Creating an In-Video Branching Project

In this topic you will learn how to create an in-video branching project.

Brightcove Interactivity offers a technique for creating branching or "choose your own adventure" content.

  • In-video branching - This technique uses a single video. The viewer jumps from point to point in the same video using annotations.

This technique works well and is a personal preference based on your production process and how your videos are produced.

Working sample

The following video is an example of in-video branching. The "main menu" part of the video will loop until an image is clicked. Clicking an image will jump to that part of the video. When that part of the video is complete, an annotation will send the video back to the "main menu" part of the video. The "Main Menu" text that appears in parts of the video is a transparent overlay that will jump to the main menu part of the video when clicked.

Branching within a single project

Follow these steps to add branching to a project:

  1. Login to Video Cloud Studio.
  2. Open the Interactivity module.
  3. Click on a project Title to open it.
  4. Add a chapter marker at each point in the video where a choice begins (the beginning of a branch). The chapter markers will be invisible to viewers.
  5. For each "choice point", add a text, image or transparent overlay annotation. This is what the viewer will click on to jump to different parts of the video. Make sure the start time and duration for each of these annotations is identical.
  6. On each annotation, configure the link settings:
    • Set the Jump to video time to select the correct chapter or enter a custom time
    • In the Link configuration, set the Action to take if the viewer doesn't click to Loop back on one of the choice annotations. This will cause the video to loop and display the "main menu" part of the video until one of the overlays is clicked. This creates a more viewer-friendly experience compared to automatically proceeding to the first branch.
  7. Click Done to save the annotation.
  8. At the end of each branch, add an annotation and set the Jump to video time to jump the video back to the "main menu" part of the video so the viewer can make another choice.
  9. Click Embed to generate the embed code.
  10. Click Preview to test your branching project and confirm that clicking on different choices navigates to the correct parts of the video.