English video
In the lesson
videoLanguage: en
Recall asks in
Korean
Video guide
How to make a video that Shadowing Player works well with
Everything the player does comes down to one thing: play one sentence from its start to its end, then stop. A video with clean sentence boundaries works in every mode.
Four numbers to remember
2–7 s
Length of one sentence
Short enough to hold in memory and say back. The sweet spot is 3–5 seconds.
150–300 ms
Quiet before a sentence
The player jumps to the start of a sentence. A little quiet before the first sound keeps that sound whole.
250–500 ms
Quiet after a sentence
The player stops at the end of a sentence. Quiet after the last sound lets it fade instead of being cut.
300–800 ms
Natural gap between sentences
Where it suits your delivery. It is simply the quiet after one sentence plus the quiet before the next.
A handle on each side of every sentence
Editors call the spare room around a clip a handle. Give every sentence one on each side.
Good
quietSentence 1quietSentence 2quiet
The player can start and stop inside the quiet. Nothing is cut and nothing leaks.
Avoid
Sentence 1!Sentence 2
Sentence 1 runs straight into sentence 2. There is no clean place to stop.
What a tight cut does to practice
Clipped ending
The last consonant of the sentence is cut off every time it plays.
Next sentence leaks in
The student hears the first sound of the next sentence before the pause.
Bad Repeat
With three repeats, the same glitch is heard three times.
Bad Random jumps
Jumping in from far away lands on a half-spoken word.
Sound: speech must dominate
In the sections students will practise, the voice is the lesson. Everything else competes with it.
Recommended
- No background music during intensive sentence sections, or music kept very low
- One speaker at a time
- A dry, close microphone sound
- Music and effects in the intro, outro and between sections
Avoid
- Loud transitions
- Sound effects over a sentence boundary
- Heavy reverb that rings into the next sentence
- Cuts that clip the first or last sound of a sentence
Subtitles and framing
Shadowing Player draws the sentence and its translation over the video, and draws quiz questions there too. So you can leave large permanent subtitles out of the picture.
TopGraphics, labels, your channel name
CenterThe speaker, or what you are showing
Lower centerKeep reasonably clear: the player’s subtitles appear here
Bottom edgeNothing critical: YouTube’s controls can appear here
- This is a guideline, not a template. A face a little off-centre or a whiteboard that fills the frame is fine.
- If your video needs text built into the picture, keep the important part out of the lower centre.
- Students can move the player’s subtitle up or down. The player cannot detect subtitles that are part of your picture, so it will not move out of their way by itself.
- Showing your face and mouth helps when pronunciation matters. It is not required.
Say which language the video speaks
Every lesson states the spoken language of its video. Recall depends on it: it shows the other language as the question and uses your video as the answer. If this is wrong, Recall asks the question in the wrong language.
Korean video
In the lesson
videoLanguage: ko
Recall asks in
English
Lock the final video edit before creating final timestamps.
A lesson is a list of times in your video. If you trim two seconds from the intro after timing the sentences, every sentence after that point is two seconds off, and each one has to be timed again. Finish the edit, export, upload, and only then write the final times.
Test it the way students will use it
Load your lesson in Shadowing Player on the published video and run these before you share it.
Three speeds
Play a few sentences at 0.75×, 1.0× and 1.25×. A boundary that is fine at one speed can clip at another.
Three repeats in a row
Repeat one sentence three times. Listen for a clipped ending and for the first sound of the next sentence.
Distant random jumps
Turn Random on and step through ten sentences. Each one should start cleanly after a jump from far away.
Twenty recall items
If the lesson is for Recall, do twenty in a row. Check that each prompt and its answer mean the same thing.
Every quiz branch
Choose every answer of every question once. A branch nobody clicked is a branch that may be broken.
Creator checklist
Tick the boxes as you go, or print this list and keep it by your desk.
Recipes for each kind of lesson
The guide above applies to all of them. Each recipe adds what is specific to one kind.
Shadowing
Students listen and repeat.
The video needsClean sentence audio
See the recipeRecall
Students see or hear one language and produce the target language.
The video needsA clean start on every answer
See the recipeRandom practice
Students practise a sentence bank in shuffled order.
The video needsSentences that stand on their own
See the recipeQuiz
Students choose answers directly over the video.
The video needsA question clip and feedback clips
See the recipeBranching quiz
Each choice can jump to a different video explanation.
The video needsA separate explanation for each answer
See the recipe