Creating Online Video with Internet and Storage Challenges in Mind

All cloud services are seeing unprecedented usage during the COVID-19 situation.  While KU IT is working closely with all of its cloud vendors, including Kaltura and Zoom, to maintain stability, we should also consider strategies to make our content creation more successful.  These best practices for Kaltura or Zoom recording tools are more relevant now than ever:

• Break up your course content into brief mini-lecture segments (5-7 minute). Shorter videos keep your students attention.  And allows you to place activities and assessments in between videos, to encourage retention.  Of course, from a bandwidth/storage perspective, they will also upload and process faster.  
• Shorter videos are also easier to re-record for updating (due to content changes or discovered errors) or network errors (Zoom). 
• Upload your content well in advance of when your students need to view it.  Allow time for file upload, processing, and potential errors. Even when Kaltura is running smoothly, your internet service provider may have degraded service which could limit your upload speed. 
• With Kaltura Capture, consider whether you need both video inputs, or if you can use just one - webcam or screen. Recording both inputs doubles the file size, and the time it takes to upload and process your file. Consider recording a short intro video with your webcam and the rest of your lecture segments with just the screen.
• With a Kaltura media upload or Kaltura Capture recording, once your upload is complete you can move on to different tasks with your browser.  You don't have to stay on Kaltura pages.  Your video will not be available immediately.  It will convert and transcode, before being playable.  This work is server-side processing, which means it's doing that work on the Kaltura server and not on your computer (or with your internet connection).
• Plan so that you won't need your content delivered to students on the same day as your upload/recording.  Using overnight hours for conversion/transcoding (on the Kaltura server) would allow you to move on to other work, and not be anxious about completion.