Slide 0 of Screencast

HelpXplain is the exciting new animated infographics and screencast tool that integrates with Help+Manual.

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Olivier Beltrami
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Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Olivier Beltrami »

Hello,

I am starting to test the use of screencasts to provide online tutorials to my users.

I am having problems with the appearance of a spurious "slide 0" at the beginning of my screencasts. There is no "slide 0" in the list of slides, but, although my first slide starts at the top left, in the File menu, the generated screencast has a slide with the cursor and spotlight in the center of the form, and then moves to my slide 1 after showing this "slide 0".

I don't mind so much having a zeroth slide with the cursor at the center, but I would like to get rid of the spotlight until the cursor reaches its first intended position. But, as this zeroth slide does not appear in the list of slides, I cannot remove any of its elements.

What am I missing ?

Very best regards,

Olivier
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Tim Green
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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Olivier,

This isn't something I've ever seen. I've asked the developers if they have any idea how this could happen. I'll get back to you here as soon as I have more information. :shock:
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Olivier,

Update: None of our developers have ever seen anything like this either. Please mail me a small demo .xplain project at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll see if we can figure out what has happened. :)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Olivier Beltrami »

Hi Tim,

I have just sent the project and output by mail.
In that email I also included the steps to easily reproduce the issue at will.
Very best regards,

Olivier
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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Tim Green »

Thanks for the project. Thhis is actually not an issue at all: The animation doing exactly what you need, and if you managed to "turn off" what you are referring to as "slide 0" the animation wouldn't be working properly. In the first part of the animation your mouse cursor is moving to the first click position and clicking. Without this, it would just click and the user would not know what you are doing.
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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Olivier Beltrami »

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your prompt response as always.

I have run some more tests since yesterday, and I guess that, if I do not want the presentation to start with a spotlight (which was my main issue), then I need to insert a couple of intermediate slides, so that the spotlight around the cursor is only applied on slide 2 or 3 ?

Very best regards,

Olivier
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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Tim Green »

I have run some more tests since yesterday, and I guess that, if I do not want the presentation to start with a spotlight (which was my main issue), then I need to insert a couple of intermediate slides, so that the spotlight around the cursor is only applied on slide 2 or 3 ?
Yes, of course you can do that. The whole point of HelpXplain over a video tool is that every single step of the presentation can be edited and changed. You can insert new slides at any point, replace slides and so on. You can even change the order of slides if necessary, although if you are in a presentation you will also need to change the animations and possibly their order. :)

If you create a screencast with a spotlight, you will have a spotlight on every page of the created screencast, of course. However, you could also just delete the spotlight on your first slide. Just select the Objects tab and delete the spotlight object. Then you will just see a mouse movement from the default position to the click position on that slide.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Olivier Beltrami »

Thank you very much, Tim.

I got a bit confused when I read the documentation part about inserting a screencast into another screencast to add slides. I thought that there was something special about the screencast format.

But, after doing a lot of testing, it seems that the screencast is a shortcut to the bulk creation of an Xplain, but that the resulting Xplain is not different than if one had created each and every slide and animation manually. Is this correct ?

Very best regards,

Olivier
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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Tim Green »

Olivier,

A screencast is ultimately just a series of slides. The only difference is that it is created interactively, using the screencast tool, which creates a new slide from a screenshot, along with the mouse cursor, every time you click or use the hotkey for adding a slide manually. In addition to this the transitions between the slides are also generated automatically where necessary, mainly for the cursor movement, but also for things like knowing what delays need to be inserted for capturing things like menus opening and closing. A lot of quite complex stuff is performed in the background to make it as easy as creating a series of screenshots. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: Slide 0 of Screencast

Unread post by Olivier Beltrami »

Thank you, Tim.
I'm slowly getting there.
Olivier Beltrami
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