For business managers and eLearning instructional designers alike, Kaltura's collaborative video development platform is worth keeping an eye on.
Problem:
In my role I will typically work to transform video-based customer testimonials and live training seminars to online information videos. The challenge is that some of these seminars can span many, many hours. Typically, 4-8 hours. Occasionally upwards of 12-16 hours with two cameras (effectively doubling the footage-hours) and PowerPoint overlays. Even with clean content, the post-production/editing process can take a while. Production ratios of 100:1 or 300:1 isn't unheard of, especially when bundling the final project into a web front end and an LMS back end.
In most cases I conduct the post-production stuff myself. Which is why I've been jonesin' for some kind of collaboriatve platform that could allow me to work with a team to simultaneously edit different sections and assemble all the segments simultaneously. Sort of an "edit-as-you-go" development scheme.
Departmentally speaking, our marketing manager usually has to queue-up video testimonials and video-based product demos with the media development team and beg for priority ahead of other time-critical projects. If only there was a platform that empowered them to do some of the work themsevles.
Solution(s):
It is possible to farm out sections of the video stream to different team members. And, with an agreed upon set of standards, have each conduct the edits, titling and overlays. As each team member completes her segment, she passes it off to another member who assembles all the segments into a logical stream.
The process above describes a similar effort to a collaborative video project Google recently conducted.
Collaborative/Simultaneous Development.
Another way to load balance the work effort is to allow each member to upload their segments directly into the video timeline.
The content can either be edited offline before uploading. Or, with a robust enough featureset and sufficient bandwidth, uploaded then remixed or edited directly in the timeline. That's the process touted by a platform such as Kaltura's.
One advantage of the latter would be to potentially cut down on the final assembly while allowing the overall project manager and/or client to focus on quality and continuity earlier in the development cycle.
For managers, think of an online platform solution that's potentially easy enough for your sales team or department staff to upload and edit short video segments. This could be a great help for augmenting the training or media development staff when developing product demos, customer testimonials or when piecing together department communiques.
From a social media/networking perspective, it gives another dimension to collaborative development. In a nutshell, it's like a wikipedia for video. In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation sees it that way, too, with their announcement earlier this year about collaborating with Kaltura to beef-up the media content for Wikipedia, WikiEducator and other Wikimedia projects.
In an earlier post I listed seven training resources sites of interest. I think the WikiEducator project updates that to eight.
I'm excited about the potential for Kaltura's platform and will be giving it a second look in the coming weeks for enabling my department to co-develop video content for future eLearning/online information projects.
