
Making a Video Course – Behind the Scenes - ifdattic
http://ifdattic.com/making-video-course-reflection/
======
jasode
Constructive feedback for the author:

I would have broken the post into 2 parts or 2 separate posts.

The 1st half of your post is not specific to "video courses" and is
generalized thoughts about working towards a goal, motivations, discipline,
etc.

The 2nd half of the post that starts with the paragraph _" Doing a video in a
single swoop isn’t for me & it often ends in a big mess."_ ... is the material
that's specific to how you produce video courses. Version control, Google
Drive, organizing audio, etc.

~~~
ifdattic
Thanks. Agree that it might have been better as 2 posts, allowing people to
choose which parts of it to read. This actually started as simple reflection
on pen&paper with a cup of tea, so mostly just kept the same format.

------
nerdy
_" You could go on forever improving & polishing everything, but in the end
you have to remember to just fucking ship it."_

Words to live by.

~~~
ifdattic
Something I'm still struggling with :/

------
marincounty
I'd appreciate any inside information on making professional looking videos on
a limited budget.

I am making watch repair videos, but they I want them to be better.

I have been using a iPhone camera with satisfactory results. I mainly, just
need a consistent close up view of the movement, while I instruct students on
watch repair.

I know watch repair is a niche market. From what I have gathered, only a few
guys have made money selling watch repair videos. They don't look like they
very successful. They are also old, and outdated. Most are still working on
pocket watches.

I know there's a lot of free videos on YouTube, but they are hit, and miss.
I'm planning on a course, or a few courses. I paid $100 for videos, a few
years ago, but they were dated, and very amateurish.

So--if anyone has done any videos, what was you process? Was it a waste of
time? Did you make any money? I'll appreciate any constructive advice.

~~~
emson
I recently made a video course "Elixir for Beginners" on Udemy
[https://www.udemy.com/elixir-for-beginners](https://www.udemy.com/elixir-for-
beginners) It was a real learning processes and I can identify with the author
of this post... you really get the imposter syndrome.

The process I finally settled on was: 1\. read various books, and make notes
on the topic for a particular video. 2\. break the notes down into bullet
points, I used the TaskPaper app, for this and highly recommend it. 3\. make
an intro slide and do a head shot video talking about the points in this
video. I found doing this unscripted gave a more natural feel. 4\. then record
the content of the lecture, this in my case was a screen video of me writing
code. I found that if I was talking at the sametime I made too many mistakes.
5\. I then edit this content and remove the typos and errors. 6\. record the
voice over for the video. \- this was quite slow I would use the bullet points
to talk about what was happening on the screen. \- I found I would record a
5/10 seconds of voice over and then position it within the video so that it
would make sense. \- there was a lot of editing to get the video and voice to
match up nicely.

My course style evolved over a few months but I'm happy with the approach,
although some of the earlier videos make me cringe a bit.

As for equipment, I bought a studio kit from amazon on black friday,
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Excelvan-Photography-Continuous-
Back...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Excelvan-Photography-Continuous-Backdrops-
Umbrellas/dp/B0111LHWOS/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1460553662&sr=8-6&keywords=Photography+Lighting+Kit)

I also bought a logitech C920 usb camera... not that happy with it as using a
mac I also needed to change the webcam settings with another app.

Finally I used a Samson CO1U condenser mic, which was excellent:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samson-CO1U-Pro-Microphone-
Headphone...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samson-CO1U-Pro-Microphone-
Headphone/dp/B00HXE4BYW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_23_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=41gHRwqvwgL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=0HA791SR5CS883693FBQ)

I haven't made much money out of the videos, even though I have around 1680
students. The nature of online courses is that it is very "coupon" based and
you need to constantly push and repackage it.

Would I do it again... yep... am building a new course as we speak. Good luck

~~~
ifdattic
Thanks for sharing, might come in handy.

Doing it for the money is the losing battle. At least you're self publishing
it and have full control over it, and do well with marketing. Otherwise it's
better spending that time working on client projects. But personally did it
for the experience. It was a really nice challenge and the best way to learn
something is by teaching :)

