For many years since video tutorials were introduced, there has been the case of people who live and have always lived in countries with virtually no internet access, or where the internet is so expensive that it is more of a luxury, and where watching an online video from Youtube is almost impossible because of the low bandwidth available. HTML tutorials have always been the salvation. thanks to the fact that they don’t condition the download so much because they are mostly images and texts, they are the best.
Then there is that you can take it to your computer (which is not so powerful) and you can read calmly and practice step by step the explanations given in these tutorials.
“Man thinks as he lives” and that conditions the use of technologies for learning, that’s why for many the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries is getting bigger and bigger.
Essentially it is a substantial difference between videos and HTML tutorials. For video content generators, this form of explanation is better, it is even easier to give explanations on the use of a computer program, in this case it is superior to HTML, but it is still excluding for a certain group of people.
Poor countries are known to use cracked versions of proprietary soft rather than FLOSS. FLOSS crowd is white educated men whether we like it or not. Just look at the % of Indian people here, for whom the language is not a barrier… I’m not sure access to internet is the first barrier.
It is true that this happens in our poor countries. But in them there are also communities of people, not exactly all “educated white men” who use FLOSS for their personal and professional development, and who are as well prepared, and in many cases even more prepared than many of the “educated white men” who live in developed countries. So I don’t understand that somewhat racist statement on your part, it doesn’t seem to me that this statement is from such a prominent professional as you are. Many of my best friends are black as ink and that does not make them any less professional, even some of them work from here, a third world country for companies that request them for their knowledge in C and Java programming among other languages, UNIX, network administration and more.
India was a British colony, they imposed their language, religion and customs on them, of course for Indians language (English) is not a problem.
Yes, you can say that from your point of view, “Man thinks as he lives”, I can assure you that it is not what those of us who live in these countries think or feel. I am sure that this is not what most users, programmers and other professionals living in poor countries think either.
Sorry for the off topic. I don´t want to start a war, here the main subject is to know if screenshots are better than videos for ones.
I don’t see how noticing that a social group is absent from a crowd is in any way racist. We don’t have Indian, Asian or African contributors. In the dt users survey I ran, there were none either. So the current snapshot of FLOSS users and contributors is educated white guys, and that’s all. And I question the fact that people who are not white and rich are interested into something else than Adobe.
@anon41087856 I feel like that your statement is overly generalized here about developing countries and about the user of FLOSS softwares. I understand that the limited sample size you’re referring here from some survey may have been giving skewed results. I am Indian and I have been trying to learn/use DT/RT type software. If I look at the DT fork, I find a lot of Indian (or at least origin) users just by looking at the name. I cant speak for other countries but I would think that it would be true for them as well.
I cant comment on why there are not any Indian developers of DT, maybe we missed the invitation !! I cannot speak for a whole country and definitely cannot generalize for them simply because I myself is an Indian. I personally want to try changes in the DT code but that would be down the road and would require me to learn and experiment. However that is the beauty of opensource software.
I dont think the users for the cracked version of a software are bounded by locality. I also do not think that everyone in US or Europe can afford Adobe Suites based on the pricing and the business model. I use Affinity and Topaz Denoise because it made sense to me to purchase them based on the utility and my budget. A lot of universities and businesses provide a wide range of legal software for the users.
Now for the FLOSS softwares, I love github. Its a source of inspiration and knowledge to me as well as a place where I know the software can be ripped apart to make sure there is no funny business going on. For the DT users, I can say its wonderful software. In my honest opinion, for new user it is very daunting and highly confusing. I know that there is manual, but for amateur photographer that may be a bit daunting. With so many modules as well as the fact that many modules are not recommended while still exist adds on top of the confusion. In terms of learning, I can see old videos of people using a module, later to find out that that module is not recommended without a clear instruction on how to replicate it with the new recommended module, can once again (at least for me) can become confusing.
There are many software around for photo editing but we mainly hear Lightroom/photoshop because of large internet libraries (text, videos, books) providing guidance to amateurs who with practice improve. One of the challenges I feel sometimes that I do not know what is the equivalent of a LR module in darktable, to apply and follow a LR tutorial.
All this being said, I also have to admit that the developers are in it merely based on their interest and spend their valuable time in doing all this to benefit others. I cannot and do not expect anyone to create software based on my need, but I need to adapt myself to learn to work with what I get. Alternative is creating one based on my interest, with help/inspiration from available softwares.
Anyways, thanks for creating and making such wonderful software available to us
I‘m pretty sure that this doesn’t need to be read as a racist statement: it’s simply a fact, that floss is something driven by people living in privileged conditions. Those ‚educated white people‘ might also have coloured skin - it’s more a social group sharing a comparable way of life - they can afford to spend time on something that doesn’t pay their bills…
We should not digress into a racism debate here. The original argument was that video tutorials require more bandwidth and that tutorials with text and images are therefore more accessible to people in poorer countries. I agree with @anon41087856 that people who are interested in digital photography in RAW format (!) and want to work with FOSS software tend not to have too many problems with internet access.
Personally, I think that video tutorials for RAW development are good, because they are about the visual content and the tutorials are more playful and less exact. When it comes to IT issues, especially on Unix based systems, I hate video tutorials. 10 minutes of babble to specify a command line .
I matters if you want to adapt the content to the audience, and more precisely if you want to spare you the trouble of adapting it towards an audience that is not interested in your product.
It is of course best if people can do that, but instead of speculating about the audience based on covariates that may or may not even strongly correlate with their preference, it may be easiest just to ask.
Eg do a poll… but this is premature at this point because non-video tutorials are rare for Darktable, so it is hard to judge. Would be great to have a few and then see how it goes.
In any case, I am now redesigning my blog infrastructure and plan to do some screenshot-based tutorials, setting up some Hugo scripts for that.
Exactly. I did that last year. Problem is you still need an entry point to reach out to those people otherwise you get skewed stats. And like this we are back to square one.
I appreciate all the effort that goes into creating informative content, whether it’s video tutorials, user manuals, blog entries and discussions here; and I’d like to thank all content creators and contributors.
Different learners / users have different needs; and different tutors / content creators have different approaches, different motivations. I think it’s perfectly understandable why someone would prefer one format over the other, either as a content creator or as a consumer.
I think the true way to test whether such written documentation is needed is to create it and see. I’m happy to see people stepping up. I might start some kind of Wiki, but have no experience with them. It may never happen, or I may stop after a while, if I feel my effort makes little difference (or if I simply no longer find the time). There’s nothing to lose on my part, only time and some hosting cost; but it’s also a learning opportunity.
If you are referring to this blog post, it is a perfect example of what I am looking for: compared to a video, it packs so much more information, especially given the time it takes me to read through it (and I read it multiple times).
Sorry, very late to the discussion!
Why do I create videos?
Because I have found that when it comes to me wanting to learn a piece of software, a well-thought-out video is much easier for consuming the information. Being able to watch someone who knows what they are doing with a piece of software, enables a potential new user to follow along, recreate what they’ve just witnessed, and then go off on a tangent to deepen that understanding.
I have had this experience with Photoshop and Lightroom videos (prior to my divorce from Adobe in 2016), and with videos on davinci resolve.
That’s me.
And if it works for me, then I assume it probably works for others as well. And the stats on my channel tend to support that belief.
I agree that in a technique-oriented context (vs. just pure reference info) videos are better… and your’s are very good - Thanks!!
However, the one thing I miss with most videos is some kind of indexing / lookup capability. I remember on the job several years ago I was trying to learn a product called NAble (“en-able”) and the only tutorials they had were YouTube videos (we won’t go into the fact that he first half of every was a sales pitch for an already-purchased product. grrr…). I spent the vast majority of my time going from video to video, shuttling back and forth, trying to find where I heard .
Without an index, it can be time consuming to find stuff. That can be partially offset by a tight focus and limit on length. Maybe a good compromise would be either a companion list of topical links or a high-level reference PDF, etc.
Then again, all that takes effort from folks who are already doing this typically for free. So, no complaints, just food for thought.
I’m trying to include timecode index points on my videos moving forward, but again, it adds more time to the production workflow.
And I don’t always remember to do it!
You can create a website with an index and links to multiple youtube videos with the embedded timestamp. As you find more videos, you can add more links and keep it accurate.
If you do this, I suggest that you try to keep it organize by DT major release since the workflow / module options have change.
!! I cannot speak for a whole country and definitely cannot generalize for them simply because I myself is an Indian. I personally want to try changes in the DT code but that would be down the road and would require me to learn and experiment. However that is the beauty of opensource software.
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