We've designed a remote editing process that you allows the Education Technology Office to provide editing services for your self-captured video content. The goal of this project is to offer quick turnaround for videos; to accomplish this, we are keeping the video editing light (think trimming, cutting, combining tracks, and graphical emphasis but not a complete re-design and enhancement of your materials). We do this by spending time during planning to ensure you are capturing high quality content that needs very little editing upon completion.
What does the process look like?
- Schedule an initial project consultation
- Define your project details
- Review support documentation and project templates
- Select (and test) your hardware and software set up
- Approve the design template for your project
- Create your first video
- Send for editing
- Review editing
- Save and/or share the videos
1. Schedule an initial project consultation
This meeting will allow us to learn more about your project, your time line and other constraints, and to ensure that we can deliver the type of content that you are looking for within those constraints. If you'd like to schedule an initial project consultation, please email [email protected]. This meeting is summarized by a project brief that is shared to all team members (see example project brief).
1.1. Initial Consult Questionnaire
During the consultation, you'll be asked a series of questions that will help us scope your project. This helps us ensure that we are allocating enough resources to ensure that your project is completed as per the mutually decided upon timeline. You can review the questionnaire before your consultation by reviewing the below file.
2. Define your project details
The intial consultation meetings usually leave instructors (and their teaching teams) with lots of homework in terms of making some decisions about their project. When you are ready to begin the project, you will submit this Remote Video Production webform.
3. Review support documentation and project templates
When we begin your project, the EdTech team creates a shared project folder where we store helpful resources and templates for use in the project. As we build files for your project, we share them centrally to ensure easy (but controlled) access to the production team.
Before you begin recording, you'll prepare for content production and communication with the EdTech Team:
- Making strong video content (see Best practices for creating instructional content)
- Sharing your project scope to editing team via a list of planned videos (see Video Tracker template)
- Communicating your requested edits clearly and concisely (see a "fake" edit request example) and strategies to make editing your video easier)
4. Select (and test) your hardware and software set up
This step usually involves a 1-1 training session (or sessions) where we walk through what tools you will be using to capture content and ensure that you're all ready to go. Each set up is a bit different and all set ups require more testing than you think.
4.1. Tips to get you started:
- Use TechSmith SnagIt to screen capture your content - it's institutionally licensed! (See "Get TechSmith SnagIt" for download instructions).
- If you're looking for something a little bit more robust in terms of editing, consider the "big sister" of Techsmith SnagIt, Techsmith Camtasia. While not licensed (see the pricing), there is educational pricing and it's an excellent entry tool for editing.
- Review our hardware and software recommendations in more detail by visiting our support guides.
Make sure you do the "10 second test"! Before you begin your recording sessions, always do a quick 10-30s status test. Set up, record, and play back your short recording to make sure the region is capturing correctly, your audio is being recorded, and to flag any other set up issues.
5. Approve the design template for your project
Concurrently with your testing, set up and experimentation, the EdTech team will be working to develop a design template that will be used as the base of your video's visual content. This is usually a PowerPoint or Keynote template file, but could also be other files that you use to add consistency, style, and focus to your videos. The design decisions are summarized in a project style guide (see an example project style guide).
6. Create your first video
Creating (and finishing) your first video will take 20x longer than any other video that you make. Creating a recording routine takes time and practice as well as the right technical settings.
6.1. Tips to get you started:
- If you're using Techsmith SnagIt, review our guide on how to set up Techsmith SnagIt for high quality capture, easier editing, and other tips to help make video recording a bit easier.
- Review our strategies on how to optimize your recording for quick and professional editing (see "Strategies to make editing your video easier").
- Take detailed editing notes while you are recording - don't leave it until the end! You can hit pause as often as needed, so we recommend making notes on your video's Editing Request document, in real time, as you are recording your video.
7. Send for editing
After you've recorded a video, you'll upload that to a shared storage space. Along with the video, you'll include an editing notes document; this document includes the type of edit, the time code of the edit, and any notes that you'd like to pass to the editing team. To facilitate this process, we use two main organization documents:
- Video Tracking Spreadsheet - This is an overview document that provides a bird's eye view into your project. All your content is listed and organized. It makes it very easy to see progress and who is working on which part of the process.
- Video Editing Requests - This is a granular document that details request for each video. It relies on time coding to let the editing team quickly and easily find and complete your requests.
7.1. Tips to get you started
- You are likely about to make quite a few videos. Make sure that you have access to your project's video tracking spreadsheet (which details all your content, it's status, who is doing what and when, and the final URLs for your videos).
- Create one Edit Request sheet per unit. Make sure that the title of the video/file matches the title that was entered on the video tracking spreadsheet.
8. Review editing
We're human, so you're going to want to confirm that the edits that we made are what you were expecting. While we do not have time for multiple iterations of editing, we do include one round to confirm that we've implemented your requests as intended.
8.1. Tips to get you started
- Review the edit request notes. There is a column on the spreadsheet called "ETO Clarification Notes." We'll use this to clarify any questions that we had during editing.
- Review the video itself. There is a column on the Video Tracking and Status spreadsheet "URL for SME Review" that you can use to view the video.
9. Save and/or share the videos
Once you're happy with the final video, you'll want to upload them to a streaming service. We recommend Microsoft Stream, as it provides an option to auto-caption, it's available globally (that we know of), and you can formative quizzes into your videos (using Microsoft Forms).
9.1. Tips to get you started
- How to upload videos to Microsoft Stream
- How to add quizzes to Microsoft Stream videos