Software Training Products

What’s the best method for products that mostly show a computer screen?

MPEG2, the codec used for video DVDs, is optimized for “hollywood” video content, that is, a typical scene from a movie shot on film or a videocamera – people and backgrounds, background out of focus, 1/48 second shutter speed with motion blur, and so on. What MPEG2 is not good for is graphics, titles, small text or fine detail.

The reason we made a separate page for software training videos is that, when you encode screen capture from a computer to MPEG2 for regular DVD video delivery, a lot of visual quality is lost, and text and fine detail becomes blurred and often unreadable at smaller sizes. Yet MOD Machine is capable of presenting razor sharp, clear computer screen activity, if we can get the video in a high quality, pristine format, before encoding to MPEG2.

Here is the ideal process:

1. Edit computer screen capture in a high quality codec, like uncompressed, PNG, Pro Res, P-JPEG @ 100% quality, etc.
2. Export each chapter or section you want the student to be able to jump directly to as a separate movie in that same high quality codec
3. Convert to x264 (or H.264) using a quality application like DV Kitchen (Mac only) or other app.

A similar process would be encoding right out of your editing application into H.264, one less step, but you don’t have as much control over the quality:

1. Edit computer screen capture in a high quality codec, like uncompressed, PNG, Pro Res, P-JPEG @ 100% quality, etc.
2. Export each chapter or section to x264 (or H.264)

The frame size is up to you. You will never have to worry about NTSC/PAL, any format works for any customer. You can also deliver HD in any size.

General video guidelines for computer screen capture:

MOD Machine will deliver movies in any size. But remember some of your customers will have smaller monitors, including 1024 x 768 laptops. Also remember, with larger screens, often it’s handy to keep your training video frame size smaller so they can watch your training video while working alongside the training in the application you are teaching. So avoid making the screen size too big. Bitrate needs vary by frame size and content, there’s great info on how to determine the perfect bitrate here.

Typical screen capture recipes:

• frame size: 800 x 600, 1024 x 644, 1280 x 800
• video codec: H.264
• video bitrate: 800 – 1400 kbps

Audio for all video sizes:

• audio codec: AAC (sometimes called “MPEG-4 audio)
• audio bitrate:
  • 128 -144 kbps mono (speech only)
  • 128 -144 kbps stereo (speech and music)
  • 224 -256 kbps stereo (music high quality)
  • 320 kbps stereo (music ultra high quality)