Noob Tutoring?

LightningCountX · Post by **LightningCountX** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 10:22 pm

I would agree on a collumn as well. I just hope that phade would aprove of it, it get it done asap

dbzrkyyh · Post by **dbzrkyyh** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 1:49 am

hymm... sorry i cant totaly agree here . i think that they should figure out the basics of editing them selves and lear from there mistakes . but obviously somethings cant be figured out that simple , and when that comes along , refer to the guides . Also i dont know how smart alot of the beginners to editing are , butthe majority of them start with wmm witch i found pretty simple to figure out in like a day or so lol . any ways like i said the basics of editing is something they need to find out by them selves , but technical qeustions , such as codec prob's , playback problems , etc . those types of things are kinda hard to find and it is easier to just talk to some one to help u on aim or something . lol ... so im realy sorta in between here .

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 9:44 am

How about a FAQ?

SQ · Post by SQ » Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:22 am

Hey, sorry for resurrecting this thread. >>

Anyway, we have an FAQ, it's just that nobody ever updates it. I mean, seriously. I go to the FAQ sometimes and it's just sad.

And tutoring I think is a great idea... Well, not so much tutoring as sort of a customer service thing. If somebody has a question, you can answer it right away instead of waiting on the forum where sometimes you don't even get a response. Kind of a counselor, I guess.

I mean, when I first started editing, I looked through literally ALL the guides, and reread AD and Ermac's guide about five times. It's not just "kinda" technical, it's really technical. I had basically no idea what I was doing, regardless how many times I read the guide.

Anyway, yes the guides are there, but we don't have any 'simple' guides. Like, How to use Premiere, for instance. Sure a ton of people download Premiere instead of buy it, but why not take advantage of that instead of let them pump out more crap videos for local disk space? Heck, they could be the next koop or something.

With all my reading of the guides(and trust me, I wanted to learn how to do this the right way) I did not know that a rubberband even EXISTED until it came up in conversation. How could I go to the forums and ask about that if I didn't know it existed? When I wanted a fade, I used the special effects fade.
When I wanted a transparency, I made a grey MSpaint image and used Image matte. It seemed simple enough to me.

So I'm all for the tutoring. Just to teach them the basics, and any random questions that come along. I'm also all for beta testing every step of the way. Everyone complains about betas being put on the donut. Well, if you have your own personal 'tutor' you won't need a host, you could just file transfer it.

Hell, look at SnhKnives' first video. He knew basics, but he wanted to make sure everything was on qeue. You can't do that by putting it on a forum and getting correct information. You just can't. And plus you need a host.

Every thirty seconds or so of his video, I was there beta testing, telling him what I thought didn't look right, or what was 'wrong', and he took it from there. Ask SnhKnives-- he will tell you that if it wasn't for my help, he'd pobably still be trying to make that video, and in the end it would probably have sucked.

So, yeah, for the 15th time, I say tutoring is a good idea.

)v(ajin Koji · Post by **)v(ajin Koji** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:06 pm

Sorry, but I just do not agree with a personal tutor. True, I got some help from my fellow studio members-but that is a totally different thing because they help out of friendship and try their best to help for that reason.

I try my best to work out any problems on my own and for that I like my AMVs even more, the only time I can remember using the forums for advice is when Premiere completey crashed and I couldn't use it-I got lots of help (none of which helped: it's still broken

but at least he thought was there) and there was no spam exept for an Isreali who told everyone else to not help me and fuck off; he was ignored.

Do it yourself.

mckeed · Post by **mckeed** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:57 pm

If you really want this to happen there is nothing stopping you from doing it now. Create a thread in one of the help forums and solicit people who are willing to tutor random people. Then just repost a nice list and ask the mods to lock it and sticky it so that people can look at it and then use the list to send PM's to these people asking for help. See how many people are willing to help out. That will give you a real indication of which people support this. The only danger I see are people who think they know what they are doing but don't quite have the grasp on the knowledge they need to be an effective tutor. Sometimes those people can do more harm than good in my experience. As these new editors have all these notions in their head which are misleading and incorrect. I came across an editor who didn't like working in 24fps because it "slowed his footage down." When he was just converting the footage wrong. Just my thoughts. but I would go ahead and try it. I would suggest trying to setup "competencies" in each major area as many people don't know "everything" about video but may know a whole lot about using a specific program or how compression works. Examples to help you get started are vegas, premire, how codecs work, encoding, avisynth, deinterlacing, Timing, use of effects, etc. I suggest giving these categories a lot of thought to make sure you know it all. Go through the AD and ErMaC's guides and see what kinds of categories they use and go from there.

)v(ajin Koji · Post by **)v(ajin Koji** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 2:13 pm

mckeed wrote:Then just repost a nice list and ask the mods to lock it and sticky it so that people can look at it and then use the list to send PM's to these people asking for help.

As if that would happen

mckeed · Post by **mckeed** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 3:57 pm

If they will make sticky Izumi's Trailer challange for awhile, they will sticky this. The mods aren't evil people. If they see that there is interest and that people are willing to be contacted they will sticky it until it proves itself not contributing to anything, then it will be un-stickyed. It would certainly cut down on stupid posts in those respective forums. Just try it and see. You might be surprised.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:07 pm

mckeed wrote:The only danger I see are people who think they know what they are doing but don't quite have the grasp on the knowledge they need to be an effective tutor. Sometimes those people can do more harm than good in my experience.

Ooh, now that's a good point...I'd like to throw some of my thoughts in on it, if you don't mind.

This is part of the problem with tutoring people who just "want to be taught" without verifying information on their own. In my experience, most people are like this; it's very difficult to find students who are real students.

I believe that it is safe to say that most (MOST, this may not imply "you") people who would be interested in a tutoring program such as this do not fall into the category of "real" students. I think that a program such as this will result in nothing more than half-truths and blatant misinformation being spread around, which is never a good thing.

mckeed · Post by **mckeed** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 4:18 pm

trythil wrote: This is part of the problem with tutoring people who just "want to be taught" without verifying information on their own. In my experience, most people are like this; it's very difficult to find students who are real students.

I believe that it is safe to say that most (MOST, this may not imply "you") people who would be interested in a tutoring program such as this do not fall into the category of "real" students. I think that a program such as this will result in nothing more than half-truths and blatant misinformation being spread around, which is never a good thing.

I agree with your evaluation, I personally are not in favor of this for the reasons i mentioned above and your comments here. That being said though, I think that they won't be happy until they try doing it and see all the problems that will come up that they don't know the answers to. The people who want the help seem to be the ones in favor of the idea. I think they will be surprised at the non-response they get from such a call for tutors. If it succeds then that would be great. Less clueless posts and the average technical literacy would go up. If they go about it in the wrong way its sure to fail, but if they at least have a good foundation to start it on, it has a better chance of working. I know I am not going to offer to help someone random who PM's me out of the blue. I am however apt to help people who I know and have developed a understanding with. Big difference. I think many people would abuse this tutor system to get fast help.