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How do I create a video branching project?
How do I create a video branching project?

Information about branching video projects

Kaisa Kokkonen avatar
Written by Kaisa Kokkonen
Updated over a week ago

WHAT IS VIDEO BRANCHING?

Video branching structures your viewers choice between various storylines to affect the outcome. “Choose Your Own Adventure” is one type of branching structure we all understand quickly. However, your options are endless: hear a different speaker, see a new perspective, pick a different fashion item, follow a different character, learn more about something… Imagine what you can accomplish!

With DilogR video branching the “path” is established based on your answers.  Your answer to a question defines which video you see next.

As a creator is needless to say, it is best to have a very clear idea of how the videos will be organized. In a nutshell, if you need to bring a viewer to different parts of the same video, you can use the chaptering feature.

WHY WOULD YOU DO BRANCHING

You could use branching for multiple reasons: engagement, collect leads, getting more quality leads, sales, e-learning,  making sure people understand your message with Q&A, etc.

The branching diagram below shows how video branching works in a super simplistic home video. Depending on how you answer a question in each video clip you are directed to another video clip. This process repeats until you have answered every question that was created in each of the different video clips in that particular branch.

We will walk you through step-by-step how to create a Video Branching project with DilogR (after you click on the Plus sign, in the lower right corner of the page, click Video Branch and get started).

STEPS USED IN VIDEO BRANCHING PROJECTS

  1. The project name (Internal Project Title) is automatically generated in the background and you can go later and change it.

  2. Select a video template

  3. Upload the first video -> this will be the "root" or main video

  4. Add one or multiple questions (“path” is based on the answers). For redirects from one video to another is recommended to use Branching Question - Branch Immediately or Branching Question - Branch at the end of the clip.

  5. Repeat these steps for each video clip you need for each “branch” storyline.

  6. Once all of your videos (clips or "childs") are added go back to the main video and add next to each answer choice the specific video clip you want your respondent to see to depending on how they answer the question you created.

  7. You add a redirect to each answer choice by clicking on the Add redirect button and selecting the video you want the viewer to be redirected next. The other option you can do is add a redirect URL by adding your own unique URL link Nore: Links or other external redirects will not appear in the Branch Diagram.

  8. Customize

  9. Integrate

  10. Distribute

  11. Reports

Recommended: Name each video for each branching project you create to have the Project names cohesive and easy to follow, something like Project 1 Clip 1, Project 1 Clip 2, Project 1 Clip 3, and so on, or maybe name them as the answer choices any logic that will help you follow each storyline.

STEP 1: NAME YOUR PROJECT

Internal Project Title (for your eyes only – make it easy to find in the Project list page).


To simplify the creation flow is automatically generated in the background (New Video Branch) and it is recommended to go and change it later.


The Title and Description are what your customers/prospects/participants/viewers will see when going through your Video Branch project (both are optional).

And you can use our power editor to customize for example the font family and size as needed.

TIP: Since you are doing video branching you will have multiple videos. Therefore it is important to name each video in a way that allows you to remember easily what they are about. Otherwise, you will be very confused later when you are creating your branch diagram.

STEP 2: SELECT VIDEO TEMPLATE

The templates are created for different purposes and looks, you can choose any of the six different video templates.

For example, Full page micro-site – 800 pixels wide your questions appear over the video or banner, for 720 pixels wide your questions will appear on the left (of the video) - or they could appear under the video.

Click on "Use Template" button and you will be taken to the next step which is to upload a video.

STEP 3: UPLOAD A VIDEO

DilogR hosts your videos in your video branch project.
Select a video from your video library if you have already uploaded videos into your account or use any of the other available options. 

If you have no videos to select from yet,  you can upload a video from:  
Your computer
Dropbox Upload
Amazon S3 Bucket
Dropbox

For this project type, we recommend to use Bulk Upload, it's a functionality added recently, available only on the video branch and added to make it easy for you to upload all your videos needed in the branch.

Once your video is uploaded it you will see it in preview in your account.

If you click on the Branch Diagram you see all uploaded videos that are or not branched yet (= no redirect).

Another option you can use to upload a batch of videos is via MEDIA LIBRARY

UPLOADING VIDEO DIRECTLY IN YOUR VIDEO BRANCHING PROJECT

In the video branching project, you also have the posibility to upload one video at a time and go trough the same process and choose the video template and name (Tile) for each video.  

You notice the AVAILABLE VIDEOS ( a.k.a available for branching) all the way in the bottom right – if you get confused which videos you have/have not uploaded you can quickly check-in there.
Please note that the order of the available videos does not reflect anything except the uploading order. However,  the main (parent video) should be always the FIRST video you upload.

One other new addition to video branching projects is the Branch Overview, which is found right next to Branch Diagram and by clicking it you will be able to see in one page multiple settings and created questions from all your videos, inside a branch project.

This way it's simpler to have an idea of what settings and questions are currently created in each video from the branch, without having to go in one by one and check.

STEP 4: ADD QUESTION

For each video, in order to branch to the next clip, you must add in questions which you can do by going to the create section (left sidebar) and clicking on the questions icon.
Click on add a new question on the left.  DilogR offers multiple types of questions (answer types really) as you can see below. 

The first two options are specifically video branching related.                                           The question types that will branch - based on the answers your viewers choose – has only two options to choose from.
Your options are: branch immediately or branch at the end of the clip.

If you have any additional questions that will NOT branch you can choose from the other question types.

Be sure to ask any additional questions before any other question will branch the viewer to another video based on their answer!!!  

  • Branch immediately

  • Branch at the end of clip

  • Multiple choice – select all that apply

  • Multiple choice – image answers

  • One choice – image answers

  • Yes/No

  • True/False

  • Long answer

  • Short answer

  • Statement

  • Date and/or Time

  • Question Lead

  • Question upload files

  • Question rating

  • One choice – image answer

 For each question, you have also option to:

  • Require an answer for this question (recommended for branching) 

  • Randomize answer choices for each respondent 

  • Do not show “Continue” button for radio button questions

  • Number of columns to display the answers

TIP: With the video branching, put the questions a couple of seconds BEFORE the end of the video.

So if the clip is 1 minute long consider putting the question “start” at 56 seconds and the question “end” at 58 seconds instead of ending at 60 seconds.

It is important to END the question a couple of seconds before the very end of the clip.  When filming videos for branching, it is helpful to leave a couple of seconds of extra footage without audio, etc. (footage that no one will see). This couple of seconds of footage act as a buffer between the end of the question and the end of the video.

The example below:  The creator chose to use the branch immediately, he is requiring an answer to this question ~Contact.FirstName~ how are you doing today?

The number of columns to display the answers? 

  1.  You can use the editor to modify your font family, font size etc.

  2. You can add and delete answer options using plus (+ ) and minus (-) signs – on the right slightly below the text field under Add/Delete.

You choose in the timeline (lower right corner) when the question is displayed over the video.
Since the answer is required the video will not continue until the viewer replies.

The screenshot below explains the ~Contact.FirstName~ how are you doing today?   The viewers were asked their name and email before they could watch his video. Therefore ~Contact.FirstName~  could be added to address them by name in the question.  
You can see a few other options explained as well.

Now that you have added a question in order to branch to the next clip you must add a new video. 

You click in the bottom right hand corner where it says “Available Videos” and click on Add Video.
Continue all steps that you followed when you uploaded your first video clip. See below.

 STEP 5: REPEAT STEPS 1-4

 (for each video clip you need for each “branch)

You need to name all the video clips you will be using, select the template, upload the clips and add your questions. 

If you want to replace any of your videos, you can do this by clicking under available videos and opening up the video that you want to replace. 

Next, go to the "Upload" tab under the create menu and click on that. 

Then you will be taken to the video upload screen where you can upload your new video(s) from your Dropbox account, your computer, media library or Amazon S3 account.  

STEP 6:  Adding in Your Video Redirects

Once all of your video clips are added go back to the MAIN video clip (your start video) and add next to each answer choice the specific video clip you want your respondent to see to depending on how they answer question you create.

For instance for answer option “great” the video will branch to a video clip called Video Branch 2A (Great). That was not hard to guess from the naming process.
Redirect to Project: Video Branch 2A (Great).  You can choose the video clips from the available video from the bottom right.
Redirect to Project: Video Branch 2B (Alright)
Redirect to Project: Video Branch 2C (Terrible)

STEP 7: REPEAT STEP 6 ACTIONS FOR ALL OTHER VIDEOS (for each video clip you need for each “branch)

You add a redirect to each answer choice by clicking on the redirect button and picking the video clip. 

The other option is add your own unique URL link

Branch diagram (on the left side bar under Create section)

You will have drag and drop capability.  The branch diagram can be viewed at any point even before you have all videos linked.  Double click on a video poster to edit the answer redirects (=based on the answer the viewer gets directed to another video clip). You can drag clips around by holding left click.

Click save to save your diagram.

STEP 8: CUSTOMIZE

You can fully customize your videos. At the top on the navigation bar (in preview mode) if you click on the video settings you are taken to the screen below where you can customize what control over your video(s) your video viewer’s will have.

Video Player Controls

Use progressive download for video distribution (Uncheck for streaming distribution).
Always stream best video quality (This can slow down the distribution process)

How much control of the video would you like to give your attendees?

Select from the following options.

  • No Control: Do not allow attendees to pause/play or seek forward or backwards. They can just sit and watch my video.

  • Pause/Play: Allow attendees to pause and play the video but not seek forward or backward.

  • Full Control: Allow attendees to pause and play the video and seek forward and backward.

  • Review: Allow attendees to pause and play the video and seek backward but not forward

Other Video Player Options:

  • Do not show Control Bar

  •  Show control bar only when video is moused over

  • Show current time and full duration for video

  • Allow users to switch video to fullscreen (*Interactive elements like questions will not work in fullscreen* This option is available only with default player skin).

  • Display question numbers in the video

2/15. What is your answer to the 2nd of 15 questions?

How would you like your video to begin playing?
 The video begins playing when the webpage opens
 The video begins playing when someone clicks “play”

Default Volume: 50 %

At the bottom of the page you have two other options that are not displayed in the screenshot below:

  1. Set these video settings for all of your clips and

  2. Set these video settings for all of your clips (other than clip 1 = your MAIN clip)

II Customize the background of the video, headline, subhead, questions, answers, lead, errors, buttons and poster.

Below you see how the lead capture area can be customized.

When you look at the left sidebar customize section, you’ll notice you can also customize your thank you page, call to action, thumbnail, exit popup – and translate project.

It is critical that you know exactly which clip(s) you want your lead capture  form(s) on before setting up your lead captures. 

For example, if on clip 1 you are using pass through code, I'm going to choose do not include a lead capture form, keep responses anonymous. So this way clip one has no lead capture, so when the lead is captured on clip three, it will tie their answers from clip one and clip two A to the lead that is captured in clip three. So if the leads captured here, DilogR will go back and say, "Okay, the leads captured, now how did they answer here? How did they answer here?"  

So if you have tags set up and Infusionsoft for example, based on how someone answered a question here and how someone answered a question here, those tags will get applied as soon as they opt in on clip three with the lead capture form. 

The lead capture form in this case is only going to be on clip three and up until that point, they're going to be an anonymous visitor. We don't know who they are, we know their IP address but we don't know their name and email. Until they opt in, we're not going to be able to apply any tags, but once they opt in, even if they opt in on clip three, people have this question all the time. 

They say," Well will tags be retroactively applies for answered that came in this clip or this clip even if they don't opt in until this clip?" The answer is yes. If they opt in here, we will go back and say, "How did they answer this." Tag them that they answered A how did they answer this, tag them that they answered A, even if they don't opt in till the third clip.

Does it store their answers if they don't opt in, or is it discarding them?

It does store them, we store their answers if they don't opt in, but it just tied to an anonymous IP address.

STEP 9: INTEGRATE

Choose the option that works for you as needed. Any questions – always email [email protected] with as much info as possible (and screenshots).

Infusionsoft Integration 

Ontraport Integration

STEP 10: DISTRIBUTE

Under this section on the left sidebar, you have to edit your URL settings. That means that you can change the URL for your video to a custom URL instead of using the default URL created by the platform. 

Generate Video Branch Code

Distributing your Video Branch with DilogR is easy as can be! You can utilize any option you like now and change at any time later on.

  1. The first option is to use a *DilogR Microsite*. All you need to do is copy the link and send it to everyone. Easy! This option is easy and highly recommended. You can even customize the end of the URL to make it more user friendly!  

  2.  The second option is to *embed the Video Branch* directly to your website or embed an image in your site (such as a small image of your Video Branch or a custom image of your choice). When this image is clicked, your Video Branch will appear as a lightbox popup over your site or the video will replace the image. For this, simply copy the code and paste it on your site or click the Email My Webmaster and we’ll email instructions.

You have different preview sizes (mobile, tablet, desktop) – and you can also modify your player design and size.

STEP 11: REPORTS

You can review how your video branching is working with your viewers. You can also download the reports in PDF.

Exporting into a PDF Report

 

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