• distribute according to the lesson plan a list of additional features, techniques and life hacks that can be demonstrated during the course of the work;
  
  
• recreate this artwork yourself at least a few more times to be sure that everything is alright;
  
  
• start writing a rough lesson text.

When you feel confident, you can start recording the lesson in short 2-5 minutes bits along with reading aloud the text you've written.

If you're having trouble working and commenting simultaneously, it's okay. Try recording the video from the monitor first, and then synchronize the separately recorded voice with the video. This approach leaves less room for mistakes.

If you start with the text straight ahead without strong visual preparation, you are guaranteed to run into the problem of "I've been talking for 40 seconds, but this is mostly general information and I don't know what should be on the screen now".

You've probably heard about the 80/20 rule. Its essence is that 20% of the effort creates 80% of the outcome. This means that it's often enough to demonstrate only the basic tools and principles that solve 80% of the tasks, and then get to the work straight ahead rather than delving into the details of each aspect.

The second important aspect is also based on the well-known rule of 'the knowledge of certain principles easily compensates the lack of knowledge of certain facts'. Try to explain the essence of things, how the things work in general. This will make the knowledge more universal, without being tied to a specific tool or software.

It's important to maintain students' interest in studying. To achieve that you need to take into account several factors:

• The originality of the task. It means the essence of the task is played out in a comical form or the outcome isn't obvious and intrigues with its potential.
• The design of the task and the overall attractiveness of the outcome. Unfortunately, this aspect is often neglected but it is absolutely critical to keep your students motivated. We realize that not all nice-looking pictures are equally good to be used as an example for studying something. You should look for a compromise. In the end, unless a student is convinced that by using exactly these tools they can create awesome images, they are likely to underestimate how valuable these tools are. We're all here to create beautiful things, so why don't we start with this?

We don't conceal anything from our students. If a tool is more convenient – we say this directly and explain why. If we believe some functions are useless – we say that we ourselves don't use them. People appreciate sincerity; imagine that you're saying what you're saying to your best friend.

Anyway, all you're saying is your personal words. No one carves it in stone, nor it claims to be encyclopedic or the only possible truth. It's your personal experience and you share it because it works.

Since you're sharing your knowledge like you would do it with your best friend, you have nothing to hide. Don't be afraid that everyone will find out some secret, and you'll be left jobless. If you won't share it– someone else will. Sharing it certainly won't hurt you.

• Do not bother much when selecting terms and words, try to sound just as you do in normal life. There's nothing wrong with using your conversational style and your natural sense of humour (but don't overdo it).
• Try to speak articulately, as students watching our courses come from 186 countries, and for almost all of them your language may not be native. If you speak clearly and in plain language, they will at least have an opportunity to google a term if they don't understand it.
• Make sure you name everything uniformly. At the initial stage, your students will be a little confused in terminology, and if it may be obvious to you that there are synonyms for different terms, it may not be so obvious for them.
• Try not to make any unnecessary actions with the cursor. If it's the first time you're recording video lessons, trust me, this will help you greatly in video editing.
• Pay attention that your actions and speech are synchronized. If you say 'Let's click this button now' – you can click it while pronouncing the words 'this' or 'button', or right after you say this phrase. If you do something earlier than your comment comes, your students may not understand what that was about.

To sum up, if you create your own video lessons keeping these four principles in mind, be sure that your students will adore you and recommend your course to all of their friends.

Bandicam
https://www.bandicam.com/

Bandicam is the best choice for screen recording. It allows capturing both video and audio from your computer. It has a useful feature of mouse highlight effect when clicking, which makes watching the lesson much easier for your students.

However, it also has two drawbacks as this program runs only on Windows OS and it isn't free.

OBS Studio
https://obsproject.com/

This software is a bit harder to configure in comparison with Bandicam and it lacks tools for customizing the mouse. But it is free of charge and can be used on different platforms.

Quicktime

It is the easiest video and audio recording option available on Mac OS.

In addition to the software described above, you can record audio directly in either Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe Audition.

We highly recommend that you mix and edit all videos in Premiere Pro. Firstly, it's a universal tool that is included in the Adobe software package. Secondly, it works great with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Audition.

As an alternative solution, you can use Final Cut for Mac OS. It's a little easier to use, though it's less functional.

Keycastow (for Windows)
https://www.ugmfree.it/Forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=513

Keycastr (for Mac)
https://github.com/keycastr/keycastr/releases

Make sure the person watching the video is able to see the hotkeys you use. To do this, you need to use software for displaying keystrokes on the screen. At the same time, hotkeys shouldn't look bulky and attract a lot of attention.

Here's a good example of a good location and size for it.

• Speak clearly and articulately.
  
• Try to explain what you do and how you make decisions rather than simply naming the things you click.
  
• Video and audio must be synchronized. Footage shouldn't be ahead of the soundtrack.

• Avoid making unnecessary mouse movements that don't bear any information.

• Don't speed up the video unless absolutely necessary. This may be appropriate in the case of frame-by-frame animations when typical monotonous actions are repeated several times.

• The video frame rate must be set to either 30 or 60 fps.
  
• Format of the final video:
  
  

Format: H264
Resolution: 1920x1080
Frame Rate: 30 fps
Field Order: Progressive (this option is very important, as video will be incorrectly displayed in teachable at any other value)
Bitrate: 8 (recommended), 5 (minimal)