Recently, I went through a process that sends shivers down the spine -- moving! As I embarked on this intimidating process, I went through the familiar ritual of sorting what I was going to keep, give away, and throw away. The entire time, the thought that ran through my head was, “If I just stayed on top of keeping this house organized, this process would be 100 times easier.” So, as I’ve settled into the new house, I have resolved to adhere to the old adage: “a place for everything and everything in its place.”
Organization. Whether it’s how we keep our home, work space or even video assets, it is an important part of our lives. But presenting an organized video experience where viewers can quickly find content can be time consuming, tedious, and sometimes confusing on the back-end. I’m happy to tell you that with Brightcove Gallery, we’ve made it easier than ever to quickly and easily create well-organized video experiences. (And yes, the new place is in shape and looking great. Thanks for asking!)
How to Organize Your Videos: Nested and Sub-Collections
Gallery’s Collection Management Tool has a brand new look. This new design makes it easier to create collections and see exactly where they will live on your Gallery site as you build. No more guessing which collection goes where. As you assign videos to that collection, you get even more details about where your collection lives on the site. Are you creating a featured category? Do only a few of your videos show up in the carousel? Is that collection on the homepage, or just in your navigation bar? The answer to these, and many other questions, are now right at your fingertips.
Organization doesn’t have to be static. We reorganize our homes and workspaces to fit our needs, right? Quickly reorder your video collections with our simple drag and drop tool. Using that same drag and drop tool, you can expand your navigation with our nested collections. Just drag your collections to the right and see how easily they nest beneath the main collection. Nested collections, or sub-collections, give you the ability to have multiple layers of video assets. In our Marquee and Classic templates, we’ve made those nested collections go even further by allowing for 3 levels of sub-navigation.
How to Create a Better Video Gallery Navigation
Another way to organize content and create a better gallery navigation is to use header collections to separate out your video content -- creating a better user experience They serve as great ways to visually break long lists of collections into smaller, bite-sized pieces. Use a header collection to keep videos grouped but separate with distinct details like year, keyword, or theme. With a click of a button, you turn a regular collection into a header collection. Since these are simply classifications you edit for navigation purposes, you don’t have to worry about assigning any content.
Organizing your video experiences doesn’t have to be intimidating. Let me show you three simple steps to get you started.
1 - Create a new site. Try a Marquee or Classic site so you can have expanded organization with three levels of sub-collections.
2 - Add in your video collections, reorder them with drag and drop, assign a header collection or two and watch where they’ll live in your Gallery site.
3 - Publish your site and see your organization in action.
To learn more about how to use our new Collection Management Tool, take a look at these great support documents:
- Adding Videos to a Gallery Site
- Adding Video Cloud Videos to a Gallery Site
- Adding YouTube Videos to a Gallery Site
As you can see, organizing your video content can be quick and painless. Now you have a beautiful site you created with great, organized content, that will help engage your viewers and drive real results. And much like a new, nicely organized house, it’s time to show it off! For me and my new house, it involved inviting a few friends over, giving them a grand tour of the new place, and pulling out some of our favorite board games to play (since I now know exactly where to find them). For you, it means inviting your target audience to view your great site. Publicize it, seamlessly integrate it as a video experience as part of your current website, and take advantage of Gallery’s built-in SEO and push your site to the top of search results.
Great sites, with easy to find content, are meant to be shown off!