From the course: Producing Screencast Videos on a PC

Keeping notes to help with post-production

From the course: Producing Screencast Videos on a PC

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Keeping notes to help with post-production

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- [Instructor] Sometimes when you're recording, things will happen, maybe little mistakes or details that you want to capture for later. Don't rely on your memory. No matter how good you think it is it's going to cause failures. You're juggling lots of details and pieces of information. So, here's a couple things that you could think about. One, don't be afraid to go traditional. If you're doing a screencast and your camera's over the computer, or depending upon the framing you're never going to see a pad of paper, this is fine. This will allow you to easily capture notes that you need. Now, I suggest that you get something that doesn't make a lot of noise. Notice how this lays flat, it's not a binder, it's not bulky, it's not sliding around and I can easily capture notes. If handwriting isn't your strength, and I say this with sincerity because a lot of us are out of practice, your smartphone can be useful for capturing notes. Additionally, if you are recording and making these notes, make sure that they don't accidentally end up in the tutorial. I'll do a snap, (snaps) or a click. (clicks tongue) These sorts of things will create spikes in the audio wave form that are easy to see. Those spikes are great for the video editor or yourself to notice that you had a spike there. And that's a way to call out the edit. You also may be able to add markers on the fly to your video format, depending upon what you're using to record. But, in any case, these are great because you have notes that you could reference. If you are working with a more professional production and you have a crew person, or a producer, who's working with you, he or she may take some notes as well. By keeping everything in sync, it's also easy to timestamp these. Things like Google Docs can have timestamps easily added to track edit points, and that timestamp can sync up with your recording clock to make it even easier to match those notes to the right section.

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