Video tutorial showing code editing

Question

I'm working on a video tutorial (and accompanying text) for installing a program in Mac OS X (http://forum.codelain.com is where the program is downloaded). I'm almost done, but I've run into a problem that I don't really know how to show in the video.

For the most part, the videos are just showing the user what to click, which commands to type, etc. The last part of the tutorial involves editing C++ code to make it compile in OS X. The code changes are not very difficult, but are lengthy.

In the text I will just say "replace < code > with < new_code >" but I don't really know how to show this in a video. The only way I can come up with to do this would be to manually type out each line at a time, which would be long and if the video wasn't shown in high-def would probably cause users to have typos.

I've also thought about doing a diff and patch, but patching is broken in OS X, so that idea is out. I don't want to just supply the changed files and have them overwrite them, because then if the base program changes I have to change the files again and provide them to the user.

How best can I show the code editing in a video?

Answer 1

In the text I will just say "replace < code > with < new_code >" but I don't really know how to show this in a video.

Why not turn on highlight when searching if your code editor has one? Focus on the highlighted region and then say that this portion is going to be replaced by whatever. Otherwise you are pretty much left to do what you have described.

Another thing, since the changes are lengthy; why not break up the code in smaller functions and change a function at a time? (You may already be doing this, but I don't see this reflected in your post.)