Making the Most of Your Instructional DVD's

One of the problems with an instructional DVD is trying to locate the exact information you are looking for.  You know you saw it, but where.  If you're lucky the DVD is divided into chapters and has a menu, but even so, what you're trying to find isn't always in the chapter that you thought it would most likely be in. 

Recently, I was torn between auditing another online class and purchasing a DVD covering the same material.  I ended up purchasing the DVD so I could watch the material over and over whenever I wanted to.  Yesterday, I spent about an hour watching about 10 minutes of my new DVD and then working on what I saw with Belle.  Then I compared what we did with what the guy in the DVD was doing.  I identified several spots where I got it wrong and went out and tried it again.

This morning, I was re-watching the DVD to see if there were still points I had overlooked.  I was about to get out my pen and some paper to make notes when it dawned on me, I could use Word for my notes and just switch back and forth from VLC media player to Word.  Then I had an absolute inspiration.  I could paste screen shots into the Word document and add notes later.  Here's an example:

Not only does this give me the important points of the DVD, it also provides me with where the information is located on the DVD.  (If I decide to print a hard copy, I would probably type out the words and eliminate the pictures to save ink.)  And of course, I'm not limited to just capturing the titles.  If there I'm having problems remembering how to do a certain move, I can take successive screen shots and save them in my Word doc.  Then I can load the document into my Samsung Galaxy Tab 5 and take it out with me when I practice.