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Broad College of Business Online Video Policy

1.0 Introduction and Purpose
The Eli Broad College of Business’ (The College) World Wide Web presence promotes College activities and educational opportunities by providing current and effective interactive communication and on-line service to a wide audience with the goals of assisting and building broad based support for the College’s mission of teaching, research, and service.

The purpose of the College’s online video policy is to ensure accessibilty, usability, accuracy, and consistency of all online media. All pages that reside on the Broad College of Business’ Web site must be in compliance with MSU’s Web Accessibility Policy.

General oversight of the College’s Web servers and Web pages, and policies governing the use of these resources, is the responsibility of the Web Team and the Marketing & Communications department.

2.0 Scope and Audience
This policy applies to all College Web pages under College jurisdiction (i.e., hosted on College servers or other servers funded by College budgets). This policy does not apply to Web pages published by students, employees, or non-university organizations that are hosted on MSU AFS space.

3.0 Policy

3.1 Flash Video Specifications
All videos must be converted to a flash video file (.flv) to be uploaded to the College’s Web server.

Required flash video settings:

  • Maximum video resolution of 640 X 360 (16:9, hdtv, photo) with a file quality of 2,000 Kilobits per second (Kbps) & 30 frames per second
  • Maximum audio quality MP3 format & 320 Kbps / 2 channel @ 44,100 Hz

3.2 Closed Captioning
All videos uploaded to the College’s Web server must have synchronized captioning provided for the video or audio presentation. The captions need to be provided in Timed Text (TT) xml format.

3.3 Audio Descriptions
Supplementary audio information must be provided for video and multimedia presentations if the video depicts information that is not audible. Audio descriptions or secondary audio programming (SAP) must be provided as an MP3 sound file at 320 Kbps / 2 channel & 44,100 Hz.

3.4 Video Content
For a video to be posted on the College Web site, its content must be directly related to academic endeavors conducted by the Colleges’ students, faculty, staff, alumni and donors. The College’s Marketing & Communications department has the right of refusal and will not allow inappropriate video content to be posted.

4.0 Video Production
When arranging for video projects to be produced by an agency outside the department (i.e., outsourcing), it is important to present a clear set of standards and expectations to the external agency or contractor.

Department Responsibilities

  1. Oversee contractor’s implementation and monitor activities.
  2. Define the relationship between the department and the agency and relay this to the College web team.
  3. Give the video policy to the agency.

External Agency or Contractor Responsibilities

  1. Adhere to the College’s video policy.
  2. Create a zip file that includes: the flash video file (.flv), Timed Text (TT) xml file, and the MP3 secondary audio file (if needed).

5.0 Enforcement
The Eli Broad College of Business Web Team will review all videos before publishing them on the College’s servers. If the video is not in compliance with the above policies, it will not be published on the College Web server.

6.0 Examples
The following are examples of appropriate videos:

7.0 Flash Conversion Software
The Eli Broad College of Business Web Team recommends WinFF as a software for converting video files to flash.