Bob Chambers

Just the other day I took my latest survey off my website. It was asking the question about what type of tutorials viewers most wanted. The choices were:

• Flash movies with sound
• Flash movies with no sound, just captions
• Text documents with screen captures
• Any type of tutorials are good
• I don't like tutorials

Now I really expected to find that most people wanted the full audio/visual experience. But when you ask a question you're never real sure what the answers will be.

Here's the results:

Notice that two thirds of those responding wanted sound.

And I certainly can understand why. I used to create my software tutorials using text and screen captures. That seemed to work okay. Until I got RoboDemo, http://ehelp.com, and was able to create simple Flash tutorials with captions. These really were great and actually easier to create.

Until Camtasia, http://www.techsmith.com, added the capability of producing Flash videos to their software. And since Camtasia Recorder can input sound, I tired that using my microphone and was sold on audio with the videos.

Later I reviewed my old tutorials as well as looked at other's tutorials. Those without audio just don't seem to give me the same experience as when I heard the audio along with watching the cursor moving on the screen.

Think about it. Recently a number of silent movies have been played on our local television channel. And even while the movies were silent, there was background music to set the stage to what was happening. Try watching any movie scene with no sound and then watch with sound and you'll immediately see the difference.

Audio with video gets us involved.

And another benefit about using audio and video is that you can create products far quicker than doing video with captions or text with screen captures. So not only do more people want audio/video, with the tools available today it's actually easier to give it to them.