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Beginners tutorial for NAM Series on YouTube

Started by mgb204, August 26, 2015, 04:13:35 AM

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mgb204

Just wanted to let everyone know, I've started a series of tutorials for new users of the Network Addon Mod on YouTube.

You can find my channel here, I'm planning right now about 5 or 6 quick 20m videos explaining some of the key features. Any feedback or comments are welcome, it might take a while to get new episodes up since it's 5 hours to upload 18m of video to YouTube, I expect at some point my ISP will make that even longer too :).

art128

The idea is great, but however the sound quality is really bad, like you can't understand most of what you said.

Also, but that's really just personal opinion, I think tutorials for something like NAM should be 10 minutes at max. 20 minutes of one video is a bit long to watch.
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mgb204

Thanks for the feedback, I think you may find headphones and turning up the volume will help, the second video has come out much better in this regard still a bit new to all this and getting familiar with everything. I know there are a couple parts where it does get really bad, but I thought 99% of it was audible at least.

I'll bear the length part in mind, I do want to keep them short, but I'm also cautious of not flying through everything really quickly, I want new users to be able to keep up with what they are seeing.

JoeST

I enjoyed it, though I agree it could start to feel long. Also the audio was really bad, even with max volume and headphones I struggled to hear a lot of it. It was a good intro into puzzles vs drags and such.
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vortext

#4
I applaud the initiative but have to agree: the audio is horrendous. Not only low on volume but the sound compression is too strong and the artifacts make your voice sound almost robot-like. Not sure if that's on your end or youtube has compressed the audio whilst uploading, either way it's not very pleasant to listen to for long period of time.

Also, imho it'd work better if you added some still images and text, kinda like a slide show. For example you mention the different height levels but did not show them. As someone completely new to NAM that'd be the kinda thing I would want to see, with some written instructions so I can pause the video and tab to-and-from SC4 to try things out. 

That said, I do realize preparing and editing a glorified powerpoint probably is more work. However, if you want to stick to spoken presentation - and I'm sure there're plenty of folks who prefer listening above reading - the audio quality will have to be better.
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GDO29Anagram

#5
The one thing that's concerning is the terminology; everything's a mix of old, new, provisional, and unauthorised slang. FA/FARHW/FARR/FAR is one of the biggest problems which I've proposed replacing entirely (proposing G3, G2, G6, and G4, with G for Grid) but received heavy criticism about.

MAVE/RD is another. So is Ax, Bx, Cx, Dx, Ex, Fx (people drop out the numbers and use C for D and D for E), TRAM/GLR, AVE-4/Avenue, One Way Road/OWR-2, and Road/RD-2.

Other problems:
- Averting focus to draggable content (though I know you see the power of draggability)
- Regional differences of pronunciation, which makes it impossible to establish an official pronunciation of "NAM"
- Viewability - I do videos in 1280×720 and at 60FPS, but I've been wanting to get a bigger viewing space.

I'm not in a state to actually review your video right now so this post may change later on.

EDIT:

- Length: You made a ~18-minute video about something that would at the most take me 5-6 minutes to explain. My personal yardstick is 3-7 minutes, and the shortest on record is one minute; if there's any fringe information, it gets broken off into its own video. I try to make things as short and explanatory as possible.
- Size matters; this goes hand in hand with viewability in a way. High-res, longer, high-FPS videos take longer to upload, so cutting down the length as much as possible is a must, especially when on not-so-ideal Internet connection speeds. (I'm honestly a little jealous that you can do 1080p and I can't.)

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mgb204

Thanks for the further comments (and to everyone who struggled through the bad audio, sorry), it's appreciated...

I think maybe having spent so long getting the first one together (not to mention re-doing most video 3 times) I jumped the gun a little - I did find the audio bad, but with the volume high enough as I mentioned before it wasn't inaudible at least. I'm not using a headset mic, it took a while to get the stereo mic I have setup, I think I will upload a short 1-min file for the second part so I can gather feedback before I go through the long process of rendering/uploading the full video to make sure it's right this time.

I'm not sure what YouTube do to the video, the uploaded file was over 1GB, but I did notice the video quality on my end was lost somewhat from the original file, nothing I can really do about that, but perhaps this also has side-effects for the audio too? If everything's fine with the second video, I may try to fix the problems with Part1 and re-upload it.

@ Vortext - Actually I'm far more comfortable with Powerpoint than video editing, I agree at certain points it may be helpful to have some references so I'll bear that in mind moving forwards.

@ Ganagram - Terminology is a difficult one, being a tutorial for beginners there is a tendency on my part to try and keep this to a minimum. I often prefer to use the full names instead of acronyms since I think that's easier for most to understand. I'm only recording at 30fps, but at 1080p, I may change to 720p since that cuts a third off the file sizes, but it's a moot point in the grand scheme of things.

GDO29Anagram

#7
Quote from: mgb204 on August 26, 2015, 02:02:30 PM
@ Ganagram - Terminology is a difficult one, being a tutorial for beginners there is a tendency on my part to try and keep this to a minimum. I often prefer to use the full names instead of acronyms since I think that's easier for most to understand. I'm only recording at 30fps, but at 1080p, I may change to 720p since that cuts a third off the file sizes, but it's a moot point in the grand scheme of things.

I'll agree with the acronyms (which is partially why I never say One Way Road as OWR or Avenue as AVE), but once you reach a certain point, it becomes less necessary. I don't have a problem with saying, for example, "RHW-8S" instead of "8S", but if you're saying "7.5 meter Avenue" all the time, eventually you have to use the shorthand of "L1 Avenue".

Better yet, if possible, introduce shorthand as soon as possible. I'll PM you an example video.

Certain letter names have no expanded version: Ramp interfaces, for example; A-F don't mean anything that's a actual word since they only denote branch direction, and even though "FLEX" is the official spelling (like FLEXRamp), I never capitalise it since "Flex" isn't even an acronym.

Video size is also a problem, I feel, even for the end viewers. Sure, you can change the quality, but I'm talking about how fast a video buffers. I went through a period of relying on satellite Internet (#NeverAgain) and before that went through several years of having horrific Internet connection speeds (#NeverAgainAgain), so for the longest time, I could never even watch high-res videos without waiting for 30 minutes to finish buffering. That's more a case-by-case basis than anything else.

There's a related issue: what if the viewers are deaf or have hearing problems or are non-English speakers? I never speak in any of my videos and that's mainly because of my sound recording equipment, so I type out everything I say and have it as text that appears on the video. Subpar sound recording equipment only exacerbates the problem, and personally, this is why I sometimes can't stand going to the movies or listening to the radio, because it's easy to Mondegreen something. This is reminiscent of an old video series by a now-defunct Youtuber called ErwinNegentig (Haljackey ended preserving one of his vids, though). There's actually a private discussion on NAMvids that I don't think you know of and a lot of us have poured out our concerns and capabilities.

EDIT: Actually, you said "BEGINNERS TUTORIAL", so that implies that an intermediate and advanced series of tutorials are in order. By that point, you HAVE to use shorthand because otherwise you're mulling over the basics that everyone should know by now.

One more criticism: No third-party aesthetic or functional transit network addons. They confuse people into thinking that's the anticipated default. Euro textures are OK; automata mods are also OK; slope mods are OK but highly recommended anyway.
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JP Schriefer

Good idea to make the videos! This is going to help a lot of people :)

mgb204

I've just uploaded a short 1-min test video for part 2, I'm pretty sure I've solved the audio issues, but would just like to know what others think before I spend the next 5-6 hours uploading the full video.

Tarkus

I've just gotten a chance to listen--the new one seems to be a bit better on the audio, though still on the quiet side.  There seems to be a little bit of distortion on it, which isn't helping.  My usual trick with the audio is to record it in Audacity while I'm doing the screen capture.  If it ends up being too quiet, there's some options there that might help ("Amplify" and "Compression" under the Effects menu).

-Alex

owlsinger

I found the 2nd video very helpful (the first one I just couldn't get enough volume on). Even though I've been playing a long time, it's little things like having someone demonstrate at a speed that can be followed that makes a difference in understanding. I've watched plenty of vids, including Haljackey's, but the action is just too fast for me to pick up the nuances. Then I'll play around in game and sometimes hit what I want, but not be sure exactly how I got there, and not necessarily be able to repeat it........which is the point that frustration sets in. The combination of video and audio that showed how draggable FAR is done was perfect for my particular learning style. There is definitely an audience out there for you!
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