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Recording SME Demos — It’s Easier Than You Think
March 4th, 2008 | Posted in Technical Writing |
You know the scenario: you’ve been assigned a new application to document, and you arrange for the subject matter expert (SME) to demo it. But when you show up at the demo, the SME is on fast-forward, moving through each tab and screen on hyperdrive. From your perspective, the SME may sound like this: Soyoucandothisonthistab and fromhereiswhereyoudothat and makesureyoudocumenthowtodothis ….
Before you know it, the 1 hour demo is over, and the SME has crammed an entire encyclopedia of information down your throat before you can properly chew and digest the information.
There’s a good solution to this. You can easily record these SME demos and play them back at your convenience — multiple times.
There are a variety of recording techniques, but here’s how I do it.
Equipment Needed
- Camtasia Studio
- Zoom H4 microphone
- USB cord
- laptop
SME Recording Process
To record the SME demo:
- Use your laptop for the demo. (This also helps ensure you have access to the application. If you can’t use your own laptop, I’m afraid this technique won’t work without a video camera or some other screen-recording software, such as Jing.)
- If you’re connecting to a projector, adjust your laptop’s resolution. The most common resolution for projectors is 1024 x 768. (To set your resolution, right-click your desktop, select Properties, and go to the Settings tab.)
- Adjust your Camtasia Studio settings. You don’t want the cursor to flicker constantly while you’re recording, nor do you want the capture rectangle box to show. Otherwise your demo session will have constantly flashing circus lights.
To turn these settings off, click the Make Recording link in the Task List in the upper-left of Camtasia’s main window. Then in the Camtasia Recorder dialog box that appears, go to Tools > Options and deselect the Capture Layered Windows and the Solid Capture Rectangle check boxes. (See the image below.)
- Attach a USB cord from your Zoom H4 to your laptop and switch the Zoom H4 to the “Audio Interface” option.
- Put the Zoom H4 on a little tripod and move it near to the SME’s mouth. Turn the input volume up to high.
- In the Camtasia Recorder dialog box, go to Tools > Options and then click the Audio tab. Make sure the Zoom H4 is selected as the input microphone device for the Camtasia recording.
- Drag the Camtasia recording area to cover the entire screen, and then click Record.
- When finished, stop the recording and produce a video at the same full screen resolution — 1024 X 768. This isn’t a demo you’re distributing to anyone, so file and screen size doesn’t matter.
Having a recorded SME demo will enable you to refer back to the file for later use, or send it to other authors who are working on the project.
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March 5th, 2008 at 1:45 am
[...] all works in ‘Multimedia’ View all works in ‘Screen Captures’ Recording SME Demos: It’s Easier Than You Thinkhttp://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/03/04/recording…Johnson, Tom H.Tech Writer [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 4:46 am
Excellent method!
I’d add: make sure your laptop is capable of running both the documented application and Camtasia. It’s not trivial.
I’m using my cell-phone camera for taking pictures of whiteboards during discussions, and plain old pen and paper for almost everything.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:03 am
I think recording is a great idea–we record ourselves doing demos, so why not record others? I’m sure part of the cause of the difficulty here is that the SME has other things to do and wants to get through this demo as quickly as possible. When you’re holding such a demo, is it your goal to get an in-depth tour of the app or just an overview? Do you and the SME agree on the goal of the demo before you start?
I’m also curious about your thoughts on how much of your documentation comes from such demos vs. going through and exercising the app yourself in a test environment.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:04 am
This is what’ve we’ve been doin to some extent last year. needs a lot of discipline. its not meant to be pretty or preproduced. but should be recorded, a quick edit, and then published to WMV quickly (no TSCC codec required) to a file server. that’s what i think
March 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
For those of us who don’t have Camtasia Studio and an expensive mic, a digital vioce recorder works pretty well to capture the audio portion of a rapid fire SME demo. While you don’t have the video, at least it serves as a memory jogger afterwards.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:25 am
If you want to go the really inexpensive route, SnagIt has video recording features, but I think after an hour you’ll be up to 2-3 gigs. Not sure.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
[...] especially by Tom Johnson, (http://www.idratherbewriting.com/) and a couple of his entries (Recording SME Demos — It’s Easier Than You Think and Six Ways I’m Using the H4 Zoom Recorder to Do Technical-Writing Related Things) particularly [...]