Publishing Videos
Jump to a section: About | Best Practices | How to Upload Videos | Image Releases | Ensuring Compliance
About
We want to showcase the great video you are producing that helps Virginia Tech showcase the incredible research, learning, students, faculty, and staff taking place on campus with a much broader community. Videos produced by the Visual Team in Communications and Marketing, as well as content creators across the university, should be published on the university platform, Kaltura, so they can be amplified to Virginia Tech News and shared by the broader community.
Publishing Content
Step-by-step instructions for uploading a video can be found in the section below and downloaded as a PDF here.
Anyone with access to Kaltura (video.vt.edu) who uploads video for approval to be published to Virginia Tech News should keep in mind the following best practices for publication:
Lower Thirds
Lower thirds, also known as CGs (from character generators) or chyrons shall be used to identify who is speaking in a video and should include his/her/their title.
Virginia Tech titles can vary in words and length; however lower thirds should be appropriately casual and give viewers context on the interview subject while not being a distraction through excessive text. Excessively long titles make chyrons too small to be legible and require mobile viewers to “pinch to read.”
For example, in lieu of writing “Suzie Snowden, Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of All things Lower Thirds,” write, Suzie Snowden, Professor. Full titles can be added in the video description as needed. The Visual Team should ensure titles, while brief, are accurate.
Virginia Tech alumni should be identified by the alumni’s year of graduation. Example: Suzie Snowden ’19
Current students should not be identified by their expected graduation but simply as students. Example: Suzie Snowden/Student
With few exceptions, lower thirds should be kept to two lines. All lower thirds shall be in the brand fonts.
Bug
The Virginia Tech “bug,” which is a Virginia Tech branded logo, should be in the upper right corner of each video.
Outro Card
The Virginia Tech outro card, which consists of a branded white Virginia Tech logo should be used at the end of each video. Exceptions may be made, and special graphics provided for University Special Events such as Commencement or Campaigns.
- The branded graphic assets for video production can be found here. (PID login required)
Closed Captioning
Captions should be closed, not open. Closed captions can be turned off by the viewer whereas open captions (burned-in) are always in view and cannot be turned off. From an accessibility standpoint, open captions do not give the end user the ability to adjust the size, color, background, position on the screen, etc. Additionally, Kaltura provides captioning, therefore, burned-in captions will overlap the closed captions on the platform.
Contact
Any questions about video requirements or publishing can be sent to Megan Zalecki, production and content manager, at meganz@vt.edu.
How to Upload a Video to video.vt.edu for use on Virginia Tech News
These instructions are for uploading a video to video.vt.edu for approval to be published to Virginia Tech News and the Daily Email.
1. At the top of the home page at video.vt.edu, log in using your PID by clicking on “Guest” in the upper right-hand corner, then select “Login.”
2. Once logged in, an option will now display in the top bar called “AddNew.” Click this, then select “Media Upload.”
3. Clicking “Media Upload” will take you to an upload page. Select“Choose a file to upload,” then select your video file.
4. When you’ve selected a video, it will automatically begin uploading. The file name will automatically populate as the title of the video. Please give the video a branded headline, then enter description text. If copying and pasting the description text, remove any formatting before pasting it into the description box.
Then, add keyword tags. This is a manual process. Refer to the Virginia Tech News tag reference for category tags. There are five category tags: Campus Experience, Academics, Research, Culture, and Impact. Only one of these category tags can be used for Virginia Tech News to identify and pull the video from Kaltura, but you are also encouraged to add other topical tags from the tag reference. See the Virginia Tech News Guide for additional information.
Paste the keyword, then hit “enter” to officially add the keyword. When adding keywords, think of how a viewer would search for your content — who is the video subject, where is the footage taking place, to which college is this content connected, what is the event, any university initiatives? Example: A good set of keywords for a Commencement video: Commencement; Student Life; Academics; Lane Stadium
5. You will not need to add information to the “College,” “Department,” “Section,” “Terms,” or “Location” fields on Kaltura. These are for classroom/academic use.
6. Scroll down to the “Add Collaborator” button. In order for your video to be approved, you will need to add Megan Zalecki (meganz), Donna Meese (dmeese1), and John Jackson (johnj1) as collaborators.
Add each individual, then select “Co-Editor,” “Co-Publisher,” and "Co-Viewer."
8. Save the video as “Private” in order to apply the information you’ve just entered.
9. Request captions. This step must happen before publishing the video in order to meet accessibility standards. In order to request captions, navigate to your video saved in your “My Media” list. Click “Actions,” then click “Caption & Enrich."
9. This will take you to the caption ordering page. Select the language and click "Submit."
10. Captions will be applied automatically. Please note: captions will need to be proofread and corrected before the video can be published.
11. Once captions are applied, go back to “My Media,” select the video, then select "Actions", then "Caption & Enrich."
12. Click the pencil icon that now displays next to your caption request. This will take you to the Closed Captions Editor page, where you can edit your captions and timestamps line by line.
13. Once you have clicked save and the changes are applied, you will now be able to select “publish” in order to submit it for approval. Click “publish,” then select the University Relations channel.
* NOTE: if you do not see the University Relations channel as a publishing option, please contact Megan Zalecki at meganz@vt.edu.
14. Your video is now pending approval.
Ensuring Compliance in Videos
Videography should be done in a manner that does not run afoul of privacy, safety, and research-subject compliance.
- For OSHA compliance guidance (for facilities, worksites, etc.), contact Meghan Marsh (meghanmarsh@vt.edu).
- For research compliance guidance (for depicting animals, laboratory settings, etc.), contact Lindsey Haugh (jangus@vt.edu).
- For use of drones to obtain videos, refer to the Drone Policy.