how necessary are tutorials/help files, really? can they be briefer?

Hi -

From a workload standpoint, it seems that you guys put a ton of work into the help files/videos for your projects, that would be better spent creating new projects, vs detailed help stuff. For example I’ve never had to refer to a single tutorial for any of the hundreds of projects I’ve bought here, since I know how to use ae.

I realize some newbies to ae may need help with basics, but since your time is all limited, I’d personally rather see you spend it creating new projects, versus spending so much time on help files/videos. It would be interesting to see how other buyers feel about it… there’s probably 5-10% at most that even need help/tutorial files, and the rest of us don’t need them at all.

Kind of like video games. I’ve played video games since 1976, atari 2600 days and still play games to this day (often for motivation for great graphics design btw), and I’ve read maybe 15 manuals out of hundreds of games… who needs it?

What does everyone think? I believe some very brief instructional stuff may be helpful in a pdf file, like a screencap showing “click this to change text, click that to change color”, but really, if people are buying ae templates they should be expected to know how to use the program, and your templates here are all “beyond easy” to use. I don’t need to pick-whip and camera rotate stuff etc, it’s all very easy.

Would it be worth asking buyers, “hey do you guys need a lot of tutorial stuff, or would you rather see the designers focus their energy on great new projects instead?”....?

just wondering,

-k

Maybe there should be a general tutorial, here on VH, on how to do basic things changing text, images, most common stuff…

It hate me to do tutorials btw

baf2681 said
Its up to the Author. Keep in mind not all buys have a lot of knowledge about Ae.

Yea, I have that in mind always, so for almost every tutorial at the end, I explain how to render out project in different sizes.

I’m spending ~1-2 hours to capture the most important manipulations (how to import stuff in placeholders or how to use control layers if they exists), and that’s all.

If client wants to make more complex changes or don’t understand smth, I’m online ~14hrs a day

Mocarg said
I would love if Videohive made some PDF Help template for us authors to use…

My help files are really simple and easy. Just a simple plain *.txt.

Example:

Hey! Welcome to my new file! It’s pretty simple to edit just follow these steps:

Edit text: -Go to “Project Panel” -Go to “Edit” folder -Open up “Intro Text” folder -Open up each composition and edit text

Edit videos/images: -Go to “Project Panel” -Go to “Edit” folder -Open up “Images” folder -Open up each composition and import your footage below the layers

Render: -Open up “_Final 720p” and render it out!

Nothing fancy…

-m.

Same here. Just a simple .txt file with a short description, general editing info and rendering tips.
I’ve noticed that many buyers ask questions that are already answered in the help file. Makes me wonder what % of them actually read through it.

Purchased a project recently with only comments left inside AE, giving a brief description of what each folder and some layers consisted of and did.

Was so much easier to understand without having to resort to a seperate tutorial/screen.

I prefer making video tuts. So much faster and easier than writing pdf’s or txt’s. It takes me max 30 mins per project. Text and video customization is the main thing I am talking about. I never go down to “this layers is for this, that layer does that..” `just the important stuff for basic customization. This is not a school after all..

-inlife