What's the best way to create a video tour to teach people how to navigate/use a web site?

October 2, 2008 12:37 PM

What's the best way to create a video tour to teach people how to navigate/use a web site?

I'd like to put a video on the site that walks people through it and basically acts as a virtual "Introduction and How To". It would be extra-great if we could easily edit/add to the video content.

Have you done it before? Is there a great software to do this that you love? Any other tips before I get started?

posted by juliplease to technology (7 comments total)

What operating system are you on? If you're on OSX, Screenflow is the best.
posted by nitsuj at 12:48 PM on October 2

Adobe Captivate. Very simple and intuitve to use, and it produces SWF files that can easily be added to a web page or. mrjunkbox used it to create a website walkthrough and was amazed at how easy it was. The free 30 day trial was a big help.
posted by junkbox at 1:07 PM on October 2

Seconding Captivate for a video.

SnagIt is good if you're putting together screenshots and using html to add in roll-overs and such to show what each does. Camastia from the same folks does desktop recording like Captivate. Jing is a web-based video capture, but I haven't used it recently so I don't recall the limitations.
posted by ejaned8 at 2:35 PM on October 2

I've had wink (sorry, no time for linking) recommended, but have yet to try it out.
posted by cestmoi15 at 2:42 PM on October 2

If you're on a Windows machine, I can't recommend Camtasia enough. It is a great program. They also offer a free 30-day trial so that you can see what it's like before shelling out -- it's not cheap, but it's worth it.
posted by k8lin at 2:55 PM on October 2

Nthing Captivate, I went from never having heard of it to a finished tour of a site in an afternoon.
posted by dolface at 3:37 PM on October 2

I think we're going to go with Captivate, but thank you for all the suggestions.
posted by juliplease at 8:33 PM on October 2