Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Alex Cutadine and I'm a Multimedia Specialist with the University of Kentucky's Office of E-Learning. We have recently completed our first Coursera MOOC and are in the process of developing additional online courses. I do come from a background in media production, but tools are becoming increasingly accessible to people with varying skill levels and budgets. Today I want to walk you through a typical production process and outline some options you have and things you will want to consider as you develop your media assets. Whether you are working solo or in a team, there are some items you will want to determine in the beginning of your process. The first of these is a deadline, which will allow you to set some limits on the scale of your production while giving you and your team members a basic idea of how much time they will need to commit to the project. Setting milestone dates will help you hold people accountable while identifying potential problems that may delay the launch of your course. You will need to evaluate your available resources before venturing too far into the production process. These include equipment and locations where you record or work, but oftentimes the largest factor is people's time. Identifying available assets early will allow you to either scale your production accordingly or to secure additional resources if needed. A positive thing is that production options are continually becoming more numerous while the associated costs are decreasing. Modern hardware has been dropping in price, becoming more accessible from both the cost perspective and the technical knowledge that is needed to operate the equipment. It is possible to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single camera, but an iPad or web camera also vary of capable cameras that are a fraction of the cost. Today there are many mediums you can use to convey your message, and each will have unique attributes. A simple screen recording with a voiceover may be suitable to present your material, or you may risk to record a live presentation that you are already going to make. You could record in various settings like a studio, classroom, outdoors, or at your desk. You may wish to utilize services like Skype, Google Hangouts, and you can perform interviews or add interactive course content. Each course is going to be a little different, so I would encourage you to start with an ideal concept of how you would like to convey your message, then work with your team or within your personal constraints to determine the most effective way to reach those goals. You will likely make some concessions along the way, but it will open up the opportunity to get the most from your resources. When you have a good idea about the scope of your project, you can outline a workflow to make the production process progress efficiently. You will have a large amount of content, and you may be working with many other people in the process of creating your message. Identify who is responsible for creating different aspects of the content and structure your scheduling to allow multiple people to be working concurrently. This may involve segmenting the process by modules or week-to-week, and using an example from our advanced chemistry MOOC, our instructors would construct their presentation, then record lectures and supplemental videos in batches. After the recording, they would develop practice problems to include while continuing to develop PowerPoint slides for subsequent lectures. As the media specialist, I would process the recordings and make any necessary tweaks to ensure audio and visual consistency before uploading the videos to the Coursera platform. When a video was finalized, I would inform an intern who was responsible for captioning. Our course designer would then update the MOOC webpages with relevant links to videos, PDFs, and transcripts. Along the way, we would meet as a team to discuss the workflow and scheduling. We would identify any outstanding problems and evaluate our MOOC site to ensure the pages were visually intuitive with logical navigation. All of these steps were managed with a shared Google spreadsheet where we could label the state of each lesson as well as add project notes. Ultimately, this process allowed each team member to keep a steady amount of work in their queue, which helped us to achieve our overall project deadlines. Once you have laid the foundation for your overall project, you can start the pre-production process. Depending on the format you are recording, this can vary greatly. One of the goals during pre-production is to make sure that time is used effectively. As more people are added to your production, the importance of good time management increases. Some people are natural presenters, but most individuals will need to review their content or script multiple times before a recording. This will allow you to practice your delivery and appear more natural to your audience, but it will hopefully reduce the amount of retakes needed. For a simple screen recording, the pre-production is limited, but you still want to make sure your PowerPoint and other assets are free from typos and that you are comfortable with the material. You have more flexibility to pause or edit screen recordings than other types of recordings, but a single read-through before the actual recording could benefit you greatly. You may want to spend some time with the recording equipment so that you are able to make a high-quality product while not being distracted by the technical difficulties. For demonstrations and classroom settings, you could be working with a video crew or it could be shot by an individual. Outlining requirements prior to recording will help you or your crew prepare the cameras, lights, microphones, as well as know how everything will need to be positioned. Even if you are doing a production solo, it is important to make an equipment checklist to keep yourself organized. It will also help you identify things like batteries, recording media, and cabling that could be easy to overlook. A studio production can be very similar to a field production, but most equipment stays in place. It is still important to discuss the production process to help people with scheduling who are assisting you. With proper preparation, a studio can be ready as soon as you arrive, but this is contingent on relaying appropriate information prior to the shoot. During the production is when all of the prep work we have been talking about really begins to pay off. Whether you are working with a production crew or on your own, the goal is still the same to make everything look and sound as good as possible while taking the least amount of time to record. Let's quickly go over some recording basics that can greatly improve your final product. Most recordings will have some form of audio. While the way you capture your audio may vary greatly, you want to make sure your input level is set appropriately. If it is too low, your audience might not be able to hear even if they increase their volume output. And the levels will probably be inconsistent if you include other pieces of content in your presentation. Low levels can be corrected to a degree in editing, but it is always best to get it right the first time to streamline post-production and to have the highest quality source files. Levels that are set too high generally cannot be corrected afterwards since over a certain amplitude the characteristics of the sound are altered resulting in permanent distortion. Most recording programs will show an input level meter. These will preferably have a nominal level indicator with added color warnings. When you speak, you should typically hit the nominal indicator, but if you see it red, this indicates level peaking with distortion being likely, and it is generally a sign that your input level should be adjusted lower. If people are appearing on camera, proper lighting will greatly improve one's appearance. I won't go too far in depth into this subject, but a typical single-person shoot will consist of two-, three-, or four-point lighting. A two-point lighting setup consists of a key light for primary illumination and a weaker fill light that softens shadows, with each typically being placed at a 45-degree angle pointing at your subject. The third light is a backlight that helps add definition to the shoulders and hair, while the fourth light illuminates the background. These are just the basics, and much more information can be found on the internet if you wish to dig deeper. Camera placement can affect how you are able to frame your shot and can be contingent on your setting, but I'll discuss a few options. A standard shot can be square with your subject, and the camera will be at or slightly below eye level. This is great when your subject wants to address the camera or audience directly. An over-the-shoulder shot can be used for interviews, with the subject looking slightly off-camera at the interviewer. A two-person interview can be captured by crossing the camera planes. The result in editing is that each person will be looking towards the center of the frame slightly, which brings me to our next point, composition. There are many rules of composition, but I'll stick with two right now, headroom and leadroom. Headroom provides a little bit of space at the top of the frame that gives some visual balance to the shot. Headroom is at least partially subjective, but a good rule of thumb for a medium close-up shot seen here is for the eyes to align about one-third of the way from the top of the screen. This should allow for proper spacing with the subject inside the frame. This rule applies whether you're using a webcam in Camtasia, presenting in a lecture hall, or conducting a sit-down interview. Leadroom is also important when framing people looking off-camera, allowing for more space on one side of the frame where the person is looking will give better visual balance. Many pieces of software exist with differing prices and capabilities. Camtasia is a popular screen recording program that also allows you to edit your recording and insert additional content after the fact. But free or low-cost screen recording solutions also exist in Apple's latest version of QuickTime or with Microsoft Windows Screen Recorder utility that can be downloaded from their TechNet site. Windows Movie Maker and iMovie are low-cost solutions to do simple video edits, but if more advanced tools are needed, there are many options, some of which can be seen in the list here. I'll try not to overwhelm you with video editing, but I want to cover some basic things to get you started. Setting up your project will differ between pieces of software, but there are some key ideas we want to remember. You will likely be working with a lot of files, and keeping these organized is important. Keeping file names and folders relevant to the content they're associated with will be helpful, and adding things like sequence numbers, dates, camera angles will help keep everything in order. Using a similar structure within your editing program as well as using metadata features is advisable to quickly find your assets. It's also recommended that you keep multiple copies of essential files during an ongoing project stored in more than one physical location. Hard drives do fail, and a good backup can help ensure that you don't lose all of your hard work. Digging a little deeper, all video editing software uses some form of a timeline. Time is usually represented with time code that shows minutes, seconds, and either fractions of a second or frames. Adding content horizontally to the timeline will increase the duration of your project. Still images generally are inserted with a default duration like 10 seconds, and grabbing the handles on the end will allow you to change that duration. Adding items vertically will allow you to layer still or animated assets like a full screen image or partial graphic like a lower third. Screen resolution is something you generally want to be aware of, and higher tends to be better, but sticking to standards like 1080p or 720p is generally advisable. Some older software will default to lower resolution settings, so consult your documentation for these settings. Most online video platforms will transcode multiple renditions for viewers, so setting the appropriate resolution for both editing and exporting is important to make sure your students are able to clearly see your content. Fixing bad audio levels and making sure all of your audio sources are at a consistent volume is something that always should be checked on when editing. And finally, pacing is something you can keep an eye out for as well. Is there too much or too little time after, say, your opening? Are there long pauses that can be removed? Pacing can be subjective, but it's always good to watch your content before you export it to at least make sure nothing feels dramatically out of place. It's always relieving to reach the end of your editing process, but we're not quite done yet. Exporting can be a lengthy process with a lot of options, but I'll try to keep it simple. If your software has a preset, these are generally safe to use and should give you good results. Today, the most common format for high-quality web video is an mp4 container file using the H.264 codec. If you don't know what this means, that's okay. If you see any presets that reference these terms, it's generally safe to use while exporting, and you'd want to use 1080p or 720p as a resolution. If you have an option for a bitrate, I would suggest 8 megabits per second for 1080p and 4 megabits per second for 720p. But back to the topic of file naming, you'll want to name the exported file something consistent that will allow you to easily be associated with relevant course sections. Due to the scale of MOOCs, there's a good chance you'll have students with accessibility needs. Coursera allows you to request subtitles for your course, or you have options to create them on your own or contract services from a third party. Free and paid software both exist that will allow you to manually create the required SRT caption files. YouTube will attempt to do voice recognition and will allow you to export these SRT files, but this method will require some editing, especially when there is technical, scientific, or mathematical language. Having a fresh set of eyes look at your material to verify accuracy and your presentation is always a good thing, since it becomes easier to miss things the longer you work on a project. At UK, we've reviewed video live in meetings, but also through private links in Google Drive and YouTube to collaborate remotely with team members. With an organized file naming system and the proper documentation, posting your files should just take a few clicks. In Coursera, you will create a course structure and upload videos to accompany each lesson. Transfer time will depend on your file size and connection speed. The same video files can also be uploaded to YouTube or other services, as Creative Commons licensing of Coursera allows you to utilize your content in other ways if you choose. Well, thanks for joining me today. If you made it this far, you're probably serious about creating educational course content. If you would like any recommendations or more information about a specific topic, feel free to contact me at alex.cuttadine at uky.edu. You can also find our Office of E-Learning website as well as other team members at uky.edu slash eLearning. Thanks for joining me, and best of luck with your projects.