How many people have to approve your church videos? How do you get each of them to view it and give you their feedback? For many of us in the Church Production world, that means getting everyone together in the same room, or taking your laptop directly to each person, or sending them a link to the video and waiting for them to make comments. This can take days and, when they do comment, can you really understand what they mean? The larger and more spread out your staff, the more daunting this task may be.
Wipster solves many of the the problems with an online collaboration tool that they call an “intuitive video review and approval platform.” It is subscription based but you can try it out for 14 days free. (www.wipster.io ) The site is secure and your video can only be viewed by whoever you approve. You can even password protect both the videos and the comments.
The process is simple and has great collaboration features. First, you have to create an account. It costs $15 per month for the basic package. This allows one person to upload the video but an unlimited amount of data and unlimited sharing of the video with your collaborators. The account charges monthly but you can cancel at any time. You can also customize your page with your church's logo and color scheme.
Once you're set up and logged in, you upload the video to the site and choose who you want to review the video by entering their name and email address. You can choose whether the person needs to approve the video and if they can make comments. Then each person gets sent an email invitation with a link to the Wipster page.
When your collaborators come on, they will see the video and have a simple, familiar video interface. They can also see who else has been invited and any comments that have already been made. As they watch the video, they can pause and put in comments that are placed on the timeline that is frame accurate. In other words, the people who are given permission to comment can tack their comments to the specific image they see. So if a piece of video should be moved somewhere else, the comment is tagged to the video and another comment to where it should go. This makes communications a snap.
The person who posted the video, gets an email with time code of the comments and the ability to create a “to do” list from the comments. Additionally, the commenting can all be done with a desktop or on a mobile device, so even if someone is out of the office, they can still be part of the collaboration.
If you use Adobe Premiere, there are plug-ins available for direct access to Wipster. The comments appear right in your editing desktop in real time. Once you've made the revisions, you can upload another version and collaborators can have access to both versions. They appear as layers on the screen. When everything is finalized, you can upload seamlessly to Vimeo right from Wipster.
What are other people saying about Wipster? We talked to Brandon Setter, video director with Rockharbor Church in Costa Mesa, CA (www.rockharbor.org) and the owner of Setter Studios, who uses Wipster on a regular basis. He told us, “Wipster has absolutely been a life changer for us. Before, we had to upload video to Vimeo, send a link to all the people who needed to see it and each one of them had their own unique way of getting back to me.” He says that comments could be confusing and the process would often take days.
“Wipster has simplified that process down to: each person will log into Wipster, they understand it immediately, they see the video, they play it, they click and make notes. I see it all in real time.” Brandon says the process now takes just a few hours. Plus he knows who hasn't seen the video and can contact them directly. He tells us that the interface is simple and even people who are not as tech savvy can use it. “I've never had anyone ask me to explain Wipster. It is simple for anyone to use.”
If you are looking for a better way to get your team together for video collaboration, or if you have a set group of approvals that need to be done before your video can “go live”, Wipster might just be your best tool. With a simple, accurate online commenting and realtime notifications, this platform can streamline your workflow. With a low monthly fee, it may be the best investment you can make for your team.
