Spice up your PowerPoint? Why not video..?

A match made in heaven.  As discussed earlier in my colleague Dave’s article, synchronized video and PowerPoint slides compliment each other nicely.  In your professional (or unprofessional) career, every presentation you’ve given or been a part of has had some sort of accompanying material.  And if there weren’t any slides, you probably fell asleep from boredom.  OR – if you’re like me, you like to find grammar/spelling mistakes to feel better about yourself.  But I digress – think about it.  Meetings with the boss, presentations you’ve given in college, any lecture/class you’ve attended in college, keynote presentations, conference presentations, you name it.  Even this witty commercial from Microsoft.

Standalone PowerPoint presentations without an accompanying speaker, like the above video, can even serve as an extremely useful tool.  Of course you need some sort of audio cue or else you just have stagnant slides.  Adding a voiceover to accompany your PowerPoint presentation is a fantastic way to deliver your message.  In a business setting, you’ll see this tactic often for individuals who -

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Tagged content creation, KZO, PowerPoint synchronization

Synchronizing PowerPoints with KZO

KZO’s pushing out an all-new presentation slide timings editor, and to coincide with that, I’ll be pushing out a few new blog posts on using KZO to sync your PowerPoint slides to video. So without further ado…

What’s all this synchronization stuff about?

Your conference was a great success, everyone loved the keynote speech, and your team had the foresight to record it on video. Now, your attendees can go back and watch it on-demand, and you can send out a link to anyone who missed the conference. The content is preserved and made easily accessible, and your viewers seem happy. Pleased with your progress, you go to watch the on-demand video yourself, when you realize – the keynote speaker is making constant references to his PowerPoint slides – and you only have video of him at the podium. You can put up a download link to his PowerPoint materials, and encourage your viewers to follow along. But it’s still not the same. Wouldn’t it be great if you could put his slides up right next to the video, and have them flip along with him as he gives his presentation, just like if it was live?

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Tagged PowerPoint synchronization

KZO Innovations Enhanced Free Account Offering of KZO Express to Include 30 Minutes of Free Video Web Hosting

Reston, Va. – January 19, 2012 – KZO Express now includes 30 minutes of free video web hosting.  KZO Innovations, the leading provider of collaborative software for business video, enhanced its free account offer, KZO Express, to include 30 minutes of free video web hosting. KZO Express is the self-service version of the popular business video collaboration software, KZO Business Video Suite. Both KZO Express and KZO Business Video Suite are targeted to business customers and offers the ability to “Create” videos online from any computer, “Share” videos from any web portal or web based application like a CRM or LMS and “Socialize” video by engaging viewers and allowing them to comment, ask questions and see responses.

“When businesses have the ability to actually use the video creation and video collaboration tools everything falls into place. They understand why KZO is different and why we lead the industry” said Brian Kelly, VP of Sales at KZO Innovations. “Expanding the KZO Express offer to include 30 minutes of free web hosting makes it easy for businesses to try KZO to see how it can benefit their business.  KZO Express is perfect for businesses or workgroups that are just starting to use video or concerned about committing to a different video solution. Use the KZO Express platform for free and as your use of business video grows, we’ll be there to help with the solution and support that fits your needs.”

About KZO Innovations, Inc.
KZO Innovations is the leading provider of social collaboration software for business video. The KZO Business Video Suite is being used by fortune 500 companies and government agencies to securely “Create” or upload video from any computer, “Share” video within any CRM, LMS, web portal or as a stand-alone video portal, and “Socialize” video by engaging viewers - letting them add comments, ask questions and get answers. KZO’s interoperability with leading collaboration portals and learning management systems, including Salesforce and SharePoint, enables organizations to securely leverage the power of video with live and on-demand collaboration within a workgroup or across their entire global enterprise. The Suite consists of three integrated components that are compatible with major video formats including Flash and HTML5: KZO Virtual Studio, KZO Video Library and KZO Media Player. Businesses that are interested in the KZO Business Video Suite can create a free KZO Express account which includes 30 minutes of free video hosting.

Create a Free KZO Express Account: http://kzoinnovations.com/express
For more information about KZO Innovations visit: http://kzoinnovations.com

KZO Media Contact:
Peter Monahan
VP Marketing
Tel:   703-957-8396
press@kzoinnovations.com

KZO Innovations Announces the Release of Feature Enhancements to The KZO Business Video Suite

Reston, Va. – January 12, 2012 – KZO Innovations, today announced the release of feature enhancements to its Business Video Suite. This new release builds on the success and features of the Video Suite which allows users to create, share and socialize their business video. Highlights of the feature enhancements of the KZO Business Video Suite include:

Real-Time Tagging: Customers watching a live streaming video will see comments and responses in real-time. This discussion string is archived and available for future on-demand viewers.

Tag Moderation: Content owners have the option to review and approve viewer comments before comments are posted publicly in the presentation and seen by other viewers.

Content Moderation. Administrators have the option to review and approve presentations before the content is available to other viewers.

Enhancements to the HTML 5 mobile version: All KZO presentations can be accessible via any Flash or HTML5 enabled devices, including iPad.

“We have great relationships with our users. They provide us with invaluable feedback which we used to determine the enhancements included in this release,” said Jeff Fissel, Vice President, Solutions and Co-Founder of KZO. “Listening to our customers is what keeps us at the forefront of the video industry, while leading our customers with new and innovative features helps KZO shape the entire enterprise video industry itself. At KZO, we have a great balance between listening to our customers, providing them with the features they need today and leading our customers, showing them new innovative ways to use and enhance enterprise video.”

About KZO Innovations, Inc.
KZO Innovations is the leading provider of social collaboration software for business video. The KZO Business Video Suite is being used by fortune 500 companies and government agencies to securely “Create” or upload video from any computer, “Share” video within any CRM, LMS, web portal or as a stand-alone video, and “Socialize” video by engaging viewers – letting them add comments, ask questions and get answers. KZO’s interoperability with leading collaboration portals and learning management systems, including Salesforce and SharePoint, enables organizations to securely leverage the power of video with live and on-demand collaboration within a workgroup or across their entire global enterprise. The Suite consists of three integrated components that are compatible with major video formats including Flash and HTML5: KZO Virtual Studio, KZO Video Library and KZO Media Player. Businesses that are interested in the KZO Business Video Suite can create a free KZO account which includes 30 minutes of free video hosting.

Free KZO Account: http://kzoinnovations.com/express
For more information visit: http://kzoinnovations.com

KZO Media Contact:
Peter Monahan
Tel: 703.957.8396
press@kzoinnovations.com

Captioning with MAGpie – Tips and Tricks

I’ve gotten a few questions about my last post about captioning with MAGpie. This post is a collection of answers, tips, and whatever else comes to mind, in no particular order.

Click here to read the first post on captioning with MAGpie. (It’s incorrectly attributed to Ben.)

(Also, quick correction – MAGpie is not open-source, just freeware. A man can dream.)

Seeing Captions in the MAGpie Player

By default MAGpie doesn’t process your captions immediately. But by clicking Playback > Export changes now, you can trigger MAGpie to export the current captions so that you can view them in the player (note: this does not save or export them to a file). You can also check the option Export changes on playback and MAGpie will do this every time you play the video. This option is off by default, and for long videos you may want to leave it off because of the loading times, but for short videos it’s useful.

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Tagged captions, cc, closed, content creation, magpie

Connecting the Dots Between Informal Learning and Video

by Your Resident Millenial Sales Professional

In my last post, I aimed to bridge the mental gap between video and a multi-generational audience, encouraging corporate leaders to embrace video in any enterprise and for all generations. This time, I want to get more specific and connect the dots between some very hot topics that learning leaders hear about constantly – informal learning and video (let’s throw “social” in here, too, just for good measure).

Everyone seems agreeable to the “80% of learning occurs through informal learning” idea. The question that my customers seem focused on now is how that applies to their organization and what solutions to put in place that can harness the natural phenomenon of informal learning to maximize its impact on the business. Usually, we hear about social networking and cloud collaboration as part of the solution (which they are).

You must consider how video is part of the solution, too. And it should be a BIG part.

Yes, I know – “on the job” learning and work experience account for much of what we’re talking about here when it comes to informal learning. In addition to experience gained on the job, Bersin & Associates notes two other types of informal learning that are part of the equation: On-Demand and Social. The Social part you probably have covered – wikis, blogs, social networking sites, even intranets…anything you’ve implemented that encourages open exchange of ideas and helps employees learn from one another falls into this category.

By “On-Demand” informal learning, we mean the kind the learner leads himself, such as self-paced eLearning or even simply searching for information; it is proactive and the learning occurs because of the learner’s independent interactions with the content. If you have self-paced learning modules in your LMS and you have a collaboration portal or company site where people can search for/share information, that’s part of the answer. Don’t stop there, though – there is much more to consider.

When someone searches for information on that portal, what do they find?

Reference documents. Articles. Contact info for their subject expert. A slide deck. A voice over or podcast. Same answers apply to someone that wants to share information for the rest of the community to learn from. They put together an updated slide deck, write a few words about an article they want to share, perhaps you invite them to record next week’s podcast.

These resources are not as effective as video resources. Here’s why:

Cisco estimates that 50% of all internet traffic will be video traffic by the end of 2012 and it has already surpassed the amount of peer-to-peer traffic on the web (that’s to say that video already accounts for the statistical majority of all internet traffic).

Why do you suppose that is? Can we infer from this that video is the preferred medium for communicating today (aside from being in the same physical room)?

I think we can.

Studies are all over the board regarding how much of human communication is nonverbal – 50% on the very low end and up to 90% on the high end (Wikipedia page on Body Language sites several bodies of research on this). Even for simple messages, we long to see the face on the other side of that message because so much is lost without body language and visual aid. It is just the way we’re wired.

If up to 90% of what you want to communicate [share] [teach] [learn] comes down to body posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye movements, your learning – formal or informal – is not as effective as it could be if it isn’t on video.

Video helps us digest more information in a shorter amount of time than other formats, which is why we’re more apt to click on the 5 minute video clip than the link to download the slide deck on the same topic. Try it yourself and track what gets more hits. Or don’t; the statistics on video traffic speak for themselves.

Informal learning has so much to do with sharing good information and making it accessible to everyone, but to really tap into that and get the most out of your people and social technologies, you have to make video the center of your informal learning world – by encouraging the creation of it as much as the searching and viewing of it.

I know this is not news to many of you. So why aren’t you using video as much as you want to or feel you should be? Probably cost restrictions or bandwidth constraints. But it might be time to reconsider. There are solutions out there that make this much more affordable and user friendly than it was even just one year ago (seriously – just call me).

Don’t buy into it? View the video version of this post (if you didn’t already) and tell me which saved you more time, and which one makes you feel more comfortable asking me a question – because that’s what we’re all here to facilitate at the end of the day anyway. If you can’t find the answer you seek or don’t feel comfortable asking your expert, what good is all this technology to begin with?

 

 

 

 

Tagged informal learning, social learning, video for learning, video for training

KZO Innovations Extends Application Integration Program Adding Salesforce.com

Reston, Va. – December 8, 2011 – KZO Innovations, the leading provider of social collaboration software for business video, extends its application integration program with the addition of Salesforce.com. Joining an impressive list of customer relationship management (CRM) and learning management systems (LMS) including: Blackboard, SharePoint, Jive, Plateau Systems and Igloo, the KZO Business Video Suite is now seamlessly integrated with the Salesforce.com platform.

“Giving our customers the ability to access the KZO Video Suite from within Salesforce.com saves time and integrates the entire sales and sales communications training process into a unified platform.”, said Brian Kelly, VP of Sales at KZO Innovations. “Sales team members, many using Salesforce.com throughout the day, can now create, share & socialize their video all within the Salesforce.com platform, making it easy to add video or comment on existing videos without going into a separate software tool.”

Benefit highlights of the free KZO Business Video Suite integration with Salesforce.com include:

• Free integrated Salesforce.com video application and free video hosting
• Ability to create or upload video content within the Salesforce.com platform
• Single sign on – leveraging Salesforce.com user accounts
• Search and find video content as needed within Salesforce.com
• Access video from any device including iPads

About KZO Innovations, Inc.
KZO Innovations is the leading provider of social collaboration software for business video. The KZO Business Video Suite is being used by fortune 500 companies and government agencies to securely Create or upload video from any computer, Share video within any CRM, LMS, web portal or as a stand-alone video & Socialize video by engaging viewers – letting them add comments, ask questions and get answers. KZO’s interoperability with leading collaboration portals and learning management systems including Salesforce and SharePoint, enables organizations to securely leverage the power of video with live and on-demand collaboration within a workgroup or across their entire global enterprise. Consisting of three integrated components that are compatible with major video formats including Flash and HTML5: KZO Virtual Studio, KZO Video Library and KZO Media Player. Businesses that are interested in the KZO Business Video Suite can create a free account which includes free video hosting.

Free KZO Salesforce.com Video App: http://kzoinnovations.com/free_salesforce_video_app/
For more information visit: www.kzoinnovations.com

KZO Media Contact:
Peter Monahan
Tel: 703-634-9386
press@kzoinnovations.com

KZO Innovations and IQT Expand Strategic Partnership to Support the U.S. Intelligence Community

Reston, Va. – November 28, 2011 – KZO Innovations signed a second technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology and solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Building on the original strategic partnership signed in 2009, the new agreement will include development of additional advanced enhancements to The KZO Video Suite, as well as expanding the reach of its deployment.

“Leveraging innovative technology is vital to the success of our GEOINT mission,” said David K. White, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency liaison with IQT. “Through our partnership with In-Q-Tel, we have access to a robust portfolio of commercial innovations like KZO’s Video Platform. We’ve seen the real impact of such tools for our analysts and users.”

The KZO Video Suite provides a simple and effective way for users to create video, share video and socialize video content in both live and on-demand applications. Typically used in Training and eLearning, Enterprise Communication and Collaborative Analysis situations, KZO’s interoperability with leading social collaboration portals and learning management systems including SharePoint^®  and Blackboard^®   enables organizations to leverage the power of video with live and on-demand collaboration within a workgroup or across their entire global enterprise.

“We are pleased to announce this expanded agreement,” said Wes Cruver, president and CEO of KZO Innovations. “The U.S. Intelligence Community is one of our most strategic markets. Working closely with In-Q-Tel has encouraged us to deliver a number of industry-leading capabilities through our Video Suite, most notably in the areas of unifying live and on-demand video and social collaboration around it, distributed production, and interoperability with other enterprise video, communication and learning systems.”

About KZO Innovations, Inc.
KZO Innovations is the leading provider of social collaboration video software. The KZO Business Video Suite is being used by fortune 500 companies and government agencies to securely Create or upload video from any computer, Share video within any CRM, LMS, web portal or as a stand-alone video & Socialize video by engaging viewers - letting them add comments, ask questions and get answers. KZO’s interoperability with leading collaboration portals and learning management systems including Salesforce and SharePoint^®, enables organizations to securely leverage the power of video with live and on-demand collaboration within a workgroup or across their entire global enterprise. Consisting of three integrated components that are compatible with major video formats including Flash and HTML5: KZO Virtual Studio, KZO Video Library and KZO Media Player. Businesses that are interested in the KZO Business Video Suite can create a free account which includes free video hosting.

Free KZO Account: www.kzoinnovations.com/express
More Information: www.kzoinnovations.com

KZO Media Contact:
Peter Monahan
Tel: 703-634-9386
press@kzoinnovations.com

About NGA
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is the nation’s primary source of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) for the Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). As a DOD combat support agency and a member of the IC, NGA provides GEOINT, in support of U.S. national security and defense, as well as disaster relief. GEOINT is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information that describes, assesses and visually depicts physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. For more information about NGA, visit www.nga.mil, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

NGA Media Contact:
Reishia Kelsey
Tel: 571-557-9014
reishia.r.kelsey@nga.mil

About IQT
In-Q-Tel is the not-for-profit, strategic investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Launched in 1999 as a private, independent organization, IQT’s mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States. Working from an evolving strategic blueprint defining the Intelligence Community’s critical technology needs, IQT engages with entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, and investors to deliver technologies that provide superior capabilities for the CIA and broader Intelligence Community. For more information, visit http://www.iqt.org.

SharePoint is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation
Blackboard is a registered trademark of Blackboard Inc.

Handbrake Quick Start Guide

If you’re looking for a quick and easy encoding solution, Handbrake is pretty clutch. It’s free and open source and will work most of the time for most of your purposes. It’s also pretty well-maintained. (Like I’ve said before, with free and open-source software, sometimes that’s the best you can hope for.) This post is a quick start guide to get you acquainted with the basics of Handbrake.

Encoding using Handbrake

HandBrake can accept almost any sort of video file you can throw at it, although with exotic fare, things can sometimes be a little rough around the edges.
-Handbrake User Manual

Handbrake is an encoder – it can’t produce video on its own. So, the first thing you’re going to need to encode a video using Handbrake is the source video itself. Use the Source button at the top left to find your source video and load it. Like the manual says, Handbrake can handle a lot of different video files, but it makes no guarantees. If you’re feeding it one of the more common formats, you should have little difficulty. It can also use a DVD as a source, which is handy.

Once you’ve found your source video, you’ll need to tell Handbrake how to encode it. Handbrake will only encode to a handful of formats – mainly Apple formats, like MPEG or MOV – but they’re modern and will work for just about any purpose.

Along the bottom of the Handbrake window, you’ll see a list of tabs. These are the encoding options. Unless you want to do something fancy like crop or resize the video, you’ll probably want to leave most of these alone. The main settings you want to look at are under the Video tab. If you’re encoding video for web (like we do!) you’ll want to adjust the Quality - or the Bitrate. You can adjust these settings however you like; however, here’s what we’ve found works best for us.

Recommended Video Encoding Settings

(Note: these are good tips for any video encoder – not just Handbrake! Here’s another useful post on Encoding for Enterprise Streaming)

- Set an Avg. Bitrate of between 300kbps and 1000kbps (1mbps).

Depending on your target audience, you can adjust this up or down. The wider the audience, or the slower the internet connection speed of your audience, the lower you’ll want to go. If you’re not sure, 400-500kbps is a pretty happy medium. Lower file sizes are better, but the lower you go, the more quality you lose.

- Turn on 2-Pass Encoding.

If you set the bitrate to Average Bitrate, that means you’re enablingVariable Bitrate Encoding. This means that Handbrake will adjust the amount of data it encodes based on what’s happening on the screen (i.e. how much data it thinks it “needs” for that frame). 2-Pass encoding will analyze the video before it encodes it, making this process more efficient. It’ll take longer, but unless time is an issue, you’ll generally want to leave this on.

- Use H.264

H.264 is an extremely common video codec that Handbrake should support natively. If you’re unsure of what codec to use, or unsure of what a codec even is, going with H.264 is a good bet.

Once you’re ready, hit the Start button and let Handbrake tick away. Depending on how long your video is, the encoding process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. It’s not unwise to test out your settings on a shorter video, before you let it run overnight.

If you’d like to read more on using Handbrake, here’s the official User Guide.

Creating Closed Captions with MAGpie

MAGpie is a free, open-source closed-captioning software created and maintained by the National Center for Accessible Media. It is not extraordinarily powerful, nor reliable. But it is free and open-source and works most of the time (with software, you can only pick two.) You can download it here.

Unfortunately, MAGpie’s documentation is woefully underwhelming (again – free and open source). However, its workflow, once you get used to it, is easy and simple to understand.

MAGpie is a nifty program – it’s half media player, half word processor. A MAGpie project consists of tracks – sequences of individual captions, with their in-times (the time they start displaying on the screen) and out-times (the times they stop). MAGpie is designed so that each track contains captions for the same video in different languages. You can even copy the exact timecodes from one track to another, if your translations are word-for-word.

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Tagged captions, cc, closed, content creation, create, magpie