Queen Mary, University of London

Using the Flip Camera to make online videos in Blackboard

What you will need:

  1. An audio/video recorder – such as a Flip camera (available in the ELU)
  2. Editing and Conversion software – such as iMovie and iSquint (available in the ELU) or jaycut.com (available online) *
  3. A media host account – such as YouTube or Screencast (available online)
  4. A Blackboard course area (available through the ELU) *

* Not required, but helpful

Step 1 – Record your Video

It is easy to record and get video using a Flip camera (which you can borrow from the ELU). The following steps were adapted from the Flip Camera’s website:

  1. Turn it on and press the red button to start/stop recording.
  2. Record.
  3. Connect camera to computer (slide switch on the side of camera to pop the USB connector out). For PC users, navigate to ‘My Computer’; go to FlipVideo Drive, then DCIM folder to get video.

Flip Camera Instructions

Step 2 – Edit your Video

This step is not required, but helpful.

Using iSquint and iMovie (both available in the E-Learning Studio) you can compress and edit your video. Compressing your video file in iSquint is very easy and makes your video iPod compatible. There are other options for editing videos, such as Jaycut.com which offers free online editing options. (You can read our article about Jaycut here).

  1. Open iSquint and simply drag your movie file into the iSquint screen.
  2. Click the Start button.
  3. Depending on your video size, the conversion should take a few minutes.
  4. In the example below, my video file was compressed and went from 54.3MB to 5MB

Converting with iSquint

If you would like to make edits, you can open your video in iMovie (or jaycut.com) where you can remove sections of your video, as well as add text and/or animation.


Step 3 – Share your Video

Next, you will need to have a media hosting account – such as YouTube or Screencast (read our comparison blog here). Screencast allows you to set privacy and authentication rights to your recordings, and decide who you want to share your recordings with.

A basic Screencast account is free (2GB space). £7.50/month or £73.50/year gives 25GB of space.

  1. Log into Screencast and click Upload Content (create a free account if you don’t have one)
  2. Browse for your video recording and upload into Screencast
  3. Once the upload is complete, click the Close button

Upload to Screencast

Your video will be in the My Library root folder (you can move your videos into folders later)

  1. Hover your mouse over the video for more options.
  2. Click on the Share icon  to see options for how to share your video

Sharing with Screencast

You can copy and paste the first link into an e-mail and share with your students or, you can add the link into your Blackboard course.

Screencast links

Step 4 – Embedding your Recording into your Blackboard Course

The following shows a sample recording that was uploaded to Screencast then embedded onto a page within a Blackboard course. Follow these steps:

  1. Within Screencast, copy the Embed on your page script (option 3 in image above)
  2. Log into your Blackboard course area. From the Build tab, click Add File, then Create File
  3. From the Create File page, give the page a Title, then click Enable HTML Creator button
  4. Type an introduction, then click the Source View tab (see image below)
  5. Paste the script from Screencast (see #1) within the <body> tags, after your introduction

Embed video in Blackboard

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the Create File page, click Save.
  2. Click on the Student View tab, and click the File that you just created.
  3. The embedded video should display, see an example below.

Embedded Video in Blackboard

Here is my embedded video made with the Flip Camera:

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