Help videos for your application's users?

[bonustracks]

Has anyone here experimented with video help files? Do most users prefer video help over written documentation? Also, if you’ve done this type of thing before, what programs did you use to capture your desktop (Windows)?

[HighPlainsDrifter]

A video help file doesn't seem like the best method of helping the users. Perhaps video clips within text/HTML based help screens might be useful, like "Click Here to see a video about how to connect to a Windows computer from the Places menu", or whatever.

A video, would not be easily searchable. Plus, chances are fantastic that people can view text, less of a chance that your user will be able to actually watch and hear your video. Plus, videos take up lots of space.

To summarize, your idea is very interesting and would be a good thing (TM) under certain situations.

On another topic, for capturing video in Windows, there's a million apps that will do that. The only one that instantly comes to mind, from experience, is a version of Lotus that was on Windows 98... I'm pretty sure there's more lol :)