Help me make an awesome flash demo of our software

August 16, 2010 1:53 PM

I need to create a promo video for our software and I'm looking for examples for inspiration. This demo will live on our website. What are some of the best done 3-4 minute software demos / promos that you've seen online? Or what advice do you have? I have Adobe Captivate to work with. In the past I have done this with screenshots and Microsoft Movie Maker. Captivate seems to give me a whole lot more options, maybe too many as I'm having a hard time deciding how to do this. I've looked at our competitors websites and the offerings there are amateurish and somewhat embarrassing. I can do much better, and I'm not even particularly good at this stuff. I don't want this to be an in depth demo. I'm trying to do more of a commercial, for lack of a better term.
posted by COD to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Who is your audience? People who know the basics and are looking for details, or someone who has no knowledge of your type of product? For the former, you can be a bit more dry and factual, because the whiz-bang stuff distracts from the true content, and may make it seem like you're trying to hide a lack of function. The non-user may need some attraction, so you could turn to the world of typical commercials for some pointers here.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:12 PM on August 16, 2010

Response by poster: The audience would mostly be people who landed on our site after a Google search on various keywords related to our software led them there. So it's people who are looking for help that our software can provide. I'd like the video to motivate them to contact us for a more comprehensive demo.
posted by COD at 3:07 PM on August 16, 2010

First, let me say that Camtasia is the only software I've actually paid for (besides MS Office) in maybe 7 years. It's awesome for on screen demos, and honestly it's a sweet video editor that covers all of the basics. If you can use MovieMaker, you can get better results with Camtasia.

That said, I've never used Captivate, so I can't offer a comparison

As far as demos, here are a couple offhand. Notice that some of them use multiple video snippets and one doesn't use video at all.

http://prezi.com/
Camtasia itself
Omnifocus
http://teuxdeux.com/

That's a start!
posted by jander03 at 5:51 PM on August 16, 2010

I'm in lurve with the promo videos Adam Lisagor created for Square and Birdhouse. They're masterful demos of the app that manage to convey a distinctly human element.
posted by AmitinLA at 9:25 PM on August 16, 2010