If you create and sell online courses, it’s very likely that you’ll need to include videos in your course materials. Video is the closest thing we have in the online learning environment to a real human interaction, because you get both audio and visual connection with your students. But there are some pitfalls to be aware of when choosing how to host videos for your online courses.
In this LMScast podcast episode Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discuss hosting your LMS videos on Wistia or Vimeo versus using YouTube. While you can post videos on YouTube for free, it is possible for people to share the links to your YouTube videos, even if you lock the videos. And it’s even possible for people to embed your videos on other websites.
If you want to be a pro with your LMS courses and be able to charge premium pricing, you should consider using a premium video hosting service. It’s important to keep in mind the speed of your website, protecting your video content, and the mobile responsiveness of your videos.
Joshua and Chris also explain how to embed video in your WordPress LMS using oEmbed and video foam if you’re using Wistia for video hosting.
Most people have a fear of being on camera when they first start recording videos for their online course. They think they need to have the perfect lighting and the perfect video. But if you just get over the fear and go for it, the connections you can have with your community can be profound.
With the lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin, it’s easy to use videos to enhance your online course lessons so you can build a better connection with your users.
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And if you’re an already successful expert, teacher or entrepreneur looking to grow, check out the LifterLMS team’s signature service called Boost. It’s a complete done for you set up service where your learning platform goes live in just 5 days.
Episode Transcript
Joshua Millage: Hello everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode, and today we’re talking about video hosting and specifically how you use video hosting in your WordPress LMS. I am Joshua Millage. I’m joined with Christopher Badgett and Chris, help me answer this question, Man. How do we host video in our LMS systems?
Chris Badgett: It’s a great question. There’s so many options out there and there’s a couple landmines you want to avoid when you start working with video on a website. To go directly to the answer of how to use video in your WordPress LMS system, I would say the best thing you can do is use a Vimeo or Wistia paid video hosting account. Those usually work out to something like a couple hundred bucks a year and with a certain amount of terabyte of videos or whatever.
Joshua Millage: Why? I don’t understand. Why can’t I just use YouTube?
Chris Badgett: That’s a great question. When people started out they first started trying to do it YouTube, and you think you’re kind of clever when you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to unlist it on YouTube so people can’t find it. Then I’ll invent a new site,” which you can do and I do recommend that if you’re going for that absolute, cheapest possible way to do it. But what ends up happening is people can share your videos. If somebody gets ahold of a link, they can put it somewhere else and embed it somewhere else and so on.
Joshua Millage: Right.
Chris Badgett: It’s really … if you want to be pro and you want to charge premium pricing, you need to have premium video hosting. If you don’t want your site to slow down or have to spend a crazy amount of money on your web hosting plan or on a development team to create a responsive mobile-friendly video player for your lessons …
Joshua Millage: Um-hmm. (affirmative)
Chris Badgett: … you just want to use one of the premium video hosting services. You can embed the videos right in your lessons. You can also restrict it and say, “Only allow these videos to be played on my website.” Now you’re protected. They’re fast, they’re mobile responsive and they work great.
Joshua Millage: That’s awesome. When you grab the video, you’ve uploaded it to the system, how do I get it into the LMS system? What do I do?
Chris Badgett: There’s different ways to do it. With lifterLMS the WordPress learning management system plugin that we created, we actually have a featured media box where you can drop in a Vimeo or Wistia or YouTube embed code, and it’ll automatically put that video at the top of the lesson. But you can also just put it at the top of the lesson. When I say put it, what you’re doing is you’re embedding it. When you go to one of these hosts like Vimeo or Wistia or YouTube, they have a share button and you can grab it. What you’re going for is the embed code.
There’s a nuance there. With certain really popular services like YouTube and even Vimeo, even Vimeo PRO, there’s a new thing that’s happening inside of WordPress itself called oEmbed where all you have to do is put the video link, the URL, and it’ll take care of all of it for you. Put it in there, put it inside the container you put it in or the column or whatever, and then it’ll compress nicely on mobile devices and so on.
That’s not available for Wistia so if you go to Wistia, you just want to grab the Wistia embed code, and they actually give you all these different types of embed code options from Wistia like iframe and this other thing called video foam. What you actually need if you are a Wistia user, is you want the iframe embed code and you want the video foam option turned on, which helps with the mobile responsiveness.
Joshua Millage: Wow! That’s helpful, Man. Cool! Well, this is like kind of a punchy, quick hit video because I think this is a question that a lot of people ask and you just kind of dialed that all in for me. I’ve learned a lot. Is there anything in closing that you’d want people to understand about video?
Chris Badgett: Sure. Two final points is that video is the closest thing we have in on-line learning environment to like a real human interaction because you get the audio and visual elements.
Joshua Millage: Right.
Chris Badgett: You could charge more for it. Your people build rapport and trust quicker with it so that’s one thing I encourage people to use video in their LMS. The other thing is there’s always, especially if you’re a first time getting used to being on camera, there’s often this fear of being on video that’s important just to get over and get past. That fear sometimes gets assigned to, “Oh, I’ve got to have the perfect video setup with perfect lighting and so on, or perfect sound.” Just get started. It’s just natural. Everybody goes through it. “Oh, I’m going to put my face on there and all this stuff.” But once you get through it and you open the door to what’s possible with video, the connections you can have with your community can be profound.
Joshua Millage: That’s awesome!. Great tips for today, Chris. Thank you so much, Man, and until next episode, we’ll talk to y’all soon.
