Creating Your Content

Setting Up Your Studio

1. Text/Presentation Editing
You may want to deliver some of your content in web pages posted to your site or maybe in a PDF file that can be read online or downloaded to the member's computer. You may also want to create video presentations that are like a business slide presentation but in a more active, video format.

The hands-down best piece of software to do this with is Open Office. It's pretty much a replacement for Microsoft's Office suite so if you have a recent copy of MS Office, by all means use it.

But if you don't have Microsoft Office or your version is old and doesn't have the latest features (like “Save to PDF”) then get yourself over to OpenOffice.org and grab yourself a copy.

Of course, it's open source software so it's free. But it's so good that I gave up updating my Microsoft Office license 3 years ago. It has the same modules as Microsoft Office (Word = Writer, Excel = Calc, PowerPoint = Impress, etc.) and you can read and write Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

It also lets you save to PDF (with basic security and protection) from all of the modules. It's superbly written, almost entirely bug free (I've only noticed a few minor glitches in the 3 years I've been using it) and it's FREE!

2a. Audio Editing - Microphone
The next level up in content is probably audio content. Joy Anderson, the lady in the Micro-Continuity free report (see the Resources section) delivered her entire course content in audio. It's much faster and easier than writing and putting together audio content is a cinch.

For a microphone, I use a cheap, DyNex DX-28 headset that I got from BestBuy for less than $25. After I bought it, I looked at the reviews and there were some frightening ones, but the headset has worked swell for me (4 months).

Another choice that has some great reviews is the DyNex DX-54 microphone (no headset). It's less than $20 from BestBuy and you can get it for less than $10 from Amazon.com Marketplace.

If you really want to save some money, try the Olympus ME-52 Noise Cancellation
Microphone – at Amazon.com new for just $4.99. It certainly isn't a long term solution but it'll get you up and running for less than $10.

2b. Audio Editing - Software
There are probably other alternatives out there but I'm going to point you to the one I use because

1. it's free (you'll notice that theme running through most of my recommendations)
2. it's easy to use
3. it's available for both Windows and Mac operating systems

Audacity is just a super product that will let you capture and easily edit you audio content. If you'd like to see how easy it is to use, take a look at this video on editing out background noise, breathing, and lip smacks (yep, you'll do it too!).

http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=7330000&fromSeriesID=733
Some of the things Ian Ozsvald does in this tutorial are little advanced, but just take note of how easily it's done. Easy things, like cutting out audio sections you don't want or re-recording a section and “pasting” it into the mix, are pretty intuitive and pretty simple with Audacity.

3. Video Camera
One step up from audio casting is video casting. The simplest form of video-casting has you simply pointing a video camera at yourself while you're delivering your content. If you have something to demonstrate (e.g. setting up and using photography studio equipment), video is the perfect delivery medium.

Most of today's digital video cameras will work just fine. Actually, many of the latest consumer digital still cameras take excellent video. The primary limitation is the amount of video (length) the still camera will capture.

If you don't already have a camera that will capture video, one of the best values on the market is the Flip Video camera from Pure Digital Technologies, LLC. It's simple to use – you just point it where you want it and press the big red “Record” button on the back.

Unfortunately, I don't know where you can get a Flip Video camera for free, but I've seen the 60 minute version on Amazon.com for as low as $100. On Ebay, they're even less.

4. Screen Capture
With screen capture, we're still talking video but we've stepped it up from the simple recording of you doing your “thing” to the capturing information from your computer screen in a way that your members can learn whatever it is you're coaching them to do.

The premier product in this category is Camtasia Studio from TechSmith. It does everything you'd ever want to do while creating content for your membership site. The only drawback is that it costs $300 – which is a fair price for what it can do. But, that's a lot of cash to spend when you're just starting out.

If you can't or don't care to go the Camtasia route there are some alternatives, but I'll have to admit they are compromises.

Wink – this is a great little FREE program for screen captures and video tutorials. It has a pretty nifty editor that provides a great deal of control over your video output. The problem with Wink is that the audio output is REALLY poor. For some reason, it sounds like you're speaking in a tunnel with towel over your mouth.

However, Wink does have nifty text annotation features that make soundless videos very doable and very useful. CamStudio – the Camtasia wannabe. It doesn't do everything Camtasia does and, honestly, most of the things it does do Camtasia does better. But for small, short screen captures and tutorials, it works very well.
Besides, it's FREE. Jing – from the makers of Camtasia, this is a great program for screen capture. There's a free version that allows you to capture up to 5 minutes of video for immediate publishing to the internet or downloading to your own computer. The major drawback to the free version is that it only outputs .SWF files. That's great for publishing on the internet but it's a pain if you need to edit the video since most video editing tools don't work with .SWF files.
My suggestion? Camtasia if your budget allows. CamStudio if your budget is tight. Jing if you don't expect to do any editing.

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with free products for MacIntosh. You folks will have to explore that on your own.

5. Video Editing
If you're good, you'll get everything in 1 take. But, if you're a dimwit like me – or if you're a perfectionist (that's good!) - you're going to make mistakes that you'll either want to edit out or edit over.

Camtasia Studio returns as the product to have in this category as well. As I said, it's the premier product for creating and editing video. Buy it if you can.

But if you can't, Microsoft bundles the very robust Windows Movie Maker in with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and I would think Version 7. It's actually surprising how much you can do with this tool.

If you're running on a Windows machine and you don't already have – and are not prepared to buy – Camtasia, Windows Movie Maker is the product for you.

6. Utilities
There's only one utility I want to recommend and that's Any Video Converter. You won't need this product if you're using Camtasia.

But if you're using CamStudio and/or Windows Movie Maker, you'll want to convert you output from .AVI (CamStudio) or .WMV (Windows Movie Maker) to the more compressed, more flexible, and more internet friendly .FLV file type.

Any Video Converter is only $29 for the Pro Version. There's actually a FREE version that will accomplish the conversions to .FLV – but $29 is a very fair price to pay for what this software can do for your membership site.