Tips for creating first software tutorial

I made my first official software tutorial on Adobe Premiere Elements (link) just recently, and along the way I learned a lot and thought it would be helpful to pass on some tips to keep other first-time tutorial makers from running into the same problems. Here are seven pointers to keep in mind that I discovered the hard way:

1. Never over-estimate your reliance on screen capture footage and pictures. Shoot an interesting narration and video to cut to as if you were using no screen capture video. What I found was I recorded my on-screen performance as if it were a narration only, then when I started editing, there were all these holes I needed to fill with footage and I had nothing because I was reading off a sheet of paper in front of the camera.

2. Don’t over do it. Keep your video conceptually simple. Don’t add flashy titles and too many diagrams that might just get in the way. I found the best way for beginners to learn a piece of software is to see the whole screen and they can follow your mouse across it. Avoid cutting to a tightly cropped section of the screen without giving the viewer some idea of proximity. They will get lost and frustrated trying to figure it out themselves.

3. Pace yourself. You know how the video should look chronologically, but it is hard to get a sense of the pacing necessary for someone who has never seen the video (or the software you are teaching) before. I found that my first cut of the video was paced to fast, and although I could understand what was going on, the viewer might be confused by the quick cuts and too much information at once. Don’t be afraid to use blank space between cuts to let the viewer digest the concept.

4. Don’t forget about your audience. Who are you trying to teach? Advanced users? Beginners? First time users? Don’t start rambling about layer masks in your editing software if the audience is first-time users. By the same token don’t try explaining to advanced users how to save your project. Keeping your audience in mind is harder than you might imagine, and I struggled with it a lot on my first tutorial.

5. Write a script. Don’t just wing it in front of the camera. Following a script during narration helps during the editing phase as well because you can use the script to visualize your arrangement of clips. Improvising a tutorial will likely lead to confusion for you the maker as well as for the audience trying to follow your instruction.

6. Get to know the inns and outs of the software before you start. I know this sounds intuitive, but I thought I knew plenty about Adobe Premiere Elements before I started the tutorial and halfway in I found that I really didn’t know what exporting as a .wmv entailed or how to turn on/off auto save. There are features in most software programs that are worth mentioning even if you never needed to use them yourself, so make sure you explore the software in detail before beginning your tutorial.

7. Be creative. I bored myself trying to make the tutorial too strait forward. Do what you want as long as it is not distracting to the viewer. Put your own personal touch, personality, and creativity into the project. It will make it less of a pain to edit and more enjoyable to watch once it is complete.

Good stuff! I always find even with short screencasts that it takes me several takes to get things refined to the point that I want. It is so easy to run into unexpected things with the software (or other things going on on your machine). Short scripts or lists of topics to cover I find very helpful.

Thanks for your insight, I’m going to try some of this for my next one…