In this video, we will talk about the preparation of your files and folders as well as your document for the recording process. We want our recording to be smooth and efficient. For this, we have to have everything ready for us just to sit in front of our screen with text and give out the content for recording.

Let’s start with the Filing System

Folder Structure

Although we have already spoken about separate files that you need for the Courses let’s talk about structure of each folder you will have for a course and when should you use those folders.

Folder structure that you need to have for each course:

1. Raw videos
2. Music or Audio
3. Tools
4. Graphics
5. Output

Let me demonstrate to you the structure.

Structure

Look at this structure. 

You have a folder for each asset type. Let’s have a look at how you should save your assets in each folder.

As you can see, we keep all assets in the related Lesson folder.

Saving raw videos and other elements

When you record and save a video file don’t just drop it somewhere and look for it later. Put it in the related folder straight away. 

If you record video and audio separately, store it properly straight away. 

Example: Let’s say you have recorded few lessons and you have completed your recording session. Now it is time to transfer the materials to your external drive or a dedicated space on your PC for further edit with CapCut.

Move each file to the respective folder.

I usually keep the names of the video files are they are. But I rename the screen recordings and the audio recordings (because I record video and audio separately). In this way I don’t have to be confused about what each file stands for. I have the name of the lesson in the name of the file.

Let’s see some details of Naming folders.

Naming files and folders

Obviously, you will not have a Course folder named as Course 1. Give it a short name of the Course.

Similar to this we should not name the Lesson as Lesson 1 or 2. Because when you will decide to update your course after lunching it and getting feedback from your customers, you might want to insert another lesson between Lesson 1 and 2. So just give your lesson folder a name.

If you have given your lesson folder a name then all videos and audios that are stored in this folder will be related to this particular video.

So by organizing the folder structure before you record you are preparing for effective recording time.

Next important part of the preparation for Highlighting what is going to be shown on the screen.

Highlights

You can see that in our course template we have a style called Highlight. Use this style to highlight anything you want to show on screen when you perform on camera.

What do we show on the screen:

Terminology to remember – not all the terms that you are using are known to the whole world. You might have an impression that everyone know that. But no. You should better assume that people hear the terms you use for the first time. So it is difficult to comprehend if it is presented to you for the first time audibly. Use text on screen to help people get familiar with the new term.

Focus words and phrases – some words inside your lesson are the key words for people to understand the topic or the task. From my experience students very often miss the key information from the lesson and thus they have misunderstanding of the topic. That is why I recommend to highlight the key words or highlight short phrases. Just like what you have seen right now.

Lists – when your information is organized in lists it is good to show the lists on the screen. The difference with the showing of the key words and phrases with lists is that lists are shown stacked in column and all elements appear on screen one by one, but disappear altogether. 

Here is the demonstration:

• List item 1
• List item 2
• List item 3
• List item 4

They have appeared one by one, and disappear altogether. 

SmartArt Export

Sometimes lists can have too much text, in this case we just show a SmartArt on screen. Another reason to use SmartArt is to demonstrate relationship between the elements of the lists visually. So if you haven’t done some Diagram Illustrations during the course content writing you might consider doing it during the Preparation for recording.

Here I will show you how to save a SmartArt graphics from your Word document.

Bold text

During the content writing we are not only doing the outlines of the text we are going to say on video, but we are writing the whole text that we are going to say.

However, it does not mean you are supposed to say all the text word in word. The reason we do it is that the written text will be used for 2 purposes:

1. To add guidelines under the video
2. Turn the content of the course into a guide
3. Use the content to guide us during the recording

Here is the technique that I use to be able to remind the text to myself, so that I don’t have to read all content before recording:

I make bold only one or few key words in each sentence. This way by just glancing at the paragraph when the recording is on, I can quickly remember what the paragraph is about and maybe even improvise to cover the content a bit differently from how I have planned. It:

• Gives me freedom
• Looks naturally on camera
• I still stick to the content plan thanks to the key words