❖ Version History ❖
11th- 20th of July 2022
Okay, so, last time on the Librarium Games Design Journal we were on a journey to create video content for the Rule Book of Calendra. In terms of project management, I would say that there are essentially 3 major steps to video productions of almost any kind:
1. Storyboarding: When preparing for filming, you need to have a clear image of the full production before you even start. This way, you know which clips you are going to need to record in order to get the content you want in the end (and not miss anything during filming!).
2. Filming: After assembling the storyboard, the process of filming then takes place. This phase revolves around capturing exactly the right shots that you will need when puzzling your final production together later on (frequently not even in the order that they will appear later on because of the magic of editing). Make sure to shoot unnecessary amounts of content, you never know what you will need later on!
3. Post Productions: The post production process comes in many forms. The earliest part is sifting through the garbage. You will have almost certainly filmed hours of content in the forming of each minute of final production… watching all of this takes time when sorting which final clips you need. Additionally, these clips need to be stitched together to form a final video, and that process requires editing in a video manipulation software of some kind (I use adobe premiere). Then finally, if your video contains spoken words, whether it be conversation or description, the kindest thing you can do for the internet is to add closed captioning…
But how does one go about adding the captioning to their videos? Well. That is what we are here for today!
The very first task in adding your annotations is deciding which video platform you are going to add your content to, as, everyone does things slightly differently. For today, we are just going to talk about using YouTube, because this is essentially the industry standard at this point.
To begin the process, simply go to your video management page under your YouTube profile to begin the typical process of adding the video. The basic details will prompt you for a title, and a description… but under this same tab there is something else very important to check off as well if you continue to scroll down a bit:
This “Language and Captions Certification” drop down list is a critical piece to the process.
***You must choose ‘video contains language’, and the language it contains***
If you do not select a language to certify the prompt for captions, then you will not be able to edit them or even see this option as available later. (This took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the first time, and was somehow a struggle again when I came back to it a few months later, which is why I am making this journal entry).
Once you have certified your video production to contain language and the need for captioning, head over to the “Video Elements” tab to begin the journey of annotating your video content.
At long last you will find yourself in the Captions Editor. If you select the option to manually enter in your own captions, this page will allow you to scroll through your video and pause at any moment to add a block of text.
As a particular gift toward this task, you will notice that there is a streaming content bar at the bottom of the page with two rows of information. The top row is where you enter in the blocks of written text, and the bottom row is a waveform recording of the audio in the video. Having these next to each other like this is a real gift toward entering in the text, because you can literally observe exactly where the audio takes place and get everything easily timed.
Though it is a laborious task to go through and make all of these arrangements, I find it unbelievably helpful for those who might need to use this video for its intended learning purposes. It not only gives you a thing to read if you can’t understand what is said, but it also opens up the availability of letting someone who is deaf or hard of hearing to have equal accessibility in the learning of the rules without the video needing to be pointing at my face or leave you guessing at what I might be saying!
If you are ever finding yourself in the process of needing to create content of an instructional kind, I cannot possibly recommend this process enough. It is critical to the professionalism of the video.
