Are you on a Mac? Are you looking for a straightforward, inexpensive way to create learning videos for your online course or flipped classroom? Then say hello to Apple Keynote. Keynote is presentation authoring software that comes bundled for free with new Mac computers. But there are a couple of features under the hood of Keynote that make it a capable video creation tool. Here we are in Keynote. This is version 7.0.5. So, this is the main editing interface of Keynote, where you would build your slides with images and text and shapes. I've put together a few slides, here, to use as content for our demo. So, say I want to take this amazing presentation I put together and share it with my audience or my learners as a video. Well, we can do that from right within Keynote. First, we go up to the top menu and select 'Play.' Now, the item we want in this menu is 'Record Slideshow.' We hit that, and we're taken to Keynotes slideshow recording interface. This is where the video creation magic happens, well part of it, at least. Let me give you a quick rundown of the interface. This big window on the left shows the current slide in the presentation. The smaller window to the right shows the next slide up. It also indicates how many builds, or animations are on that particular slide. This button on the left labeled 'Show Navigator' If we click that it allows you to jump back and forth between the slides in your presentation on the fly if need be. We'll go back to our first one and we'll just close this. Now, down at the bottom you can see here this level indicator. This is the microphone level indicator. That's right, Keynote allows you to record narration with your slideshow. Now, you'll notice there's no controls to set the microphone level. To adjust your microphone level you need to go to your Mac's system preferences I'll quickly show you how to do that. First, we'll close out the recording interface by clicking this 'X.' And then we'll go over to the 'apple' item on the top menu. Select that and then we'll select 'System Preferences.' We'll go over to 'Sound' and then to the 'Input' tab. This shows your microphones that are connected to your computer. So, you connect, or rather, select the microphone you're using and you can select, or adjust, rather, the volume down here. So, let's close out of the 'System Preferences' and head back to our recording interface on Keynote by hitting 'Play' and 'Record Slideshow' again. Now, down here, beside the 'Microphone Level Indicator' we have some controls. We have a 'Rewind' button, a 'Play' button and the 'Record Button' the big red button. You hit the record button to start recording your slideshow. Let me show you real quick. I'll just record a little bit of my demo presentation. So, I'll hit this 'Record' button. I'll get this big countdown, and then I will just advance through my slides using the 'Forward Arrow' key on my keyboard, and I'll narrate as I go. Do you want to take your photography to the next level? Then you need to learn from the pros. And in this video I'm going to share with you five tips from photography pros. Let's get started. Pro tip number one, 'Think ahead.' Think about what kind of photo you want to create and how you're going to create it. Great images are rarely created on the fly. Some kind of planning goes into them. Our next pro tip, tip number two, 'Get down.' And I don't mean dancing. Shoot at the eye level of your subject to bring us into their world, be it children, or your pets, to really give us a sense of their perspective. Makes for a much more engaging image. Okay, I'm gonna stop the presentation here, and I'll do that by hitting 'Record' again. Keynote has recorded and saved my slideshow recording, including my narration, internally within the Keynote project file, and the recording is represented by this blue timeline down here. You can play back your slideshow by hitting the 'Rewind' button then hitting the 'Play' button. Let's do that. Let's just play this back, rewind and play. "And I will just advance through my slides using the forward arrow key on my keyboard and I'll narrate as I go. Do you want to take your photography to the next level? Then you need to learn from the pros. And in this video, I'm going to share with you five tips from photography pros. Let's get started." Okay, I'll just pause that. We can see that we do in fact have a recording, here, on the timeline. Now, you can scrub through the timeline of your recorded slideshow using this playhead, here. And this will scrub through and advance, so you get a sense of what you've recorded. If you'd like to review your recorded slideshow fullscreen what you need to do is you close out of the recording interface by hitting the 'X' here. Then we're going to go back up to the top menu to the 'Play' item. Click that and select 'Play Recorded Slideshow.' So, let's hit that and see what happens. "...and I will just advance through my slides using the forward arrow key on my keyboard and I'll narrate as I go. Do you want to take your photography to the next level? Then you need to learn from the pros. And in this video I'm going to share with you five tips from photography pros. Let's get started." Okay, I'm just going to hit the 'Escape' key to get out of that. So, that was our recorded slideshow with the narration. Now, the other option on the 'Play' menu, we'll just go back up here and see, is 'Clear Recording.' Now, you click this if you want to trash your recording and start over. Wait a second Mike, what if i get near the end of recording a really long slide show and I make a mistake and I want to fix it. Does that mean I have to re-record the entire slideshow from the beginning? Well, thankfully no. Keynote gives you the ability to go back to a spot in your recorded slideshow and re-record. Let's hop back into the 'Recording' interface and I'll show you what I mean. Let's go back to the 'Recording' interface by selecting 'Record Slideshow.' Now, to re-record a section of your presentation you would grab the playhead and move it back and, say, okay, maybe I wanted to change how I presented this slide coming in. Now, you'll notice these little tick marks on the timeline. These little light tick marks indicate the transition between the individual slides. So, once you find the point where you want to start re-recording, what you would do is you would hit, let's say we'll go in here, right before, here. Hit 'Record.' Now, you'll get this big warning: 'Are you sure you want to re-record from the current location? The recording from here to the end will be replaced.' So, everything from this point in the timeline, on, will be erased and recorded over, just so you know. So, if you choose 'Record' you'll get a countdown and Keynote will start recording over your old stuff with the new stuff. We'll cancel out of that. It'd be nice if you could set an out point on the timeline for your re-record, instead of having to blow away the rest of your recording just to fix a specific spot. Well, maybe in the next version. However, what you can do is drag the playhead to the end of your timeline and record on from there, adding to your recording. So, if you need to create a long presentation you don't have to record the entire thing all in one take, or one session. You can stop, save your file, and continue recording from where you left off, later. But this awesome recording you just created isn't much use if you can't share it with your audience or your learner's, right? We need to take this recording and turn it into a video file. To export your slideshow recording as a video we need to close out of the recording interface by hitting the 'X' up here. Then you'll head over to 'File, Export To Quicktime' and you'll get this export panel. And you'll want to make sure in this 'Playback' area that 'Slideshow Recording' is selected, so that we export the recording that you created. Now, you'll also notice that we have some settings to take care of. In the format area, here, you have a choice of exporting your slideshow as a '720p' resolution high-definition video file, or you can also select a '1080p' resolution HD video file, or you can pick a custom set of settings, depending on what your final destination is. We're going to go back and select '720p' because that'll work for our purposes. After you select your export settings, you select 'Next' and then you'll set a location on your machine to export your video file. In this case I think I'll just put it to the desktop. Then hit 'Export' and your movie file is created. I love keynote, but it's not going to replace dedicated video-editing or animation software. However, if you're looking for a quick, barebones way to create lecture-style videos on a Mac, then Keynote may be all that you need. If you want to create high-quality learning videos with maximum flexibility then you're going to need a few more tools in your toolbox, in addition to Keynote. Now, if you want to know the tools that I suggest then download my Video Learning Toolkit Resource List. You can grab that right now by hitting the link on the screen, or the link in the description, below. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you next time.
