Video - recording rooms

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This entry relates to Video.

The University has 2 recording studios and 4 recording pods:

  • Sturt South - room S418
  • Central Library - room 109 (4 separate pods)
  • Social Science South - room 374

    These rooms are available to all staff on a self-service basis. All rooms have the ability to do video and audio recording. The studio at Sturt also has green screen technology, which replaces the green wall behind you with a backdrop of your choice (PowerPoint presentation, images, video, websites (live) or even Skype or WebEx calls).

    No specialist skills are required to use these rooms, making high-quality professional-looking video accessible to everyone.

    The following information is available to help you use these rooms. Please pay close attention to those items marked *.

     

    Access to the rooms

    All staff cards have access to the rooms. Standard access is between 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday. If you require access outside of these times or for general access problems, please submit a Service One request (Facilities > Building or room access) requesting access to the required recording room.

    Remember: This room is accessible by anyone so please ensure you do not leave your personal belongings in there as it is not secure. This also applies to your USB stick.

     

    Booking the rooms

    You are able to manage your own bookings for these rooms using the following process:

    1. Using your Outlook calendar, find a day and time that you’re available and create a new meeting request.
    2. In the To field, enter the room name below to invite the room to your meeting. Add any other meeting attendees.
      • Room - U_LIB_109a_Recording Pod 1 (2)
      • Room - U_LIB_109b_Recording Pod 2 (2)
      • Room - U_LIB_109c_Recording Pod 3 (2)
      • Room - U_LIB_109d_Recording Pod 4 (2)
      • Room - U_SSS_374_Recording Studio (5)
      • Room - U_STS_418_Recording_Studio (4)
    3. Click on scheduling assistant tab to check the availability of the room and other attendees. If the room is already booked at the time you’ve chosen, you will need to adjust the date/time.
    4. Complete any other details associated with your meeting and click send.
    5. If the room is available at your chosen time your booking will automatically be accepted. If the room is already booked, your request will automatically be rejected, and you’ll need to send a new one.

    If you have made a booking and can no longer make it – please cancel your booking so other staff have the option to use the room at that time.

     

    Arranging a familiarisation session

    If you are unfamiliar with the room, a member of your local eLearning team can run a session in the room with you. This session should take no more than 30 minutes. Please submit a Service One request (Education > Recording room familiaristion session) to arrange this and a member of the eLearning team will book this for you at a mutually convenient time.

    Once the familiarisation session is booked you may want to consider booking a recording session directly after your familiarisation session to practice recording something.

     

    Preparation before you arrive

    1. Create your PowerPoint slides
      • Set the aspect ratio of your presentation to 16:9 (widescreen mode) to fill the screen in the room and prevent black bars appearing down both sides of your final recording.
      • Leave a blank area in each slide to provide you with space to stand without obscuring your information.
      • Make your slides visually interesting yet neat, tidy and clear. Limit the amount of words and use sharp, high-quality images. Complicated and busy slides will overwhelm your audience.
      • Use colour but consider visually impaired audiences and make your background and text visually contrasting.
      • Ensure a minimum font size of 24pt to ensure readability on a small screen (phone or tablet).
      • You may want to use some of the Flinders corporate PowerPoint slides. If so, download them from Flinders Press Branded Templates (scroll down and look for Recording Studio Corporate Powerpoint Slides).
      • Maintain a consistent look across all slides (background/fonts/colours).

    2. Plan your message
      • We suggest preparing a clear and concise script to keep yourself on track and prevent you from forgetting anything important.
      • The rooms don't have teleprompter/auto-cue technology so make sure you rehearse beforehand. This will help you to appear relaxed and natural.
      • Keep your message generic to ensure your video is reusable. Don’t include dates/times (of assessments for example) as these will make your video single use only.
      • Aim for your recordings to contain shorter snippets of information (<= 7 minutes if possible). If a concept takes longer to explain, find natural breaks and create multiple videos.
      • Consider adding questions or prompting reflections within your video, giving the appearance of 1:1 dialogue, making the video more personal and possibly promoting deeper level thinking.
      • Ensure any resources you did not create yourself are copyright compliant and can be rebroadcast e.g. a YouTube clip cannot be recorded and then published in FLO. You can submit a “Copyright for my teaching material’ or a "Copyright for research" request in Service One if you have any questions about your material.

    3. Dress for success
      • Consider what you wear to ensure it works well on camera and with your slides.
      • If using green screen function, Don’t wear any green as you will be replaced by your backdrop.
      • Aim for a bold single colour that contrasts with your slide background colour.
      • Avoid thin stripes and plain white (it’s too stark under the lights).
      • Be aware wear lanyards or shiny jewellery that can rattle or reflect the light.

    4. What to bring with you on the day
      • An empty USB (16GB USB 3.0 version is recommended. This will store approx. 3 hrs of recording time).
      • Your presentation on a separate USB or available via the network.
      • Your mobile phone in case you need to authenticate with Okta when you log into the system.
      • Your staff ID card to access the room.

     

    Tips to produce a professional recording

    1. Engage your audience
      • The camera is the connection to your audience – good camera interaction is important.
      • Use body language and expression to connect and engage with your audience.
      • Show enthusiasm for your subject through facial expressions, voice and hand gestures and include humour where possible (making sure it is culturally inclusive).
      • If you use a script, consider how you are going to read the script and maintain eye contact with the camera. Do not read large slabs of a script looking down at notes on the lectern etc. eLearning support staff can provide support in mimicking a teleprompter/auto-cue, but it is still better to be well-rehearsed than just reading multiple paragraphs of text from paper or screen.
      • Motivate your audience by explaining what they will get out of watching your video.
      • If recording two people conversing (for example an interview with an invited content expert), the presenters can alternate between looking at each other and the camera – this engages the audience as the 'third person' in the interview/discussion.

    2. Don't be the distraction
      • Make sure you maintain eye contact with the camera keeping your head still. It is distracting if your eyes are roaming.
      • Speak clearly at a consistent volume, and at a moderate speed.
      • Don't constantly move around, stay in position in front of the camera so that your audience can focus on you and read your body language. Although moving back and forth across the stage can add to the entertainment value of your recording, try to avoid overusing this stage effect.

    3. Creating visual engagement
      • Use explanations of concepts that have worked well with your students in the past, preferably with strong and relevant visuals as support.
      • You can use annotation and animation within your presentation to add to your explanations and the visual engagement.
      • An alternative to always being in shot is to have some slides where you leave the stage (get out of shot completely), so your slide is the focus. When ready you can step back into shot and continue your presentation. This allows the audience to focus on different things, and not on you constantly.

    4. Don't rush
      • When explaining or demonstrating websites or specialist software, move your mouse slowly and allow time to show hover hints or popups. The mouse cursor in your final video may end up being very small, so the added benefit of the room is that you can point to items.
      • If you muddle your words, start the sentence, or even the whole section or PowerPoint slide, again. You can edit the mistakes out later. When restarting, compose yourself and leave a few seconds of silence and no movement before starting speaking, to facilitate the editing process later.

     

    Setting up when you arrive in the room

    1. Try to prevent unnecessary interruptions
      • Place your phone out of sight and switch it off or turn it to silent.
      • If you have any other software open on the computer, close it to prevent pop-up or audio interruptions (e.g. email notifications)
      • Pop-up interruptions may be an issue if trying to demonstrate/record websites. You can contact your eLearning team for advice.

    2. Make things readable for your audience
      • This is particularly important for web pages and Excel.

    3. Know how to navigate your presentation
      • If possible, learn the short-cut key commands to navigate through your presentation during your recording.
      • Avoid going back to previous slides to re-explain a concept – students can review the video as many times as they need.

    4. Good audio is crucial to engagement
      • Always check the microphone is working correctly before starting your recording.
      • Some rooms have fixed room microphones, or you will need to attach one of the lapel microphones to yourself and switch it on.
      • If using a lapel mic, place the microphone cable under your clothing if possible, to hide it from the camera and avoid getting tangled with your hands during your recording and place the radio transmitter unit in a pocket/belt using the attached belt clip.

     

    Technical support

     As these are a self-service recording rooms, on-demand technical support is not always available. If you encounter any difficulties, please contact your eLearning team on 15000.

     If there are problems with your recording, you can book another session in the room.

     

    Room help guides

     

    Edit your recorded video

    Depending on the number of mistakes and outtakes in your raw video recording, you will need to allow time for the editing and upload process. You do not need to be a perfectionist; if the video demonstrates passion and provides a clear explanation, students will understand and accept the odd word stumble, ‘umms’ and ‘errs’.

    MyMedia (Kaltura) has a simple built-in editor that allows easy trimming of the start and end of a video to remove the bits where you are getting into position, and when you finish your recording and have to walk to the wall-mounted control panel in the room to press the stop button. Your video will look much more professional if you edit out these parts.

    If you need more extensive editing within a video, you may need to do so at your desktop PC using desktop video editing software such as Camtasia. The TechSmith tutorials will guide you through this process or your local eLearning support team can provide training with Camtasia.

    If you are not confident with the video editing process or software, review the help guides and videos available before making changes to the original raw video. Make a copy of your video before you begin any changes. Make your edits to the copy of the original file, never overwrite the original.

    Always play back the entire final edited version of your recording before publishing to your FLO site to check for errors or glitches etc, and if possible, ask another person to review the final edited video before making it available to students on FLO.

     

    Add captions to your video

    The Kaltura video platform in FLO allows you to request machine-generated captions. Once you make a request, the captions are added to your video within approximately 30 minutes. 

     

    Upload your video to FLO

    Ensure your students can view/play your video via FLO from a variety of devices, platforms and browsers by uploading to My Media (Kaltura), then embedding your video within a FLO activity in your FLO site. Avoid using YouTube or other video streaming services to house your video, as they are out of our control and may not play on all platforms and personal devices or may require special browser plug-ins or add-ons.

    Take care where you put the videos within your FLO site. Make sure they are in a logical place and if online discussion or reflection is encouraged after viewing, then ensure students can easily access the location in FLO where this collaboration will occur.

    Whenever possible, upload a PDF 'handout/notes' version of the presentation (PowerPoint etc) to the FLO site which students can download/print and/or use to add handwritten notes while viewing the video. 

    » How-to glossary