Creating Narrated Screenmovies with Windows Media Encoder

 

Use Internet Explorer 5 or higher to view embedded Windows Media Video tutorials linked from this page.

Windows Media Encoder makes it easy for PC users to create narrated screenmovies that can be particularly useful in tutorials. If you choose to do this assignment, you will get practice at using Windows Media Encoder to create a short, narrated screenmovie and embed it in a Web page to be served from a standard Web server. Just to keep this assignment short, you will use Windows Media Encoder to demonstrate to a hypothetical learner how to display the PRINT dialog box in Microsoft Word. Use audio narration to guide your learner through this short process.


1. Download Windows Media Encoder 7.1

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp

 

2. Prepare the screen area which you will record.

Launch Microsoft Word, and size the window so that it just frames the PRINT dialog box. The idea here is to keep the area which you capture as small as possible, without cutting out important areas of the screen. Here's how.

 

3. Prepare Windows Media Encoder to Capture Audio Narration + Word Document Window

Launch Windows Media Encoder, and set it up to capture audio narration and the Word Document window. Here's how.

 

4. Capture a Short, Narrated Screenmovie

Here's how.

 

 

5. Upload Your Screenmovie to Your Student Account

 

For demonstration purposes, I've uploaded one sample WMV file (Windows Media Video) to my LRS account, and an identical copy to my COE account.

 

 

6. Create a WVX Metafile to Point to Your WMV File in Your Student Account

A metafile is just a text file that contains the URL of the video that you want to stream. Metafiles are important to streaming because if you were to link directly to the video file from your Web page, the browser would just try to download the video file in its entirety before you could start playing. A metafile is basically a redirector file. You point the browser at the metafile, and the metafile redirects to the video file. This sets up the stream.

To create a metafile, watch this quick tutorial to see how to use the code below.

For a LRS account, modify the code below as in the tutorial, copy it to the clipboard, paste it into Notepad, and save the file with a WVX extension.
For a COE account, modify the code below as in the tutorial, copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into Notepad, and save the file with a WVX extension.

Then launch a text editor such as notepad and paste the code from the clipboard.

 

7. Create a Link from Your Web Page to the WVX Metafile

 

The final result should look like this.
(Make sure to maximize Windows Media Player when it opens.)