company has opened an online platform
The epidemic may have affected almost everyone's life, schooling and work. I believe that many minority readers must have experienced online courses and remote working. It is precisely because of this epidemic that many companies have realized the convenient accessibility of online content and the wide dissemination of high-quality content, so they have begun to try to expand online content operations, including my company.
Of course, my current company is a leading foreign company in a niche field, so the basic WeChat official account and App are relatively mature. But today, as video platforms are becoming more and more perfect, everyone’s habits of obtaining information through the Internet have also changed. Time is changing. So in the middle of this year, I received an assignment: to assist my leaders in producing a series of training courses. Since this is the first time we try to make
, we discussed it and decided to use the simplest form of "PPT demonstration plus dubbing" to make it. The entire process of making the course will be briefly shared below.
Material preparation
Video screen ratio determination
When we started making PPT, we discovered the gap between traditional industries and the Internet industry: Our group has complete specifications for promotional materials, from color matching to layout, size, and background color. They are all defined in great detail. However, the group PPT template updated this year still has the ancient ratio of 4:3. The reason is that the main purpose of the group's PPT is to give on-site demonstrations and training to customers, and most traditional companies are still using 4:3 projectors (however, in the past two years, customers led by large companies have also Gradually moving to the big screen).
But for online courses, the most important display device to consider is the screen in front of the audience, which is mainly 16:9 computer monitors and approximately 18:9 mainly mobile phone screens, so we chose 16:9 The picture ratio is believed to be a relatively reasonable choice at the moment.
I have also seen that many video UP hosts have directly embraced full-screen ratio videos, which requires everyone to measure according to their own target audience.
Slide production
Because the group stipulates the PPT template, I can only "dance with shackles" when making it. However, there are still many basic principles to follow when making a PPT with a passing grade or above. This is what I Several points that are important in the actual production process:
- Do not use too many colors: for example, use colors of different shades (brightness, saturation) of the same color system, or use two or three similar colors;
- elements should be aligned: reasonably Use guides or grid tools to keep text, pictures and other elements visually aligned with other elements adjacent or at the same level, making the layout neat.
- Choose the appropriate font: consistent with the theme and tone of the presentation, such as a friendly round body, Correct boldface, etc.
- Use clear pictures: Blurred pictures will greatly reduce the look and feel. If you cannot find an alternative picture, you can try to use a prototype or add a border to process the picture, reduce the display area of the picture, and increase the PPI.
- Add appropriate animation: Use with caution Those very "cool" animation effects in PPT
and even less superfluous designs will make PPT look fresher and more advanced. Personally, I hope that the PPT will have a sense of sophistication. In order to achieve this goal, I think a very simple and eye-catching trick is to insert the 3D model of the product, and cooperate with the smooth switching effect of the PPT to make the audience feel Rich and interesting.
This 3D model comes with PPT. There are also some websites on the Internet that share models available for PPT. You can make it yourself through 3D drawing or drawing software.
There are many designers online who are willing to share their experience, such as Cao Jiang, the growth author I sent. He was also a well-known PPT designer before his transformation. Of course, friends in need can go to Xiaopo Station and encounter many high-quality free tutorials.Here are some ups that I often use for inspiration. Master:
- B Site: Perfect Man Teacher Luojia, Black and White Room Design, Side-by-side PPT, Excellent Design Classroom, etc.
- Weibo: @木白, @Simon_阿文, @ After communicating with the leaders and completing the PPT design,
, Luojia Carlos, @RIPPPT, @Just for Design, etc., have completed the first step, and then enter the recording stage.
Video and audio recording
Select the recording device
Let’s talk about audio recording first. I originally asked a colleague in the marketing department to borrow a voice recorder, but the effect was not satisfactory and was not as good as my MBP direct recording, so I applied for a grant and bought the widely recommended Blue Yeti. Blue Yeti is indeed very helpful in improving sound quality. The use of cardioid sound collection can reduce noise in other directions while recording, ensuring sound quality. It is also easy to use, plug and play.
However, if the budget is limited, then you can use the equipment at hand to record (podcasters will also recommend using iPhone, MacBook, etc. to record). However, you should pay attention to choosing a suitable recording environment to reduce the noise of the material and avoid secondary damage to the recording caused by post-noise reduction processing. After all, content is your number one competitiveness.
reference link: Recommendations for recording equipment in the Getting Started Guide to Podcast Production
One more thing I want to say about recording is that since it is an audio course to be produced, there are requirements for content volume and information density, so if time permits, it can be completed. Verbatim scripts are the best, which may greatly improve the recording efficiency and the success rate of each recording. This will be mentioned in the video recording section below (because we did not have time to write a verbatim script due to lack of time).
recording method
In order to meet the needs of "PPT presentation with dubbing", we need to achieve simultaneous recording of video and audio. There are two simple solutions: one is to use a computer to play the slides, use software to record the screen and record simultaneously, and the other One way is to use the recording function that comes with PowerPoint. An analysis of the pros and cons of the two options is as follows:
A. Play the slideshow on the computer, use the software to record the screen, and at the same time open the recording software to record simultaneously
The advantage of this option is that the audio and video can directly correspond, and the verbatim draft has been written in advance. , there are less bumps in the middle, so you can record it in one go, and the overall progress will be very fast. But the corresponding disadvantage of
is that if there are many lags or slips of the tongue, a lot of invalid video and audio clips will be accumulated in the early stage, which will make batch screening more troublesome and increase the workload in the later stage. Since we leave the post-production work to our cooperative advertising companies, this will further increase communication costs. If it is a scene that you cut for your own use, then this method will definitely be much more flexible.
B. Use the recording function that comes with PowerPoint, combined with the function of exporting videos;
PowerPoint is a very powerful presentation software, and "recording slide presentation" is one of the very useful functions, and it is also the solution we chose this time.
We chose this method this time because of its advantages:
- can be recorded in pages and exported as a whole. It is simple to modify and simplifies the recording process.
- When time is tight and it is impossible to prepare a verbatim draft, you can add notes to each slide in advance. Write an outline well, so that the difficulty of impromptu recording page by page will be greatly reduced.
- After the complete recording is completed, you can also modify the dubbing part of a page independently without the need for cutting and collage process.
- has less material waste and can greatly reduce the number of videos. Post-communication issues
Of course, there are corresponding shortcomings in using this method. For example, the audio cannot span across pages. If you turn the page while speaking, the process of turning the page will not be recorded. It can only be recorded page by page. In terms of fluency, There will be a discount.
directly uses the "Slide Show - Record Slide Show" that comes with PPT to record dubbing page by page, and you can easily see the current recording duration and total duration.
After the recording is completed, a small speaker symbol will appear in the lower right corner of the slide page (as shown in the lower right corner of the slide above). You can visually check whether there are any missing pages later.Of course, there is also a row of brushes and highlighter marking tools at the bottom, you can also try it if you need it.
and when modifications are needed, you can select "Start recording from the current slide" to re-record a single page, so that most of the modification work can be transferred to the early stage.
Final video export
Adjust animation time based on recording
After the leader has recorded all the explanations page by page, it is time to export the video, and at this time a problem that was not expected before appeared: when exporting the video, in order to The voices of the slides on this page are synchronized, so all manually clicked animations need to be changed to automatic playback, and the automatic playback time points are adjusted; when I found that in some places with dense explanation content, the voice duration between the two animations may exceed one hour. Minutes, in order to synchronize the animation and voice commentary, I naturally set the animation delay to the corresponding interval, such as 120 seconds, but I was "surprised" to find that the delay interval between the two animations in PPT can only be the longest allowed 59 seconds for .
So I came up with a small way to solve this problem. By adding a 100% transparency graphic before the next animation, and then giving an animation randomly, the animation effect can be set to a maximum of 59 seconds, and the maximum length of 59 seconds is added twice. delay, you can delay the automatic playback time of the animation by about 3 minutes. If it is not enough, just repeat the above operation.
As shown in the picture below, if you want the blue rectangle to appear 2 minutes after the orange rectangle appears, the normal animation interval cannot be set. At this time, I inserted a transparent rectangle in the middle and set the delay to gain time difference.
Export and create video
After completing the above steps, you can select the *.mp4 format from the PowerPoint "Save" option or obtain the video file through "Export-Create Video". By default, it is saved as a video file containing all animations and dubbing. The highest resolution that can be set is 1920×1080 @30fps. If
needs to export 4K resolution or higher frame rate videos, it can be modified through VB code (reference link). However, after my testing, even if a higher frame rate is exported, the actual animation smoothness has not been significantly improved (of course, this may be a problem with the Office version I am using, version 1803-9126.2259), but the clarity There will really be a very obvious improvement. You can refer to the comparison in the following figure: After exporting
and checking that there are no problems, it can be passed to relevant colleagues for subsequent processing, or directly uploaded to the required video platform. Our video tutorial was eventually divided into three chapters, taking into account the content and audience attention span, and each chapter was ultimately produced into a video of about 10 minutes. Unresolved problems of
Of course, during the whole process, I also encountered some problems that were not solved in the end.
Our company purchased the group Office365, but it restricted updates, so the version was lower. After setting the pause animation of multiple videos, the second pause animation when exporting the video will cause the video in the slide to be reset, and other animation effects are normal. , so it is speculated that it is a problem with Office365 itself. We hope that subsequent software upgrades can solve this problem. We corrected the erroneous parts through the post-production of the video and gave up on using PPT.
Last but not Least: Copyright
The last point I want to mention is the copyright issue. The longer content producers want to do business, the more attention they must pay to this point.
As for the entire video I made, the copyright-related parts include video post-production software, fonts, pictures, audio and video materials and quoted content. Among them, the quoted materials are basically industry regulations and do not involve copyright. The audio and video materials are all recorded in-house and the video post-production is outsourced, so you only need to pay attention to using free commercial fonts and images, such as the Siyuan series fonts and the Unsplash gallery. etc. I hope that when I don’t have the budget to support copyrighted font libraries and libraries, I won’t infringe on their rights.
After all, it’s hard for me to imagine how I would feel if the videos I worked so hard to create were stolen by others. Don’t do to others what you don’t want others to do to you.I hope this little experience of mine can provide you with some minor help.
