Automated Screenshots

Sometimes it’s quite amazing to learn that small things can make a huge difference when you build a new product. When Videate was founded, the problem we set out to solve was immensely difficult. How do we automate the production of videos on every software release?

As more clients started to use the platform, they asked if Videate could solve another very painful and time-consuming activity:

What about screenshots?

When you update software, not only do the videos need to change, but the screenshots in the documentation may need to change as well. If you have ever written tech docs or help articles you know that you have to examine every file and determine if you should update the screenshots or not.

Videate can automatically grab screenshots. It makes the videos and can create permanent links that get updated on every software release. This means you no longer have to do this manually, i.e. we will build your screenshot library for you.

How does it work? There are two options.

1. You can add tags to your script instructing Videate to grab a screenshot at that point, or
2. We can set it up to do this automatically at specified time intervals.

We have a specific markup instruction for “grabbing” the shots (it creates a tag called “grab”) and of course it can be automatically found in your source scripts if you follow a similar convention.

If you provide an image name with the grab notation, we can automatically update permanent links, which means you don’t even have to edit your source documents for UI changes (you will need to review for additions and deletions just like you would for videos).

Following the perma-links we can deliver the images to your media library, eliminating one more step in the process. Videate will save you a lot of the time and get rid of this repetitive work you currently perform creating screenshots and updating docs and/or support portals.

Videate is all about automation. Our engine continues to learn with every new client and this is a great example of a highly requested feature that could be quickly implemented.

While some clients are initially a little skeptical about the quality of the spoken voice in our computer generated videos, after trying it out, not only are the videos high quality, but the business case is quite clear.

With the latest addition of the screen grab feature, the ROI just got even better!