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I'm currently creating a helpfiles topic which will be integrated into a new application. Each of the processes (approximately 50) is available in its own drop down text hotspot.

The drop down hotspot contains step-by-step instructions and we plan to include a short video (3 minutes) for many of the processes within the drop down as well.

My question is will this amount of MP4 videos slow down the help files and make them slow to load or navigate?

Does anyone have any advice in terms of how I can mitigate any potential issues... Should I change the videos so they are not set to automatically play etc?

Many Thanks,
Louis

LouisWilkinson1980 wrote:I'm currently creating a helpfiles topic which will be integrated into a new application. Each of the processes (approximately 50) is available in its own drop down text hotspot.

The drop down hotspot contains step-by-step instructions and we plan to include a short video (3 minutes) for many of the processes within the drop down as well.

My question is will this amount of MP4 videos slow down the help files and make them slow to load or navigate?

Does anyone have any advice in terms of how I can mitigate any potential issues... Should I change the videos so they are not set to automatically play etc?

Many Thanks,
Louis

You should definitely not set them to auto play if either:
- you have multiple videos in a topic
- the videos are in a drop down

Technically it should be ok to have 50 videos in a topic, but isn't it quite a lot of content to put in a single topic?
I think it's something you need to test though.

I don't know about the technical issues, but from a purely administrative point of view, 50 videos will create a lot of maintenance work for future releases. All it needs is one widget adding to the UI, and you have to record the whole lot again. If you've not produced videos before, make sure you plan for this.

I suppose you could make a decision not to update the videos, and put a caveat in your help: "The UI may look different in your version of the product."

I was asked by a project manager to re-record 80 of his own rough-and-ready videos as product-quality ones. I pushed back, as our department had nowhere near enough resources to maintain them. I got one 25-minute video done. One release later, it was out of date, and it has stayed that way. The same is true of videos made by colleagues.

Think of the overhead involved in maintaining screen shots, and cube it. Or else make it understood to product managers and end users that they will be once-only artefacts.

None of this is to deny that videos are useful, but to maintain them you need a tech comms department that is better-resourced than any I have ever worked in