Making Inspections more fun & productive

[mlparham]

Let's say you could wave a magic wand and have professionally edited inspection videos made from your the videos you are taking now with your cheap cameras.

What would that be worth to you and is that something that others would be interested in?

I already add short videos to my reports. For example, if a dishwasher is making an unusual noise I take a guick video so that the sound is recorded. I like that capability.

However I do not want to video the entire inspection but we must admit that it is coming. Probably as much to protect us as anything else.

[mlparham]

L

Yeah, Morgan, if you have notes. My photographs are my notes. I don't include all of them in the report, especially those with my funky hand signals or crazy angles telling me why I took the picture, but that's why I scroll the pictures to input my comments and photos at the same time.

I do it like Kurt. Input comments as I go down the film strip, adding the photo the the comment, rating it and then moving on to the next photo.

I also like the way I can set it to remove pictures, that have been put into the report, from the film strip.

I get it Erby. I have been working on doing the same thing. Making my pictures the notes. Once I get that system implemented I would likely scroll to a comment from my picture.

[scottb1978]

I agree with Marc. Proliferating videos would be wretched. Most inspectors can't form a sentence with a noun and verb; HI's putting together a tightly executed educational video is impossible to imagine.

I can imagine a lot of situations where a stand alone educational video would be extremely helpful, but the idea of HI's making them makes me shudder. Everyone thinks they can write because a computer program punches in sentences for them. Think what would ensue if there was a program that did the same thing with video clips.

Most folks just need a list of what's wrong with the items placed in context. Time is short, emotions are high, lots of stakeholders in the process (realtors, banks, lawyers, family), and lousy videos would complicate it. Making effective videos is hard; I can't think a software program could do it. It requires skill in scripting, storyboarding, knowledge of the craft, production capability.....lots of stuff. People go to school to learn this stuff.

I also believe that whoever comes out with something like that would find a receptive audience in the general HI population.

Which is the problem we have now.....software vendors tittilating HI's with sparkly bells and whistles report programs.

I wasn't suggesting that it would be done by software. There are highly skilled people from other countries with skills such as video editing.

I could provide a service where you upload your raw videos and these highly skilled people could construct the video professionally. You get the end result to share with your clients.

Would anyone be interested in trialling a service like this?

[kurt]

I'd probably not be interested. I occasionally take videos, but they're very short and only to illustrate some completely oddball thing, and they're so short (5 seconds maybe) that I wouldn't need an editor.

The time frames for doing inspections and delivering reports is so short, a video would just get in the way for me.

I could see using the service for a site I'm developing now. I'm building a library of short essays describing principles, materials, and methods of construction for very specific things I write about constantly. I write the inspection report, describe the issue and it's implications, give people a basic low down, then link to the site. It keeps the reports short and coherent, but allows me to go deep with folks that want to go deep.

It would work for some videos I'm considering.

[kurt]

Yeah, Morgan, if you have notes. My photographs are my notes. I don't include all of them in the report, especially those with my funky hand signals or crazy angles telling me why I took the picture, but that's why I scroll the pictures to input my comments and photos at the same time.

I do it like Kurt. Input comments as I go down the film strip, adding the photo the the comment, rating it and then moving on to the next photo.

I also like the way I can set it to remove pictures, that have been put into the report, from the film strip.

That sounds exactly like my system. I can yank them out of the film strip if I want. I think the only difference is I can change categories and "weights" on the fly. I can make a comment and change it's category and weight at any point. Can HomeGauge do that?

[Erby]

I don't "yank them out". I can set the film strip (one click) to either show all pictures in the folder (with the used pictures grayed out) or set it to automatically hide pictures that I've inserted in the report. Switch easily between either mode.

=====

Category = section of report, i.e. roof, kitchen, electrical, plumbing, HVAC etc.

Item = individual thing in that category

Weight or rating, yes (it's hidden in this screen shot but the ratings columns are to the right of the item, though it shows in the screen shot I posted above.) Click the box you want to select the rating for that item.

Category ?? Ain't that hard to copy and paste a comment from one item or section to another but why would you put a comment somewhere other than the category you already want it in. But I guess if it works for you.

See screenshot below:

One click in the left column changes the category.

One click in the top middle box changes the item. If I'm already in that category, I don't even have to take my hands off the keyboard, arrow keys scroll me from item to item.

Comment goes in the bottom middle box. I can either type a comment or insert a saved comment by clicking the little yellow pen thingy (blue arrow) which brings up the saved comments to scroll thru to select which one I want.

I can either drag or double click the picture, in the film strip, to get it to associate with the comment, edit (arrows, etc), click OK, picture is in that comment. I like that I don't have to be real accurate with the drag. I just grab and drag the picture close to the center of the screen and it associates with whatever item I have selected/highlighted, etc. In the screenshot, that would be "CONNECTED DEVICES AND FIXTURES".

HomeGauge actually lets you have TWO film strips, one of the pictures I took at the inspection and another called drawings where the pictures and drawings I use as an example are stored. One click switches from inspection to drawings film strips. (Of course, I've got so many drawings I have them categorized in folders so I also have to use a click to select which folder I want, then scroll and pick the picture I want.)

I don't use this often because, if there's a "drawing" I want with a particular comment, I've already associated it with the comment and it automatically loads with the comment as HomeGauge also lets me associate a particular picture/drawing, or even automatically attach a document to the report, with a comment.

Any time I insert that comment, the picture/drawing is right there with the comment or the document is attached to the report.

Like anything, there's a learning curve. but once you get it down, you've got it. Though a lot of people using software never bother learning how to make it work better, faster, etc for report writing. They use it out of the box and never customize much. I know one guy who still uses about three hours to write a HomeGauge report and mostly uses the canned comments that came with it.

Click to Enlarge

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[kurt]

Category ?? Ain't that hard to copy and paste a comment from one item or section to another but why would you put a comment somewhere other than the category you already want it in. But I guess if it works for you.

Because I can assign categories on the fly. Sometimes the sequence of pics is such, I might be in one category but want to put a particular pic in another category.

Remember that part about options that minimize actions? I don't have to cut or paste nuthin' from one place to another. I can move the place to the picture, or the picture to the place, and comments up, down, or sideways. My graphic library is searchable & organized in the DB; I don't need folders; search the graphic, click it, it inserts in the report.

Kinda like a wormhole....I can cross thru other dimensions with a button click....

[Erby]

Well, I gotta admit, you certainly are in other dimensions sometimes!

[:-monkeyd[:-monkeyd[:-monkeyd

I thought how could I better explain this. Ah, FastStone Capture Screen Recorder.

Best viewed full screen!

It's only 22 seconds long.

Might have to watch it a couple of times to get it.

[kurt]

That's slick. I like home gauge. If I'd not started using a variation of my software >20 years ago, I'd probably use HG.

Can the the SOP stuff and the list of comments be separated in HG in the report? IOW, comments only and descriptions listed elsewhere.

[Erby]

That's what I use the summary for. It's the short version of the report, with just the commentary and pictures.

However, the answer to your question is yes. You can rename, move, delete, add stuff as you see fit, other than on the customer and report info screens, but those are simple data collection forms. What you do with that data and how it appears on the report is up to you.

Think I'll stop on this thread now. I'm starting to sound like a salesman for HomeGauge.

Well hell, because FastStone Capture is a new toy for me, here's one more on the Styles and Materials selection.

Then, that's it. I'm out.

[Marc]

Yeah, If I understand Kurt correctly, he is indeed referring to another dimension of reporting software. One that doesn't require you to select the category up front but leaves it to the end.

The software I used for ten years requires up front selection of category and partitions your boilerplate among them. If you're at the end of the report editing session and you want to change the category of a particular finding, you can't. If you want to insert a particular boilerplate from a different category, you can't, at least not with a few strokes.

That's my gripe, not the only one but an important one.

Marc

[kurt]

That's how it works. I can make all the comments at one time if I wanted, and designate them later. Sorting and printing scripts is how it gets divvied out. Basic DB reporting stuff.

The main difference between my stuff and other stuff is image management....sorting, archiving, displaying in various formats.....telling the story with pictures. Words, of course, but pics as a primary storytelling tool.

My boilerplate and graphic library is a true library. I can store words and pictures together, or not, with subscripts to find stuff. The sorting mechanisms have allowed me to keep track of ridiculous amounts of dissimilar material, materials lists, quotes, videos, text, sounds, music, .pdf's, whatever.

The libraries would be good stand alone software apps.