During the sixth annual Technology CMO Roundtable trends in technology and marketing were discussed. Specifically, the results of a White Paper by the Arketi Group which stated that “video is one of the most powerful channels for reaching key audiences.”

The report stated that:

-           Content is all about conversion – You should not just “put content and articles out there but [to] make sure you’ve got a tight framework. Otherwise, yours is just more noise in the marketplace,” the report concluded.

-          Video is a powerful, relevant channel for reaching key audiences - Tech marketers said video’s value lies in its ability to help optimize organic search and offer instructional content, thought leadership and testimonials.

Video is leading in the technology markets. 90% of participants in the Arketi roundtable planned to invest more into video marketing efforts. With the KZO Video Suite, enterprises have the opportunity to inexpensively make quality videos for use on internal social learning sites. Additionally, organizations can use the Suite to make videos for their external blogs and websites. 

In this week’s Quick Tip, I would like to draw attention to an overlooked aspect of the KZO Video Suite. Most enterprises, big and small, use some sort of Learning Management System for organizational education. Stratega, SAP, Moodle and Blackboard – are some of the well known LMS just to name a few for you. With the KZO Video Suite, administrators have the ability to authenticate with an LMS to add another element to the enterprise’s education strategy.

Inherently, these systems do not have a native video application integrated into them. This is where KZO Innovations can help enterprises succeed. Embed the KZO Video Suite portal into your LMS so, that employees can use it to view On-Demand video, create presentations and use the system’s social video learning elements.

A course creator can even generate a  list of activities using the SCORM  plug-in centered around a learning video in the Suite. This way, enterprises can track which employees have completed assigned training videos. If you are using the Suite and an LMS at your organization, I’d suggest looking into integrating the two together for a conjoined learning experience. And if you aren’t using video in your LMS, I’d suggest taking a look at a solution like the KZO Video Suite which will allow you to integrate video into your learning initiatives.

Andrew Hauser is the Technical Account Manager at KZO Innovations.

One great solution is KZO Innovations own KZO Presenter tool, which is part of the KZO Video Suite. It allows you to quickly and easily capture video from your webcam or desktop. But this tool isn’t always the right one for the job. Sometimes you need a program that is a little more robust, that can produce a more polished screen capture. For instance if you need to send a product demonstration to a client or produce a training video on a web application for new hires.

That is where we turn to Screen2Avi. I’ve written a Quick Tip about this product before, but I felt a more in depth post would be useful. Watch the video below to see an example of what we’ll be accomplishing in this tutorial.

*Note: For Mac users, Quicktime is still the best program for a quick screen capture.

Download and Installation

First, download Screen2Avi from their website. They have a number of different mirrors for their software, pick one that says “Latest INSTALLABLE version.” Unless you are planning on running this off a thumbdrive, in which case you would want the PORTABLE version.

After downloading Screen2Avi and installing it, we’ll need a video codec that will give us a good quality video, while keeping a small file size. For this we turn to the XVID codec. We’ve done a few blogs on Codecs in the past. But the gist is that a codec is how we compress the video file from a large raw state, to a smaller manageable size, while trying to retain the highest quality possible. I’ve tried a bunch of different codecs, and found XVID to be the best trade off on quality and size.

Thankfully installing XVID is short and easy. Once both the program and codec are installed, it’s time to get our screen capture tool set up.

Setting up Screen2Avi

As the program opens up we are greeted with this page.

You’ll notice the green box on the screen. This is because Screen2Avi starts with a pre-defined region of the screen that it will capture. If you only want to capture part of the screen, this is acceptable. But most of the time you want to capture the whole screen. To change it, simply click on the fullscreen tick mark.

Next we’ll need to tell the program to use our new codec. Click on the Video tab and there will be a codec dropdown list. Near the bottom should be our XVID codec. *Note: If you don’t see the codec, close and reopen Screen2Avi.

Once you have done this click the FPS drop down and change it to 30. This will give us the smoothest video for our screen capture. You can make the file size smaller by keeping the FPS at the default 25 or even drop it lower. Personally I’d rather sacrifice a little bit of size for a better quality video.

*Note: If you are having issues with the video being sped up (e.g. 2x or 3x as fast) try lowering the FPS to 20 or 15. As always, you should do a few test recordings before any big project.

Once you change the setting it will alert you to restart the program so the changes can take affect. Simply close and then reopen Screen2Avi, all your settings should be saved.

Recording Your Video

This part is the easiest. Simply click the red button up at the top of the window, the program will minimize and another small window will pop up. Simply minimize this window (it’s there to tell you stats about how the codec is working). Your screen capture is now running and whatever is happening on your desktop is being recorded!

To stop, hit the square stop button that has replaced the red record button. Once you are done and have stopped the recording, the file will be saved to the location specified in Screen2Avi under the General tab. The default will be something like this:

C:\Program Files\Screen2Avi\Output\Screencasts\

Conclusion

That’s all there is to know! Now you have a nice, free, simple tool that can capture video of your desktop.  I’d recommend the KZO Presenter if you’re looking for a more robust tool that can capture video from a Webcam or desktop. KZO Presenter allows uploading of existing videos and presentations. If you’d like more information on this or any of the KZO products, don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below.

The KZO Video Suite offers features that are in high demand by users according to previous research from Aragon, “In a survey that Aragon Research conducted in 2012, one of the most requested learning features was the ability to do more with video. As the demand for simple video tutorials grow, learning vendors will need to respond. With KZO, Peoplefluent can appeal to business owners or learning and development managers who want to create video tutorials.”

Mr. Lundy cited the video collaboration capabilities of KZO Innovations Video Suite, “The video collaboration capabilities could be game changers. KZO lets users collaborate with each other at multiple points in a video. For example, when they play back a video, they can tag it with comments at any point where they choose. It is important to note that this capability is available now.”

Aragon Research concluded that enterprises should develop a plan for video collaboration. Additionally, Organizations should prepare for the growth of video-enabled business applications (VEBAs).

You may read the summary from Aragon Research on their site.

With The KZO Suite, all search results are driven through the access control lists. A system administrator can set the controls on the Suite so, that users can’t discover videos which they do not have permission to see through search results. This way they will only find search results that display content which the administrator has given them permission to view. Enterprises can and should use this option to their benefit. KZO Video Suite’s search function will only bring back results on metadata, video (titles, chapters, descriptions), threaded discussions (collaboration) around the video, associated closed captions if available and even text on accompanying slides.

The search results around chapters, threaded discussions, closed captions and text on slides is all time based. Time based means the user can easily jump into the part of the video in which the search term is used. After reading today’s tip, readers will be inspired to use the robust search capability of the KZO Video Suite. In the coming months, users should be on the lookout for a new feature in the KZO Suite where administrators can embed KZO search results in any webpage.

Notably, Pierre has 15 years of combined experience as a corporate leader and a mentor. He has a Master’s degree in Human Resources.  He is the author of the book “Simple Intelligence G.O. (Get Optimistic)” which is about personal development.

In the webinar, Pierre extolled the value of being authentic. Many leaders are afraid to use video to disseminate knowledge because they are afraid of how they look on camera. But, he explained leaders should work with their flaws to create a sense of authenticity that will resonate with their audience. It is also important to stay on message – Pierre called it “staying on purpose.” A speaker can never really lose their way on camera if they are prepared to give their message. Any small mistakes or flubs just add to the speaker’s authenticity. Pierre noted especially how useful video is for knowledge management.

Knowledge management is an asset any company can manage with enterprise video as a tool. Video on-demand allows for easy capturing, sharing and dissemination of information. The KZO Video Suite, as an example, is useful in communicating previous employees’ experiences to new employees.

If you missed Pierre’s presentation on “Leading and Coaching Through Video On-Demand,” you can still see the whole webinar. It is posted on KZO Innovations’ website on-demand.

In each section, we outline the basic steps and key elements needed to accomplish each part of the process. We hope you enjoy this infographic and use it to plan your next enterprise video. Feel free to share this infographic with anyone who can benefit from this information.

Feel free to send me your feedback on the infographic

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<a href="http://kzoinnovations.com/2013/05/02/how-to-make-a-quality-business-video-infographic/"><img alt="How To Make A Quality Business Video (Infographic) from KZO Innovations" src="http://kzoinnovations.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/KZOinnovation-5-1-2013.png" width="600" height="2086" border="0" /></a> Presented By KZO Innovations, <a href="http://kzoinnovations.com/">online video platform</a>

Comment Moderation is specifically the process where an actual person looks over each comment in a queue before it is posted to a website page.

Consider the following reasons and potential drawbacks:

Reasons for content moderation

1. 1.       Keeps Conversations Topical – moderating comments allows you to keep your audience focused solely on the message being delivered and helps eliminate any distractions.
2. 2.       Allows Time for Accurate and Informative Responses – an often overlooked benefit of moderating comments is that the Subject Matter Expert (SME) has time to prepare an accurate and informative answer.
3. 3.       Controls Negativity – this of course is the largest foreseen benefit for moderating comments as once again it will ensure your entire audience is only focused on the message you’ve delivered and not distracted by detractors. Keep control of the conversation!

Drawbacks to comment moderation

1. 1.       Intimidates Viewers and Participants – much like how pay walls in digital news have pushed away perspective readers to find other sources of information, using a comment moderation tool might turn off users who submit comments and have them rejected.
2. 2.       Limits Opportunity for Information Sharing– making yourself accessible to your audience via comments provides the SME the opportunity to learn from their audience to get their feedback. Additionally, individual users can get inspiration from these exchanges which will lead to the material spawning new ideas.
3. 3.       Added Labor – comment moderation requires the extra step where a staff member or volunteer has to look over the comment. After the comment is considered and deemed acceptable then it is published to the site. Some organizations may not want to take the required extra step for an actual person to look over the comments.

The decision to moderate comments is almost never black and white. There are positive reasons as well as drawbacks to comment moderation which each content creator must carefully weigh when using current technology. Moderating comments protect content producers’ messages from negative attacks; however, moderating the content could prevent inspiration. And the opportunity for an organization to be a thought leader is a huge motivator for producing content. Ultimately, you will have to gauge whether to use comment moderation based on your message, audience, and method of delivery.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, and it is a way of describing the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. It’s most common application is to style web pages written in HTML. This gives us a lot of options when we are looking at how to integrate our KZO Suite with an existing site.

The native KZO Suite

We designed it to be clean and simple, something that would natively go well with any existing platform. But some customers want to take the integration a step further, and CSS is one way to do that.

The IAFF KZO Suite

This example is a KZO customer who chose to style their Suite to match their homepage. They also used single sign-on to make the transition from their website to our Video Suite as seamless as possible. 

An Example KZO Suite

But that’s not all you can do! With CSS you can hide or display elements as you want, with only a few lines of code. The above example has the sidebar hidden as well as stylistic changes to match with their LMS. It is another example of how you can customize the KZO Video Suite to fit your needs.

KZO Suite Admin Page

Adding CSS styling to your KZO Suite is also very easy. Simply go to the admin section of your platform, and there will be a section called Edit Site Style Sheet. This allows you to change the styling of your platform, all within the browser.

CSS is only one of the many customization and integration options that that KZO Video Suite provides. If you would like to learn more, contact us, or leave a comment below!

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The native KZO Suite

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The IAFF KZO Suite

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An Example KZO Suite

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KZO Suite Admin Page

To read more click here.