YouTube Video

Uses

Adding a high quality YouTube video on your page can provide information to your audience and boost engagement.

For example:

• The Kenneth Woods Portfolio Management Program page includes a video about the program
  
• The page dedicated to honorary doctorate recipient Sheila Johnson includes a video of her speech to graduates

If you're wondering whether it's worth including a YouTube video on your page, contact your Communications Advisor for their expert advice.

Best practices

Using video

It's usually best practice to include no more than one video per page. This allows the video to have greater impact.

In some cases, you may wish to include more than one video on a page. For example:

• a How To page or training page may provide several short, sequential videos demonstrating the steps involved in a complex procedure
• a page that showcases a short series of videos, like the Concordians living with disabilities page

If you currently have 5+ videos on your page that are neither a video series nor training videos, please contact webcoord@concordia.ca to find a more effective way to present your video content.

The YouTube Video component

• This component is reserved for YouTube videos. For videos hosted on other platforms, you can use the External component or the Media Player component.
• Never upload video files such as .mp4 files directly to the DAM.
• Instead, contact Studio to request that your video be uploaded to Concordia's official YouTube channel and then obtain the YouTube link.
• In the Video ID field of the YouTube Video component, you only need to enter the last part of the YouTube link, which is the ID.
  • Example: If the YouTube link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW4BE40N1Rc, the ID is DW4BE40N1Rc

Accessibility

All Concordia videos must include captions to comply with accessibility standards as required by the Government of Quebec.

What are captions?

Captions consist of speech transcribed into text. They should also note any non-spoken sounds that may be useful for understanding context (e.g. upbeat music and cheering). Captions appear embedded at the bottom of the video, matching what's being played.

How to create captions

Services like YouTube use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions. However, automatic captions may not always be accurate due to factors like pronounciation, audio quality, etc. You should always review and edit auto-generated captions.

Creating captions by yourself or via a third-party service provider may result in a higher quality output.

Design options

When you open the YouTube Video component for editing, it may look like you have several design options. However, you actually don't need to do anything!

Descriptive title: You can ignore this field, as YouTube automatically displays the video title.

Show captions: You can also ignore this field, as it only applies to captions that have been added manually. Viewers who wish to see video captions will click on YouTube's CC button.  

Caption: This is the caption that appears under the video's thumbnail image. We almost never use a caption, partly because the text is extremely small. For example: 

Try it out!