Is it normal to spend > 2 hours to produce 10-12 minutes of video content :) ?

[mhassanist]

Hello friends, 

I'm creating my second course on Udemy. I thought after my first course it will be a faster process but it seems I miss something.

Creating the presentation of the video (ppt) takes some time and I'm totally fine with that. 

My problem is when I start recording, I sometimes cancel the part/minute I just finished because of some mistakes in wording or noise or any other reason ( Like I could explain that better. Let's repeat it). I keep doing that throughout the process. Today I counted exactly 2 hours to get the video ready which is 12 minutes. This does not include video production/export time

Is this normal? Are there any best practices for that? What about you?

Thanks in advance.

[DYay2810]

Don't think so, I can usually record 4-5 hour content in a day - this is when I have all the lessons scripted, named and resources produced. Also, I don't do any editing while recording (I have been through the pain of recording a lecture then editing it :().

Hope it helps 🙂

[knihT]

You have the lessons scripted within the same day or beforehand? You teach IT stuff which probably doesn't need scripting?

[MartinCohen]

It all depends on how much editing is needed.

I once had a video lecture that needed a lot of editing and effects. It took me almost 2 whole days for 10 minutes of video.

Other video lessons I make need perhaps an hour for 10 minutes of video.

Anyway, for my latest course that I just published about 2 weeks ago, and which is 20 hours of video, I needed almost a year to produce it (and I worked almost fulltime on it).

I guess that I just don't work so quick as others (or I'm too perfectionist...).

[RandyMinder]

I have about 13 courses on Udemy. My first couple took a long time to record and edit because I really didn't know what I was doing. Now I can knock out courses pretty quickly, after I've done the research I need to do.

There are two reasons for this. The first is because I'm much better at doing this than I was early on. The second is that I've stopped trying to be perfect. When you think about it, you're going to earn somewhere between $.80 and $5.00 for each course sold (if you're an average Udemy instructor). It's simply not worth putting in the extra effort to try and be perfect. Your time is much better spend creating new courses than making existing ones as good as you can possibly make it. 

[Sandra11Percent]

I also expected on my second course for it to go much faster, but I got disappointed. Now, creating my sixth one, I realize that number 2 and 3 were still very much part of the learning process. With the first one, I had no idea what I was doing. Second one I thought I did, but it was still a lot of experimenting and learning. I used to film every part at least 2-3 times until I was happy with it. Now I can do most in 1-2 takes. So you will probably get faster, but the learning process is slower than we would like to.

And it still takes me A LOT of time to create a course. My mindset is that if the course is of good quality, it will stay fresh for a longer time, and you will have less job fixing things you are not happy with later. 

But here are a few things that helped me speed up the process a little bit:

Invest some time in setting everything up

Creating a good setup usually saves me a lot of time later on. I usually spend around two whole days just to set everything up, camera, lights, microphone and run a lot of tests until I am completely happy with the whole setup. My courses are usually a few hours long and I don't want to realize in the middle of filming that I'm not happy with something. Happened to me once and yes, I ended up refilming that whole part 🙂

Write a script

I'm not sure what's your process, but having a script with the exact text you are going to deliver helps a lot. Just watch out you don't end up just reading it. I usually reread a paragraph once or twice and then try to deliver it as if I was explaining it from my head. It helps me sound more natural but at the same time knowing exactly what I'm about to say makes it go more smoothly. But then again, having to write a script is also very time-consuming.

Find the fine line between good enough and too perfectionist

This is something that took me a lot of time to learn. Which things to just let go. Which things to polish even more. It's something you figure out with time and through your student feedback. I think it also depends a lot on your final goal. Do you just want to publish a few courses to get a little bit of money on the side? Or do you want to create high-quality courses as a full-time job? This will dictate how much time you invest in polishing all the little details.

Get some honest feedback

When I get stuck, I ask someone who I can trust to give me some feedback on the things I'm struggling with. Is this explained well or am I overcomplicating it? Can you really hear this noise in the background or is it just me? Are these visuals too bright or is it just my screen? Something the thing you've been overthinking can be solved in a second with a second opinion.

So in my opinion, no, >2 hours for 10-12 minutes is not too much, and yes, you will get faster in time, it will probably just take a little longer to get there than you expected 🙂