Adobe Spark was used to create educational videos for the FCS Real Money Real World virtual program and the Extension sustainably committee used it to create Sustainable Action videos. Here are some instructions you can follow to create a new video presentation based on a Spark presentation template.
Adobe Spark Video Instructions:
To get started making Adobe Spark video presentations:
Login at: https://spark.adobe.com/sp/ with your ‘school’ account (your university login).
To create a new branded presentation from a project shared with you (using the shared project like a template):
- From the home screen go to: ‘Projects > Shared with You’.
- Then click ‘Duplicate’ from the three-dot menu on a project that you would like to use as a template. Spark then copies the duplicate to your ‘Your Projects’ area. If you’re not using a shared project to create a copy for a new presentation you can work directly on the shared project. Be sure to let others working on that project know what you are updating.
To edit your new project from a template:
- Go to ‘Your Projects’ and find the project that was copied there.
- Hover over the project and click ‘Edit project’.
To create a new slide and record audio narration:
- Click the ‘+’ button to add a new slide.
- Press and hold the microphone button to record audio on that slide. Release the mic button when you are done speaking.
- You can also choose a music background track from the available options.
- You can reorder your slides by dragging and dropping them.
- If you want to duplicate a slide you can hover over it and choose ‘Duplicate’.
To edit slide text:
- Click on the existing slide text to edit it or add another text block.
- Click and drag on a text box for alignment options.
To preview your video, click the ‘Preview’ button. You can also start playing from a particular slide from it’s the ‘Play’ button which gives you a limited preview.
Editing slide theme and layout:
- Click on ‘Split Screen’ under the available layouts on the right to divide the slide into two sides.
- When using the Split Screen Layout for a slide, you can hover over it and swap one side with the other using the ‘Swap items’ button.
- Click on ‘Medium’ under themes to give the slide a scarlet background instead of white.
- Use the ‘+’ button to search for an icon to insert.
- Click and drag on a text box for alignment options.
Exporting your video presentation and adding captions:
- In your list of videos, hover over your presentation and choose ‘Download’ from the three-dot menu. Spark will take you to a screen showing the progress of your video download. At first it will say ‘Preparing your video download’. The video will download in the .mp4 standard format which can be used in MediaSite or YouTube hosting.
- Uploading the video to the Otter.ai service is one way of getting the .srt caption files that MediaSite likes. Be sure to edit auto-generated captions to improve accuracy.
- Choose the video hosting platform that works best for your project and your department. The Real Money Real World (RMRW) videos had been uploaded to the OSU Extension professionals YouTube channel. Videos in the FCS Successful Co-Parenting course were hosted in Ohio State’s lecture hosting system, MediaSite. You cannot host videos directly in a Canvas course because each course shell has a limited file storage quota.
Collaboration with teams and colleagues:
- To share a Spark project with a colleague, click the ‘Share’ button at the top.
- Then choose ‘Invite’ and type in their email address.
- You can collaborate on the same Spark project or create a duplicate of their project to use as a template for a new project of your own.
Last updated on: 7/13/21.