In this 101, we will:
- Look at the mechanics of how to set up your recording
- Go through the main features for recording audio and video
- Show the editing features within PowerPoint
- Show how to export to mp4 and upload it to YuJa
The feedback we’ve had from academics is that this is a really useful way to create a video, since you can edit the content that you make on a slide-by-slide basis. This is also a really familiar environment for academics to operate. So, for example, if you have a slide set with five slides and record three minutes for each slide, your result and video would be a 15-minute MP4. That MP4 would be what your students could see, but you could go back in the future and edit, delete or add slides individually and then then that would be the resultant video without having to make the entire 15-minute video again from scratch.
1 Preparing to Record
If you go along at the top and open the “Record tab”, you’ll notice that you’ve got several different options, including making screen recording. So if you wanted to take students through an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document, you could actually make a screen recording from in there.
For just now, we’re just going to be looking at the two different options that you have within making slide recordings, and that’s the audio and the video options.
To do this, select the “From the current slide” option from underneath the “Recording” tab.
Now we’ll take you through some of the different options you have in the “Record” area within PowerPoint. At the top, you can see your total amount of time once you start making a recording. Next to that is the record button. A few icons further still in this top bar is the microphone. You can click on the mic to turn it on or off. Next to that is the camera, which you can toggle on or off. When you turn the camera on, you can see you’re placed in the bottom right-hand corner. You can change the position of this later on. By your video, you can see an icon of a person in a box. If you click on this, you can blur your background.
If you’re making an introductory video, you might want to have a large image of yourself and you can place that in the middle. Or you may want to turn it off if you are on top of a slide with a lot of visual information.
For the mic, you want to make sure it is using your preferred microphone. We do advise against using the in-built microphone that you have on your HP laptop. You’re better off using a headset device or even a dedicated microphone. You can speak to IT if you want to have access to better quality microphone. Also, make sure you’re in a quiet environment and you’re close to the microphone, while making recordings.
The next tab to the right of the recording controls is where you can export your video. We’ll go over that at the end.
Down at the bottom below your slide, you can annotate your slide with laser pointers and highlighters. This will be recorded and the screen recording, and it will be displayed in the export. One thing to note is that anything you record while an animation or transition is occurring won’t be recorded, so be sure to bear that in mind and make sure to not record while those actions are taking place.
On the bottom right-hand side of the screen, you’ve got the different views. This will let you use the presenter view, which will show you what the next slide is, and it shows you your notes pane. This means you can have a script in here that you’re going to cover. This can be really useful to help you stay on point and also can make the content more accessible because you’re working from a script, and you won’t be drifting in and out too much. You can also use that to cross-reference with the transcription later on. This view is just called the presenter view.
You’ve also got the teleprompter view, which makes the script a little bit larger and you can adjust the text size in this panel as well.
When you record, PowerPoint will simple record the slide you are currently on, it won’t record any of the notes in the presenter panel or the text in the teleprompter view if you are using either of those.
2 Recording
When you are ready, click on the record icon and you will get a countdown timer and then the recording will begin. You can pause the recording at the top of the screen by clicking on the “pause” icon to the right of the record button. To resume the recording, use the play button. To stop the recording, click the red button at the top of the screen. Once that recording is complete, you can move on to the next slide.
If you use the highlighter or pointer, they will see you make those highlights in real-time while you make your point verbally.
To move on to the next slide, click “Page Down” on your keyboard, or click on the arrow key next to the slide number at the bottom left-hand side of the screen. You can repeat this process of using the record button to record your content. This time, you can see in the timer area you’ll now have two timer. The one on the left is the count for the current slide, and the one to the right is the count for your total presentation. This can be helpful to remind you how long your presentation time is running as a whole.
This also gives you a good idea of when we talk about chunking up a presentation, you might want to split five slides into a chunk or decide how to chunk your content based on time. Then you can make a separate recording for the bit of information.
3 Editing
Next up are the editing features within the slides. Go back to the presentation view by clicking on the back icon at the top right of that centre area. Now you can see that the video can be moved around or re-sized as you would move any other slide content
You can also play back your content. If you just recorded audio, you can see the audio icon which is also on the bottom right-hand side of the slide by default. On this slide that recorded audio. You can see that it’s there. And you don’t need to worry about this symbol. It won’t be showing and the resultant recording.
If you want to make any edits to any of the recordings that you’ve got, you will have some basic options. If you right-click with your mouse, you can trim your video if you weren’t happy with the start or the end.
What we’ve found is that academics like the fact that they can edit each slide. Remember, you don’t need to get the whole slideshow right – you just need to get the slide right. And, if you’ve made just a little mistake at the end, you could cut that.
However, you can also cut your entire recording. To do this, go to the ribbon at the top (remember, we’re still in the recording tab), and click on the option for “Clear recording”. Just make sure you clear only what you want as you have the options for clear recording in the current slide and clear recording from all slides. You can also actually click on the video in the slide itself and just hit “Delete”, and that will do the same job.
This is the same for your audio, you’ve got the option to trim, and again you’ve just got the option to trim the start and the end.
4 Exporting
Next, let’s look at the export options. Still in the “Record” tab, you can go to “Export to video”. From within the recording area, you also had the export option at the top right-hand side of the central controls. Either option will take you to the same place.
From here, you can enter your filename, can browse to the location where you want to save your video, and click “Export Video”.
First, let’s go over a couple of key options by clicking into the button “Customise Export”. For learning and teaching, we suggest using the quality level of “Full HD” – that’s 1080p. There might be instances where you want to go up to 4K if you’re making a screen recording of a high-definition video, but for most cases 1080 is going to be your best choice.
We also suggest that you leave the option below this at the default of “Use recorded timings and narrations”. Do note that if any of your content and your slideshow doesn’t have any narration or video content within it, then it’ll just play for five seconds and any animations within that will also play, so you may want to adjust the time below this setting.
Now, if you click the “Create Video” button, you’ll see you have the option of naming the presentation. Below that, you can adjust the format but we strongly recommend leaving this as an MP4. That’s going to work well with our video management system, YuJa. It’s also going to work well if you want to share your video with other colleagues and other institutions. You can use YuJa or OneDrive, but an MP4 is a widely recognized export file.
5 Uploading to YuJa
Next, we’ll show you how to upload your MP4 file to YuJa.
First, navigate to where your file is located. Next, you’ll need to log into YuJa by going to video.dundee.ac.uk. For more information on using YuJa, check out our 101 session dedicated to YuJa.
Make sure that when you’re uploading your file, you’re uploading the correct one as it’s quite easy to accidentally upload the PowerPoint file rather than the MP4. Check for this file type, and note that it will usually notice be a large file size as well.
Just drag and drop this file into your media area – this is the simplest way to upload videos.
You could also click on the link for “Upload” in this window, and it would bring up an option to drag and drop or to search for the file. You can use whichever method works best for you.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll see an information box in the right-hand side of the screen that will show you your upload process. This may take a bit of time depending on the file size. Do note that this is just the time for it to upload, and does not include the time for it to create the transcriptions (which it will do automatically).
Once it has finished uploading, you’ll see it in your page and it will say “Processing”. While this is processing, you can change the title, give it a description and even give it tags to make it a bit more shareable. You will want to make sure to update the title and the description.
Once the file has finished processing, then you can check it in there, including checking the auto-transcription feature within YuJa and see if it needs any small changes. You could cross check it with your notes pane if you used that feature in PowerPoint.
Once you’re happy with everything, hover over the video and select “Publish” to put it onto your module’s YuJa channel. Find the module that you’re teaching on, click on it and you’ll see it appear in the “Selected” area. Then click “Select” and that would publish to that module.
Your video will still live in your “My Media” collection, so any changes you made within here would be replicated in the video wherever else you may have published.
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