Video Shareouts 101: Utilizing the Playlist Builder and Editor

Transcript

Karen:

Hi there. I'm Karen Eisenhauer and I'm an original research lead here at dscout. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how to use our Playlist Builder and Editor. We'll be taking you through the entire process, from compiling data, to organizing and editing, all the way through to exporting and sharing. By the end of this tutorial, you'll be fully equipped to start using the Playlist Editor and turn your video data into compelling, stakeholder ready stories.

Before we jump in, let's start with why you might want to build a playlist. Video data is one of the most powerful storytelling tools for user researchers. It's visually interesting, easy to socialize as standalone pieces, and nothing really compares to it in terms of building empathy for your user's experiences.

There are a lot of different ways you could leverage video data in your deliverables. Trimming together reels can drive home a key theme to your stakeholders, or socialize an introductory look at a larger suite of insights. Individual videos trimmed down to their highlight moments can be excellent embedded data in larger deliverables. It can punch up what otherwise would just be another verbatim on a page or lend new context to your quant. You could also trim together multiple videos from a single scout and really bring their journey to life in their own words. I'll often use videos for all these purposes within a single project. You can really let your creativity shine with how you deploy video data in your storytelling, especially since dscout makes it really easy and accessible to play around with your video in platform.

With that, let's shift to where we can actually find the Playlist tool in dscout. The Playlist Builder and Editor is available across all of dscout's tools. In Diary Express and Recruit, the Playlist Editor is found in the upper left hand corner among our other data views. For Live, the Playlist Editor is labeled Clips and Playlists, and is available in the top of the sessions page. For this video, I'll be walking you through how to create a reel of multiple videos here in the diary tool. But the process of editing media will be the same regardless of where in the platform you're working.

The first thing you'll need to do is select media for your playlist. When you navigate to the Playlist Builder, you'll see all the videos in your mission available for selection. Any video captured in a dscout mission from moments to mobile selfies to web videos and screen recordings can be added to the playlist together.

Select the ones you like and click save as playlist. You can also access previously made playlists here in the sidebar. If this view is overwhelming, you can try filtering down to specific videos you're looking for, using the part and question filters. Or just do what I do, which is to tag your desired videos ahead of time, filter to the exact group you're looking for, and add all from there.

Saving the playlist takes me to the Playlist Editor. Here I can give my playlist a name and begin to fine tune my media. Once I'm in the Editor the first thing I like to do is organize the order of my clips. I can do that either in the timeline by dragging and dropping blue bars left and right. Or I can arrange it in the viewer here at the left, by dragging and dropping up and down.

Sometimes I'm not sure which videos I'll end up using so I err on the side of adding more and relying on the hide feature, which will temporarily remove these clips from the Editor. That way I can experiment and fine tune without worrying about having to delete and re-add my media later.

For longer reels with multiple themes, I also like to create title slides. These can help guide the viewer and orient them to different parts of my story. To add a title card, I simply click the plus button between videos. From there I can add a title, add a subtitle, and adjust the font and alignment until it's to my liking. I can also edit the length of the card away from its standard five seconds. I personally prefer three. Once they're created, I can move the title cards around like any other media. The text is also re-editable at any time.

With my media arranged roughly how I'd like it, I can begin looking at the individual videos and adjusting them as needed. Again, I can do this in a few different ways. I can use the marker and the timeline to split clips, or edit beginning and end points. There are also keyboard shortcuts to make this process more efficient. The transcript is also interactive and responds if I click to a particular point. I can also click and drag in the transcript to change my approximate in and out points, which I can then fine tune. If I want to fine tune and clip even further, I can use the slider to zoom in on a transition. There are a few other things I can control on a video by video basis. I can rotate or flip the media to make sure it's maximally legible and I can display the Scout's name at the beginning of their video.

Okay, now that my videos are all organized and adjusted, I can fine tune settings for the entire highlight reel. I can adjust these in the playlist settings tab in the editor. They will affect all of the media in my playlist at once. Dark theme will allow you to change the color of the background, the fade, and the title cards between white and black. Leveling audio will bring all your Scouts to a similar adjusted volume, which helps to equalize sound quality between the loud Scouts who are recording in traffic or on the street and the quiet Scouts recording in their home. Fade will add a short fade to black transition between your media. And aspect ratio will change the dimensions of your playlist container between four by three, which is better for mobile video, and 16 by nine, which is better for desktop.

This playlist is now ready to share. The first step in my process will be to render the video, which saves my edits and converts the separate edited files into a single shareable one. Your playlists are only shareable in rendered form. Note here that your editing will be disabled during this process. Also, if you make any other changes later, you'll have to re-render the video to get a shareable copy of your most updated version.

Now that my render's complete, I'm ready to put it in front of other people. I have several options. I can click the share button, which will generate a public share link. Recipients of this link will be taken to a custom protected page hosting my video. For data security I can also set a password for the link, and an expiration date, after which the link will no longer be functional. With our Slack channel integration, I can also push my share link directly to my team, with an optional note attached. Alternatively, I can also download the reel directly as an MP4 file by clicking on the download button.

And that's it. Now you know everything you need to about how to build, edit, and share video playlists for your stakeholders. To learn more about the Playlist Editor, contact your account team.