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Step by step: making videos with Videoscribe

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In September I made a new video to introduce the Library in 60 seconds. It was designed to be played in short Induction talks, and to be embedded in various online guides. The whole thing took around 4 hours to do (albeit spread across a couple of days) and it turned out pretty well - before we go through the step-by-step process here's the video:


It was made using Videoscribe, and they just published their 'Favorite VideoScribe videos of 2019' which, it turns out not only has videos from the BBC but also from our Library! The video above being featured on their list has reminded me to complete this blog post, which has been in the Lib-Innovation drafts folder for a while...

Step 1: Script-writing 

Because we were also producing a longer virtual tour, I knew from the start this would be only one minute long. This was surprisingly non-limiting in the end: once you accept you can't go into detail on anything, it becomes quite easy to write a friendly voice-over that introduces a number of key points in quick succession. The purpose of the video was to provide an overview, help students understand the basics, and encourage them to ask for help. So a brief script was worked up with that in mind, and I shared it with a colleague for a second opinion, then with the narrators. 

I wanted Yorkshire voices for this introduction to a Yorkshire library, and I wanted people who were friendly and informal, and I wanted it to be a man and a women ideally. Happily my first choice voice-over artists (Sarah Peace from IT and Martin Philip from Academic Liaison) said yes when I asked them to do it! 


Step 2: Voice-over recording 


The hardest thing about recording narration is finding a suitable acoustic in which to record. Even small meeting rooms in our building seem to be echoey, and although the Linguistics Department does have an audio booth we can get access to, it wasn't available in our time frame. In the end we chose quite a big room that has enough in it to absorb any resonance, leaving us with an acceptable sound quality. 

I recorded my narrators on my own laptop using Audacity, a freely available audio-editing tool, and an entry-level Blue Snowball mic I use for webinars. It took 40 minutes to record both this script and the Virtual Tour script, and the main issue was making sure the narrators were close enough to the mic. 

Audacity is incredibly simple to use. You can zoom right in on the visual representation of the audio-waves and easily identify what talking and what is not - for example, in-breaths before a word. Breaths and pauses can be selected, highlighted, and deleted. For this reason, there was absolutely no need to aim for a perfect take of the narration. Each narrator took their time delivering their section, re-running any sentence they weren't happy with. It then took me perhaps 20 minutes to edit the audio into one seamless narration, and export it as an MP3 file to add to the video.
The audio for the voice-over, as displayed by Audacity


Step 3: Creating the video with Videoscribe 

The process of creating a video with this software is to add objects to the canvas (a little bit like you might with Prezi) and then decide how they are animated, and when. So for example you can just type text in and have a hand or pen 'write' the text at the speed of your choosing, or you can add photographs which can either be 'drawn' or pushed into frame by a hand, or just appear. You put all this together, add music and a voice over you if you wish, and you have a video.

I've tended to always build towards a final picture that includes everything the viewer has just seen - so you see each section as it's added, and then at the end you zoom out to see everything at once. But you don't have to use this approach - you can stay buried in the detail if that helps you tell your story.

The VideoScribe interface looks like this:


The main part of the screen displays everything that will appear in the video, but the boxes along the bottom are how you dictate when objects arrive, how they enter the video, and in which order.

Here's a closer shot of that:


All those icons - the phone, the thumbs up, the wifi symbol etc - are from VideoScribe itself. There's also some writing, and (in the middle) a screengrab of the library catalogue.

Absolutely key to a good VideoScribe video, in my experience, is the 'Set Camera to Current Position' button I've highlighted here:



This allows you to control what the camera sees, meaning you can have multiple objects in the frame at once. For example at the end of the video there's a big smiley face and the #UoYTips text added: by default the camera would zoom in so these filled the frame, meaning you could only really see them. But by setting the camera to the same position for the last three sections of the video, you get to see the entire library map, AND the smiley face / #UoYTips in the same shot.

The whole process of creating the video took around 2 hours: trust me, this is REALLY quick for making video content!

Step 4: Exporting to YouTube 

I exported two versions of the video: one directly to YouTube, and one as an MP4 file to embed directly into the Induction PowerPoint presentation me and my colleagues would be using throughout the first week of term. 

With the YouTube version there was probably around half an hour of faffing involved - writing the description, title, all the keywords, and so on, and editing the subtitles. YouTube's auto-generated subtitles are actually pretty good, but they contain no punctuation or capitalisation and sometimes get names or other words wrong - in screenshot below you can see it says 'you can get health and advice' which I had to edit to 'help and advice':



It's a relatively quick job and of course well worth doing to make sure your video is accessible. 

If you've watched the video above you'll have seen that the narration ends at least 10 seconds before the end - this is because I wanted space to link to another video (the more detailed virtual tour), a clickable thumbnail of which appears in the bottom left of the screen. This was achieved by inserting in YouTube itself, via the End Screens menu. As you can see below, the video itself is designed to receive the thumbnail in that exact position, with the arrow pointing to it. 


One final piece of admin was to create a custom Thumbnail for the Library Minute video itself. YouTube auto-generates three for you - normally none of them quite work as an encapsulation of the video, so you have to make your own (either from scratch or, more often in my case, just by taking a screenshot of the video at the best possible moment).



Step 5: Promotion

Even though the video is a piece of marketing, it still needed to be marketed... I saved a version for adding to Induction slides, and then created a slide in which it was embedded for everyone to add to their presentations.

We also tweeted it, put it on Instagram (where it did much less well than I expected, interestingly) and embedded it on key web pages such as our Info For New Students page.

And that's it! Videoscribe is a tool which we pay for on an annual basis - we don't often do this with so many great free tools available, but we feel it's worth it in this case. If you have any questions about the software or the video above, let us know in a comment... 

New to Twitter? Here's what you do

[If you're not already on Twitter, just give up and join. It's really worth it, and it's really NOT like it is often reported to be in the mainstream media. There's a big myth that twitter is just people saying 'this is what I had for lunch today' - it's not like that at all. Celebrities understandably get the bulk of the coverage when Twitter gets into the news - you have to understand that someone like Stephen Fry (or whoever) is followed by literally 1.8 million people; he can't possibly interact with all of them, so his twitter stream reads more like a monologue than a dialogue. But you (almost certainly) won't have that many followers, meaning you'll be able to use Twitter for the purpose for which it is intended: conversation. It's full of useful links, it can lead to all sorts of opportunities, it breaks the ice at conferences, and it adds colour to professional relationships.] A twitter bird holding a 'follow me' sign

Here 10 top tips I wish I'd known about Twitter from the start.

  • Put in a bio. You need a bio, don't leave it blank or just put in a town or your job title. Twitter works because it facilitates conversation - to converse with people generally you need to follow each other. What happens when someone new follows you is you get an email - so and so is now following you on twitter, here's some more information about them. Most people will click on this and read about this new follower, and perhaps check a few recent tweets before deciding whether to follow or not - it's a tough crowd, generally, because popular tweeters get so many followers that you have to stand out for them to take an interest in you; no one wants information overload. If you don't say who you are or give people anything to go on in your bio, chances are they won't follow you back, thus reducing the chances of the two of you conversing, thus reducing the value you're getting out of using Twitter. I don't believe in amassing followers for the sake of it, but of the 40 or so people who I follow but don't follow me back, four or five of them I wish would do so (I'm looking at you, Helene Blowers...). If that figure was really high, Twitter wouldn't be working so well for me. For an example of a good bio, check out Buffy Hamilton's twitter profile - fantastic! No wonder she has that many followers.
  • Use a headshot of yourself. Twitter is a more personal medium than a blog - I started off using the wikiman logo, but changed it because people want to contextualise what you're saying with a picture of your actual face. Even if you're shy, try and go with some kind of picture of yourself if you can...
  • Cannibalise the follow lists of people you like. So for example, if you are an Information Professional, you'll probably know of a few people on Twitter than you can start following right away. But also look at the people they follow and start following the most interesting looking of them, and then do the same again, and so on, till you've got a decent sized group of interesting people. (If you're an information professional, feel free to cannibalise mine - everyone I follow is awesome...)
  • Don't just follow the Queen Bee, follow the workers too. Many, many tweets are @ replies. This means they begin with @[Insert Person's Twitter name here] and are consequently only seen by people following both the tweeter and the person they are tweeting at. So you could miss fantastic conversations if you're only following one of the parties - they simply won't appear in your twitter stream. (64% of my tweets are @replies, according to TweetStats, meaning that the vast majority of my output is only seen by some of my followers.) Therefore, if you really like someone on Twitter, follow the people they interact with too, so you increase your chances of serendipitous interesting conversation overhearing. :)
  • Give of yourself, from the start. If Twitter ends up working for you, you'll end up being yourself. You'll end up sharing more than just work stuff, probably, and being closer to your true personality than you might imagine - more unguarded. You have to make up your own mind if you're happy to be unguarded online, and how unguarded you are going to be. But the point is, don't be shy and don't try and hide your personality - people want personality, they'll forgive quirks if they get more character from you (and therefore more value), and as I say if you're here for the long haul it'll happen eventually anyway. Just be yourself from the start.
  • Tweet links to your stuff. / Tweet links to other people's stuff. Twitter provides a large percentage of hits on this blog. If you blog with wordpress, use a plug-in like Twitoaster to auto-tweet links to your blog posts, and draw the twitter conversation into the comments section of your blog. But don't, whatever you do, just use Twitter to self-promote. People will suss you out and switch off pretty quickly. People will be interested in what you have to say if you tweet links to a broad range of useful, pertinent stuff.
  • ReTweet. Don't assume everyone else will have seen what you've seen. If something's really worth reading, ReTweet it so that your followers can all read it - they may not follow the person who originally said it, or they may not have been online when it was said. Plug people in to the good content. What you want to achieve overall is a blend of useful information, thoughts, links, character and responses to other tweets. Don't be afraid to jump into conversations, either - certain people I follwed for ages without them reciprocating, but as soon as I @ replied to one of their tweets they started following me too because I demonstrated some value to them; we've since gone on to chat all the time.
  • Don't ever criticise your employer. Twitter is personal  - but don't forget that unless you lock down your account, anyone can read it. There's nothing to be gained from venting your frustration at your institution via this medium - just resist the temptation! You never know who may end up reading it. Or who may end up not seeking you out to give you an opportunity later. Generally speaking, unless you are going to tweet anonymously, discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to criticism of all kinds - by all means give an opinion, but always run this test before you tweet something harsh about an individual: would I say this to their face?
  • Investigate clients . I must admit, I've found Twitter's homepage adequate for my needs. But many people use clients, that access Twitter but present the information in a better or different way - try Brizzly, or Tweetdeck (and you can sync those with Twitter on your phone, too).
  • Prune. Don't just follow everyone. Followers are not an end in themselves - don't just automatically follow everyone back because they've followed you. If you are to use Twitter at all it needs to WORK for you - you need to follow a manageable amount of people, or at the very least use lists to sort the essentials from the occasionally interestings. About once a month, go through the list of people you follow, and if any of them are no longer giving you value, unfollow them. It may seem brutal, but you really don't want to end up viewing Twitter as a chore because there's so much irrelevant stuff in your stream.

For more info on the nuts and bolts of it, check out Twitter's official guide.

Happy tweeting!

- thewikiman

UPDATE: since writing this, I've come across a lot of people ReTweeting a link as part of a reply to a person. So for example I might tweet "Check out this presentation [URL here]" and someone else wants to ReTweet it but does so like this: "@theREALwikiman really useful presentation [URL here]". If you reply to someone then the only people who can read the tweet are people who follow you AND the person you are replying to - in other words, no one new will see the Tweet. So - don't do that. Does that make sense?

That's the explanation; the rule is, if you want to draw people's attention to something, make sure there is something - literally ANY character except @ - before you include the name of the person who originally tweeted. So in the example above, the tweet should read "really useful presentation via @theREALwikiman [URL here]." That way, everyone who follows you will get the message. Got it? Good!

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