I'm working on a product that's going to require in-house video content creation. This is way outside my wheelhouse since I've only really worked on user-generated content before. I know little to nothing about video production.
What's the fastest and cheapest way to go about creating high quality how-to videos? What kind of people do you need to find, etc?
As the old saying goes, pick any two (or sometimes just one)
I used to produce high quality video tutorials. I used "Screenflow" from Telestream. I had a professional quality Shure microphone and an audio mixer, as well as a USB sound card. Probably the most important component is your audio, much more so than video quality, so spend some money on good quality audio equipment.
I pre-planned my tutorials, recorded the tutorials and then edited them. For editing, I did most of it in Final Cut Pro, although I was eventually able to do it all in Screenflow. I spent a huge time editing - synching audio and video, recording parts where I messed up.
All told, for a 20 minute tutorial I would probably spend an hour planning, 40 minutes recording, 3 hours editing, and 2 or 3 hours encoding the video. The encoding part would probably go much faster on today's hardware, but the 2 or 3 hours editing was the result of many hours of learning - it was probably 8 or 9 hours to edit the first ones.
If you're recording screencasts, I wholeheartedly recommend screenflow. Without a doubt it's the best screencast software there is (not an ad, just a happy customer).