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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
No, I meant I did a survey on dt’s users to get an idea of how it is used and by whom.
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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.
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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! 
Much appreciated!
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.
This may help with fulltext navigation through a video:
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I prefer a written tutorial with screenshots too, to videos.
It is much quick to focus in what you need than having to see all the video with many repeated things you already know, and sometimes the part you are interested on is too short or you don’t see well what options is being selected.
I don’t like videos too much as a learning tool, except for some things that need a dynamic presentation.
But it is the tool everybody loves today.
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I try to be as far away as I can from them (YT and FB), but not easy.
Well I understand that making a video speaking while you show what you are doing is usually faster and more easy than writing down an explanation and showing the screen captures.
A more elaborated video may take quite a lot of time too.
Anyway, any kind of turorials are wellcome, we need them are people who make them does a valuable effort, thanks for it.
It would be great to have more of them in spanish for the las two versions of DT.
Captions generated by youtube are of help, but sometimes the translation is quite bad.
There are some opensource alternatives to youtube, I hope they will be more used in the future, now that youtube is getting really nasty with al that intrusive announcements.
The best way is to contribute. If you want written tutorials, take a video that you think would benefit and make a written tutorial!
We have the keys to publish on almost every site and contributions are welcome.
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This comment is about tutorials in general, not specifically darktable.
I like both video and written tutorials and appreciate the time and effort the authors have put in. In general I prefer videos when I’m learning a new piece of software or a complex task, but maybe that’s my senior’s brain finding it easier to follow. I like written tutorials with screenshots when I want instructions on how to perform a specific simple task or command.
In particular I’ve benefited from Andy Astbury’s video tutorials on RawTherapee and Mike Davies’ on Gimp.
A few months ago I needed to learn digiKam and OBS Studio from the beginning, and Kdenlive at a more advanced level. This was partly to make a video tutorial for a photography client on using digiKam to catalog the photo shoots I was doing for them. In particular it was helpful to watch current videos on OBS and Kdenlive as I needed an overall picture of how they worked rather than how to perform a specific task.
While searching for these tutorials I found that in general, there are more video tutorials online than written, so they tend to be more current. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to follow a written tutorial made for an earlier version of a piece of software.
BTW, I made the video tutorial on digiKam for the client because I couldn’t find one online that I thought would work for them. If anybody wants it I can send it to you.
I also made a video on using Hugin for stitching scanned film and artwork, using mosaic mode. This was for a workshop I did on using a DSLR/mirrorless camera for digitizing film. I made this because the written tutorial on the Hugin site was out of date and hard for me to follow. I can send this to anybody interested.
Bruce’s videos are exceptional. One thing he does is provide in the top left corner of the screen, a click and type indicator. My next suggestion is a not a Bruce or DT suggestion, but simply would e cool suggestion. So, if instead of just perform a left button click it would tell us where on the menu or which shortcut was performed and then list it as a history that could be reviewed. Even if a PIP of the DT history that could be sidelined would be awesome. Now I am not suggesting Bruce or others create this I just think if YT made this available to them or Python or, or it would marry video to the static display learners. It would also make pausing so much easier. Even if YT had multible bookmarkers I could set as I watched. So, I could jump to the tidbits that were important to me. All this is to say the problem is not Bruce’s but really YT’s…
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I think that would be a bit of a gong show…Just my opinion. The file would be polluted with a lot of clicks that were not direct actions in a module (drawing masks etc) that would not translate or perhaps you are asking for a sort of mouse click keyboard playback list or script that you could re-run??
I think if you have the xmp file and the source file…that might be a nice request…you can go module my module and analyse it…I think that sort of micro detail and logging every click and action would result in tunnel vision and might be hard to interpret…you can hover in the history and see what settings have been modified?? Perhaps begin able to capture that as a log??