CMS Video Tutorials

[Jesse]

Hi everyone.

I spent part of Xmas Day, and a good part of Boxing Day (Dec 26th) learning how to use a nice free little tool called CamStudio (http://www.camstudio.org/) which is a really nifty free video/audio capture tool. I've been making video tutorials to teach you all how to use the CMS.

Why video? I figured it was easier than writing it all out. Some stuff is just better when demoed. And now you can all hear my weird accent and laugh at me.

Originally I planned on making them Flash video, but it just wasn't easy enough, so I've decided to make them Xvid AVI, with MP3 audio. These are not streaming videos. The intention is that you will download them fully then watch them locally. We figure you might want to keep them for your reference.

[Edit: See Strok's post below for Flash versions of the same tutorials. The quality is a little worse but they are streamable and smaller]

You'll need the free Xvid Codec (http://www.xvid.org/) and a media player such as Windows Media player, or you could get something better like VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) (Windows, Max, Linux).

Here's what I've done so far.

01. Intro to CMS & Author Profile - 10m 26s

HTML/FLASH version (4.76mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_01-Intro.html)
Download High Resolution AVI Version (6.14Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_01-Intro-HighBand.avi)
Download Low Resolution AVI Version (2.65Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_01-Intro-LowBand.avi)


02. Article Creation - 18m 42s

HTML/FLASH Version (8.2Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_02-Article_Creation.html)
Download High Resolution AVI Version (17.5Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_02-Article_Creation-HighBand.avi)
Download Low Resolution AVI Version (6.21Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_02-Article_Creation-LowBand.avi)


03. Using the WYSIWYG Editor's Features - 28m 29s

HTML/FLASH Version (20.1Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_03-Using_Editor.html)
Download High Resolution AVI Version (45.3Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_03-Using_Editor-HighBand.avi)
Download Low Resolution AVI Version (13.4Mb) (http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_03-Using_Editor-LowBand.avi)

Apologies for the size of Tutorial 3. I've tried all sorts of encoding settings and can't get it any smaller without losing a fair bit of video quality. The Low Band one has quite blurry video but I think it's probably enough to get by with.

While recording Tutorial 3 I ran into some issues so you get to see me screw up. These are the sorts of things you might run into yourself, so I left them in and covered how to address them.

Also, please excuse how dull and boring my voice is in most of these. I normally don't sound like this but I recorded each of these at uncanny hours in the early morning :)

Assuming you've watched all of them, you should be ready to start posting via http://www.actionscript.org/resources/admin/ .

I don't plan on making any others as I think these three cover the major topics. I may if anyone has any suggestions for a particular topic. Get in quick though, because after a few days I'll forget all the stuff I had to learn to be able to put these together :)

Jokes about my accent and general comments welcome.

[jehochman]

Jesse, is there any chance you can get these videos translated into a standard format so somebody can just click and go? The process of installing the codec seems complicated, and the Xvid site says that their executable distribution may not be legal for production use. :confused:

Besides that, can you add a real easy link to the post so we authors can find the entry point for submitting an article? Some of us are none too bright, or maybe just time constrained.

[Jesse]

Hi Jonathan,

They're being converted to streaming SWFs also but I'm not managing that task. I'll follow up with Strok.

I've added a link to the CMS above.

[Strok]

HTML/FLASH versions

1. http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_01-Intro.html (4.76mb)
2. http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_02-Article_Creation.html (8.2mb)
3. http://www.actionscript.org/video_tutorials/CMS_Video_Tutorial_03-Using_Editor.html (20.1mb)

[Cota]

excellent, thank you guys very much.

[CyanBlue]

Just curious to know if you guys had a chance to add a line that says that the imae should be 500px wide or less... ;)