Tuts: Do you prefer videos or written tutorials?

[Morne]

Hi all

I would like some comments on how you prefer to do quick online tutorials. Do you prefer watching videos or do you prefer going through something written with a bunch of screengrab images and descriptions? And why do you prefer this method?

[squintnic]

i prefer written with pictures as many tutorials have people that cant speak properly and move their mouses around and tend to dawdle

[joconnell]

Videos for me - with written stuff sometimes the author can gloss over where to find a tool / button which can make for confusion. With a video if I see everything they do, then I won't miss as much. I normally watch all of the videos at 1.5 or 2x speed in vlc to get through them quicker also.

[glorybound]

short and to the point videos for me.

[YoyoBoy]

Videos, when the phrase "go ahead" is kept to a bare minimum.

[Pixelcon]

Written. It's more likely a tutor will forget something in a video tutorial.

[Syclone1]

+1 for videos

[bardo]

written, I prefer it because it's easier to skip useless infos...

[AlexP]

Written usually, as during the day in the office I can easily skip through a written tutorial but a video tutorial requires a bit more time investment.

Also agree with the above, that some video tutorials are painfully slow. With a written tutorial you can easily skip to the relevant bit.

[kimgar]

definately written; search it, print it, do whatever and no commercials

[suurland]

I prefer video too for the same reasons joconnell already pointed out.

It's easy to ruin video too though, making them too long, annoying voice or it's easy to see the user doesn't really know what he is talking about.

[voltron7]

Video here, too. Of course, there are always exceptions
I end up actually watching and trying video most of the time. With written/image tutorials, they often tend to sort of get forgotten about and sit around on the HD :P
Sometimes even poor quality, soundless, or "different language" videos have been helpful enough.

edit: Vimeo over youtube

[Bathyscaph]

Quick, concise video tutorials are great but for longer, more difficult subjects I just don't retain the material as well.

For me, the act of trying to understand what the author meant is more of an active process than just watching and I feel like the material sinks in deeper. Written material is very easy to visually sort through to find what you need; It's very hard to scroll a long video to find a specific sentence or two you want to hear over again.

With written material it is also possible to refresh anything learned, even months later, with just a quick re-read.

[Neilg]

written, for being able to skip useless bits, catch up to where you were, casually browse through, quickly check things (it said to change this number, but to what? is a lot faster when you can ctrl f instead of having to skim through a 45 min video for a quick flash of something random like that).
plus 90% of videos are awful and very few people have any sort of idea how to present them. You need to actually be a great teacher to pull off a video tutorial, whereas text/images can just be a dump of your process in a vaguely chronological order and still work.

I guess technique/theory is best in videos, technical stuff is best written.

[soulburn3d]

Both, depends on the subject. Videos give you a more direct view of exactly what the user is doing, and its nice to simulate the "guy sitting beside you" kind of thing. But a text tutorial can be more easily scanned, and you can do word searches. Also, since updating a word tutorial with new info is easier than updating a video tutorial, word tutorials tend to be more up to date.

- Neil