Microsoft Stream is not just a place to store videos. Now it’s also a place to create videos! Welcome to Day 118 of 365 Ideas for Microsoft 365– Create Videos in Stream.
What is Microsoft Stream?
Microsoft Stream is a video platform for your organization. It’s like your school district having its own walled garden version of YouTube, but with additional features built in, and integration with other tools like Teams and Forms.
Besides uploading videos you make elsewhere, like the Slide Recorder and the Screen Recorder in PowerPoint, you can create videos right within Stream to share directly with your students without needing to upload or download anything.
Because Stream is cloud-based, it even works on limited devices like Chromebooks.
Accessing Stream from Office 365
Open Stream from your Office 365 account. If you don’t see it when you click on the waffle (app launcher) in the top left corner, select “All apps” to see it listed alphabetically.
Record Screen
Once logged into Stream, click on “Create” in the ribbon and select “Record Screen”.
A message now appears at the top of the screen to remind you of copyright law.
A much larger window pops up with some options, showing you what your recording will look like with the options you currently have selected. By default both the microphone and webcam are on. This is called the “screen recorder”, so the web cam is a smaller picture in picture in the lower right corner. You can turn this off if you prefer not to be on screen in your PJs. If you have multiple camera or microphone options, you can also select a different choice here.
Device options
Notice as I turn off features, the display changes to match, making this very accessible for students and preventing mistakes about what is and isn’t being recorded.
Record
Once you are done selecting settings, just click the record button. This opens a window that allows you to choose what to record. Your options are:
- Your entire screen -if you have multiple monitors, you can choose which one to record
- A single application window- if you have multiple windows open you can choose which to record
- A specific tab in Microsoft Edge- if you have multiple tabs open you can choose which to record
This is much like deciding what content to share when you choose to share your screen in a Microsoft Teams meeting. These choices have different windows or apps to show, when sharing your entire is what you need. If you only have one window you need to share, you can still choose the desktop, but just a window is also an option. The advantage of just sharing a single window is that is anything else pops up on your screen, or if you open another window, it won’t show up in your video. The same is true for a single tab in Edge. If you open other tabs or windows on your screen during the recording, they won’t interfere with the recording. Stream records the computer audio as well, even when the window or tab you are recording is not what you are looking at on your desktop. Make your selection and click “Share”. This starts a countdown to begin recording. You may pause and restart and keep recording for up to 15 minutes.
Review
When your recording is finished, press “Next” to review. You can watch and listen to your video, and if you don’t like it, re-record it. If you like it you can upload it to Stream for sharing, or download it for yourself, or both.
At this point your options are the same as when you upload an existing video to Stream- choose a name, give a description, indicate the language spoken so Stream can auto-generate both the closed captions and the searchable, clickable transcript, and your first chance to decide if you want to give all users in your organization access to your new video. And you have a second shot at downloading your video. (You can do this anytime after it uploads as well.) If you find you need to edit anything, you can download your video and do some cutting and pasting in the Windows 10 Video Editor.
Name, description and sharing settings
There are many other features for Stream videos including sharing settings, adding to channels and associating channels with groups that I’ve addressed in other articles.
Now that you’ve learned how to record videos in Stream, check out ways you can utilize your creation inside of Microsoft Teams!
Looking for more? How about the
Remote Learning with Microsoft Teams Course
Sign up to learn how to go from a complete novice in Teams to using Teams for your complete solution for remote learning.
If you like this style of directions and screenshots, walking you through ideas for using Microsoft tools in your classroom, check out my new (2nd Edition) book,
All the Microsoft Tools You Need to Transform Your Classroom: 75 Ideas for using Microsoft Office 365 for Education available on amazon in both Kindle and paperback.