I wrapped up Bradnor this week. I just had a few tweaks left in the code based on client feedback, and a few more to infrastructure - notably, sending deploy notifications from our deploy pipeline through to our error reporting tool.

With that done, the main job was handover. Part of that was to hand over various services to the client’s control; I always feel better knowing that the appropriate person ‘owns’ control of something, even if we’re at free or low-usage tiers.

More importantly, it meant documentation. I tidied up the READMEs lying around the place, and then wrote a long document called What We Did which synthesized the various discussions and interim documents into one clear document that could be referred to in future. I find it easiest to write this for an imaginary future developer coming to the project.

To do that, I assume relatively little specific technical knowledge. So I explain everything we’ve done that either deviates from norms, is domain-specific to the application and product, or that is our ‘configuration’ of existing tools. Beyond that, I link out to documents for open-source tools or products, rather than explaining them myself, but assume familiarity with the core language or framework being used.

That future developer is, of course, easy to imagine because I think about myself returning to a project after a long gap. It’s also there for the client, who is themselves technical: whilst they’ve been making decisions I’ve put to them, this is a reference document for them, too, so they can see how the things we’ve spoken about join up, and have a final ‘map’ of the infrastructure and code we’ve put together.

With the final pieces in place, I shipped the documentation, and the client seemed very pleased with it - and the project as a whole. A satisfying end to this phase of work, and perhaps we’ll work together on the project again in the future.

I got some feedback from the University of Leeds about the courses I wrote for them on Futurelearn. In general, they sounded very pleased: really exciting numbers of sign-ups, and good responses from learners in the comments threads. However, one ‘step’ of a particular course was causing a little confusion. I asked learners to skip over some stages of an external tutorial without quite clarifying why; many of them wanted to do the missing steps, or hadn’t quite worked out how to skip things. They asked me if I could make a short screencast clarifying what to do, and why.

So I spent a few hours this week back in my screencasting tools, making a short film to explain not just what to do, but why I thought this was a good idea.

How do I record screencasts at the moment? I record video using the “record area of screen” function built into Quicktime Player, with the audio from my webcam microphone alongside it. At the same time, I am recording my external condenser microphone into Logic Pro, with a small voice channel set up inside the DAW. I usually have a script or notes laid out on a table in front of me. Then, I hit record in Quicktime and in Logic, and just keep going until I have decent takes of everything I need.

Once that’s done, I fiddle with the voice channel in Logic, to get all the audio up to a nice level, and to remove any background noise. Careful application of the built-in compressor, and occasional Brusfri does the job here. Then, I bounce out the audio to a wav file.

To edit it, I open all the media up inside Hitfilm, and synchronise the bounced audio from Logic against the ‘guide’ audio from the webcam. Once those are synced, I can remove the webcam audio entirely. Then it’s just a case of walking through the script, chopping and editing, and occasionally deploying small video effects to zoom in on an area, or making small comps to manipulate areas of the screen.

My goal isn’t to get to something completely final. Leeds have an excellent video team who take this and make it sing, adding B-roll, tidying my edits or comps, and adding titles, stings, and transitions, in line with their branding. Instead, I’m trying to give them enough to work with, to make sure the script and technical video are watertight, and to make the intent of the film clear.

Once we’d approved my short script, it (as ever) worked out at around an hour’s work per minute of footage - I’m pretty swift at this now, but never seem to be able to break that rule of thumb!

Finally, I had a quick meeting with the Easington team about that work, and we arranged a kick off meeting for Monday 11th - Week 384.