In questo articolo
Over the years, at Banana.ch, we have developed an internal tool called Quick Tutorials, designed to create professional video tutorials through a developer-inspired, continuous improvement approach. This method enables our team to produce clear and effective tutorials quickly and to keep them constantly updated as the software evolves and user needs change.
With Quick Tutorials, we have already created and maintained hundreds of presentation and tutorial videos in multiple languages. These have been very well received by our users and have helped significantly reduce support requests. We are also experimenting with reusing the same structured content to generate documentation for AI assistant tools, and we see great potential in this combination of video and intelligent documentation.
To understand whether other organizations might benefit from this solution, we have decided to make it available in the same form we use internally. It already works well, though it is currently best suited for technically experienced users. If you are interested, we invite you to get in touch with us.
Why a new video tutorial tool?
At Banana.ch, we realized that creating a good video tutorial is not a one-time effort—it’s a process that improves step by step, just like software development. However, the tools we found on the market did not fit this workflow. Most were designed for artistic video editing, required specific technical skills, and were entirely cloud based, making them slow and difficult to integrate into our development environment.
We wanted something that followed the logic of software development: a structured, data-driven tool that works locally, supports collaboration, integrates with Git, and allows multilingual content management.
Since nothing suitable existed, we decided to build our own solution. Starting from the C++ code of Banana Accounting, we created a new application—Quick Tutorials—that uses the same powerful table-based structure. It might seem unusual to use accounting software to produce videos, but the principle is similar: entering structured data to generate a precise result. Instead of producing a financial report, Quick Tutorials produces a video tutorial.
Each video is described using tables that define scenes, texts, translations, and visual styles. This structure allows for clear organization, easy updates, and full control over every element. It also makes multilingual production simple and consistent, with all versions managed from the same source data.
The "Build Video"
Quick Tutorials works like a blend of a programming environment and an animation tool. You define your video using tables: the sequence of scenes, associated images, titles, subtitles, and the text to be spoken. You can also include simple visual effects such as arrows, boxes, highlights, or numbered steps to guide the viewer’s attention.
When everything is ready, you press “Build.” The system automatically generates the video in the language and voice you choose.
It creates the narration using AI, eliminating the need for manual recording. You can adjust pitch, tone, and style to achieve a natural, professional result.
It adds titles, subtitles, and effects, automatically synchronizing each scene with the narration’s duration.
Finally, it combines everything into a complete, ready-to-use video, with an index and transcript.
Because all files are local, the build process is extremely fast. You can immediately review the result, make adjustments, and rebuild—just like compiling code. This iterative process makes it easy to refine the tutorial and respond quickly to feedback.
Advantages of the solution
One of the main strengths of Quick Tutorials is its multilingual capability. The tool can automatically generate speech, subtitles, and texts in different languages while adapting the timing of each scene to match the spoken text. There is no need to shorten or simplify translations—the video naturally adjusts, resulting in accurate and fluent content for every language.
Capturing images is often the most time-consuming step in video creation. Repeating it for each language is impractical, especially when updates are frequent. Quick Tutorials solves this by reusing the same images while automatically adding translated texts and effects, giving the impression of a fully localized video without re-recording visuals.
Because software and procedures change regularly, tutorials can quickly become outdated. With Quick Tutorials, those who know the process can directly edit and rebuild the video, ensuring that all materials remain correct and relevant.
In addition, the same structured data can be used to automatically generate PDF Tutorials—documents that include an image of each scene and its corresponding text. These PDFs are ideal for study and reference and can also be used by AI assistants such as ChatGPT to provide quick, context-based answers to user questions.
Quick Tutorials does not aim to replace creative video editing platforms. Instead, it focuses on doing one thing extremely well: creating, updating, and translating instructional videos quickly and consistently. For teams that need to maintain accurate and multilingual learning materials, it is an efficient, developer-friendly solution truly worth exploring.
How It Works
Creating a Video Tutorial for a Desktop Application.
- Capture Screenshots.
Begin by capturing screenshots of the desktop application and saving them to a directory (recommended size: 1920x1080). - Fill in the Clip Table,
Enter all necessary information to create a video:- Select the image to be used.
- Apply effects to the image, such as highlighting a section, adding arrows, or circles.
- Choose the text and voice style for the speech.
- Input the text for titles and/or text-to-speech.
- Translate the text into other languages as needed.
- Build the Video.
On executing the build video command, the program performs the following tasks based on the specified language:- Adds effects, titles, and subtitles to the images.
- Generates speech files using internal or Microsoft or Google voices, as selected.
- Creates a video sequence for each image. The duration of each sequence matches the length of the speech or a duration you specify.
- Final Video Compilation.
The final video is created by combining all the video sequences.
How it works
Assuming you are creating a video tutorial for a desktop application.
- You capture screen shots and save to a directory (size 1920x1080).
- In the Clip table you enter all the information needed to create a video:
- The image to be used.
- Create effects on the image. Like highlighting a part of image, adding an arrow or a circle.
- The text and voice style to use.
- The text to be used for titles and/or for the text to speech.
- The text translated to other languages.
- You give the build video command and the program, based on the language you specify:
- It add effects, titles and subtitles to the images.
- It generates the speech files using the Microsoft or Google voices you choose.
- For each images it create a video sequence.
The duration of the sequence is the duration of the speech, or one you specify. . - A final video is crated by putting together all video sequences.
Video tutorial of the Quick Tutorials application
Create video from images, with speech, subtitles and text decorations.
- Watch the video tutorial (03:13).
The video has been created with the Tutorial Maker Application. - Watch the video tutorial in French (text has been automatically translated).
Here is the full project and files on github.com.
For tech-savvy users
The Quick Tutorials application offers advanced features specifically tailored for tech-savvy users.
Quick Tutorials is currently available in the Dev-Channel version and has been extended to a select group of partners. You're welcome to try it out; however, please note that it is not a fully supported product, and it requires the installation of additional components. Its features are also subject to change at any time.
Currently in its alpha phase, the application has been fine-tuned for internal use. It requires a specific setup and is still in the early stages of implementing error handling. Moreover, the interface is quite raw, and all messages are in English only. As such, it is currently best suited for tech-savvy and technically skilled users.
Please note that the structure and format of the data may change over time, and we may not always provide tools for migrating to new versions. Terms of use and pricing are also subject to change. We reserve the right to modify technical content, availability, conditions, and pricing at any time without prior notice.
We invite you to share your experience using the application and greatly value any feedback or suggestions you may have.