Using VideoScribe for Animation

Why Videoscribe? And more generally, why an animation video at all?

Consider your goals. If your goal is to illustrate a concept much like you would using a whiteboard, Videoscribe may be useful for you. The presentation is very similar to Prezi in its ability to zoom in on detail and zoom out to show the big picture.

Consider your budget. VideoScribe is freely available to any UBC staff, faculty, and student who has access to Connect.

Registering for Videoscribe via Connect:

1. Log onto your Connect homepage, click on the “Resources” tab near the top right. Complete the registration process for Videoscribe on the screen provided.

2. It takes several seconds to complete the operation so you will likely see “Registering…” first while it is processing. You should receive a confirmation email requiring you to activate your account, once you have registered successfully.

If you have any problems with the registration process, please contact support at lt.hub@ubc.ca.

Our experience?

It takes time to learn the software and experiment but once that’s done and you’ve established your workflow you can begin to produce videos very quickly. For the Academic Model videos, the first video took about 6 hours to produce (2 people working at the same time), after that we were able to create a 2-4 minute video in 2.5-4 hours (also 2 people working at the same time) provided a good script and storyboard was ready. So although one of the biggest concerns at first was the time it would take to produce a series of videos, once we got the hang of it, a lot of time was saved and the easier it got (allowing us to get more creative!).

Take-away tips for Your VideoScribe Project:

1. Pre-record audio apart from VideoScribe (mp3), then break down script into sections so you can match audio with the visuals in VideoScribe. To save time in matching audio to visuals use your sections. See how long the pre-recorded audio narration is for a section and you can use this to calculate the total time of your animation in VideoScribe. This way you can ensure that your visual and audios roughly match instead of painstakingly going through to align everything in VideoScribe (this helps because there is no Audio timeline in VideoScribe).
2. Start with a good script, then worry about visuals. Once you have a great script you can be creative in a variety of ways to visually match the script (icons, images, etc.).

Examples

UBC’s Med IT

60 Seconds on Hospital Safety in About 120 Seconds from UBC MedIT on Vimeo.

UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology

Backward Design Process

Enrolment Services: SASI Project

Resources:

• Video tutorials for getting started with VideoScribe
• VideoScribe Troubleshooting forum