Contribute your own Drupal Videocast

If you would like to contribute a videocast to the community here are some loose standards we recommend.

Creating the Video

Some popular recording applications:
Mac: Snapz Pro, iShowU, Jing
Windows: Wink, CamStudio, Camtasia, Jing
Linux: RecordMyDesktop

Other screen recording software can be found on Wikipedia.

1. Make sure that the format of the videos is an open standard! Windows Media (.wmv) is a closed format that can only be watched with Microsoft software. We recommend Quicktime (.mov) which is available on Windows, OSX and Linux based systems.

2. Add a Creative Commons license to your video. Without a clear license, we can't be sure whether it is "safe" to host these videocasts for you.

3. Use a resolution of 640x480 or higher. With smaller resolutions it becomes difficult to read text in the movie. When trying to resize your browser in preparation for recording, you can use a javascript snippet to resize your browser. Save the following as a bookmark:

javascript:self.moveTo(8,28);self.resizeTo(640,480);

4. Here are some recommended settings (as used for the Lullabot and Drupal Dojo videos):

Compression: H.264
Frame Rate: 10
Key Frame Rate: 500
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Internet Streaming: yes

For a more detailed discussion on video settings you can read the Dojo article on Tips and Encoding Settings for Long Duration Screencasts.

Slides

Feel free to use these slides in your videocasts.

Creative Commons slide (yellow, full-text)
Creative Commons slide (black, symbols)
Drupal Videocast bumper

Additional suggestions

1. Provide the written script somewhere (can help with translations). Some people have hearing disabilities, some work in an environment where they can't use audio, and some just absorb things better by reading instead of listening.
2. Keep the videocasts short and focused. They are effectively linear, not random access. Sure, you can move the slider, but there's no index telling you where to move it. If the videocast covers too many things, and someone is just interested in one aspect, it's difficult to find that one point.
3. In particular, pick your audience and don't mix end-user, editor, and developer information, except at the most general level.
4. Keep the video uncluttered and focused. There's no opportunity to wave a laser pointer over the relevant area, and no opportunity for a viewer to say "slow down, which text field are you talking about." Mouse and text cursors can be difficult to locate, particularly on new screens.
5. Use high contrast, even if you're used to using low contrast for yourself.

Uploading the Video

To save your bandwidth and make the video most accessible to people we recommend providing the video in two ways - a place to watch and place to download.

We recommend blip.tv to host movies for easy viewing. You can access the source video once you have uploaded and they allow you to choose your license and offer the full array of Creative Commons licenses. When you link to the video from your handbook page, link to the "source" rather than the blip page to get the best quality. You can get the source link either on your account page or from the video's blip page under Share > Permalinks. Also, make sure you add the drupal tag to it along with any other appropriate tags.

For downloads we recommend setting it up as a torrent. We have found Zudeo to be a reliable and easy way to get torrents started.

Create your Handbook Page

Create a child page for the video under the appropriate section (see points 2 and 3 above under Additional Suggestions about being focused - videos that cover too many areas may end up confusing the viewer). Give a short summary of what the video is about and make sure the title is specific enough that someone just browsing the list has a decent idea of what it is. Remember to add the watch and download links (if you have both) to your video. If your video is in a language other then English just put the language at the end of the page title, e.g. My Video Tutorial - Spanish.)