Class on Demand Report Card

News, Views, and Information from COD | October 2009

In this Class on Demand Report Card - Have your Apple and eat it too...

Have your Apple and eat it too Traditionally tight-lipped Apple caught many of its partners off guard last month by announcing Final Cut Studio 3, Final Cut Pro 7, and Snow Leopard without giving us any heads up. COD has responded quickly with the following; All Apple products we are currently selling including FCS2, FCP 6 and OSX Leopard training include a sticker on the packaging that can be redeemed for a free copy of our FCS3, FCP7 and Snow Leopard training when it is released later this year. Tom Wolksy is scheduled into the studio early in October and we’ll let you know in a future Report Card when to expect the new titles. “Cash 4 Clunkers" contest and the winner is... A big thank you to those customers who sent in some very amusing uses for their old training in response to our Cash for Clunkers contest last month. We’re not convinced that Tom Hanks was in fact using “Class on Demand’s Video Toaster for Beginners” training on VHS tape to help build his raft on Castaway, as was suggested, but it’s a nice thought. A number of you are preserving your desktops using old DVDs as coasters. But the ultimate winner must be Mark Martin of Orlando FL who wins $250 of COD training for sending us this photo of him skeet shooting using a Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop 1.0. Quiet please Studio 14 on air We released "Complete Training for Studio 14" in September featuring our very own Paul Holtz. Many of the effects that can be created with this amazing $100 software program would take applications worth ten times that amount. In over eight hours of instruction Paul shows you how to get the most out of the program and teaches you techniques that will make your productions look polished and professional. The title is already available as a digital download from the Pinnacle and Class on Demand web sites. For those you who ordered the DVD we will ship these the week of October 5th. To learn more about "Complete Training for Studio 14" click here. Thanks for stopping by After 17 days, 6234 miles of driving, eight different hotel rooms, and two convention centers we’d like to say a big thank you to all of you who stopped by the Class on Demand booth at WEVA or DVExpo and bought some training at our crazy tradeshow prices or just said hi – it’s so great to meet our customers and talk training. Many of you were repeat customers who told us how valuable our training has been in helping you get your job done. This is always good to hear. Paul spoke to well attended sessions at both conferences on the “business and techniques of interview production.” We carried a number of production technique titles at these shows including instruction on Grip Techniques produced by the DVPA, Training on lighting techniques and conducting interviews. We were amazed how these titles sold out at both venues. We have many many discs to send out this week to those of you who ordered them at the trade show prices. We’ll add more titles in the coming months and be sure to take ten times the amount to future trade shows.

Paul Holtz Fires Back

At last month's DVExpo, FCP guru, Larry Jordan, interviewed me for Digital Production Buzz and his opening question asked how COD is different from other training companies. I thought I’d share the philosophy behind our products and company.

Training producers and video professionals with video-based training is kind of like teaching Emeril Lagasse how to poach an egg. Our customers make their living recognizing glitches, spotting dropped frames, and delivering production values. That’s why they choose the products and software they do. It’s why company’s like Adobe, Apple, AVID and Digital Juice invest considerable resources and money to ensure their products look and feel so professional. So why would our customers not view their training in the same way? The answer is; they do. And that’s why we spend an inordinate amount of time making sure everything we produce is the very highest quality.

Good training starts with the instructor. We are fortunate to have a cadre of industry gurus that not only know their subject matter but how to convey the critical features of an application in a clear and concise way. This extends to every aspect of the product; the original content used throughout the training (which we include with every product), the studio set up for the instructor on-cams that bring the “human” element to the training, the high resolution screen captures, the clarity of the narrative, the post production, the graphics, and ultimately to the navigation of the finished product.

The face is that there are other training companies produce more titles than Class on Demand. These are often produced and edited by the instructor who employs a simple screen capture with voice over. While this can be an effective method of learning, and is certainly much quicker to produce, it is much harder to reinforce specific points. Without the use of supporting on-screen graphics, call outs, and on-camera explanations by the instructor, the training can often lead to widely differing results for the student.

By contrast a typical COD title takes six weeks to complete and always starts with a producer in the studio with the instructor providing critical direction and keeping the instruction focused. This approach has the added benefit that the producer may catch factual inaccuracies that a one-man production will miss. By the time the product has been released every frame has been viewed and checked for inaccuracies at least 4 times. Significant use of graphics to reinforce what is being said; such as calling out short cut keys in an interface for commonly used tasks is easier to grasp when there is a graphic in addition to the interface and the instructor’s narrative. We spend significant time in post-production editing the narrative for “um’s and ah’s” and other mispronunciations that others may find too costly to edit out. In many respects it’s like watching a professionally produced newscast verses a personal blog.

We constantly poll our customers about not only their new training product requirements but also how they would like to consume the programming. Many have told us they like the DVD-ROM’s ease of navigation and image quality. There is also the side benefit that it can be viewed where there is not necessarily broadband access like on a train during a commute or on a plane. However, we also recognize that a growing number of customers like the on demand nature of broadband delivered content and we have been making more and more of our content available in this way. To us this is less a religion about delivery formats and more about a passion for delivering a high quality product that is recognized by our peers for its production value and quality. Thank you to our customers for your on going feedback and for making Class on Demand one of the industries’ most awarded training company.

To hear Larry Jordan’s complete interview, click here http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/Archives/LiveThatExpo_DVEXPO_2009.php