How KQED saved five hours of editorial review per video

KQED isn’t just a media company. Their mission is to ‘inform, inspire and involve’ the people of Northern California with their community-led alternative to commercial media. Because, as their president importantly notes: “an informed, inspired and involved public is the foundation of a healthy democracy… When the media is used as a force for good, we can spark curiosity, foster understanding and build bridges across differences.” 

From humble beginnings in 1953 as the brainchild of two veteran broadcast journalists, KQED has now transformed into a multimedia hub of storytelling, journalism and education. News stories, podcasts, youth media, arts and culture, events, children's programming, interactive content and applications, educational learning tools… the list goes on. And there’s a LOT of content to produce.

Executive Producer, Annelise Wunderlich, is based in the KQED education department, and creates just one part of this multifaceted content puzzle. Annelise and her team produce the Emmy award-winning Above the Noise YouTube video series for teens and tweens, working with a myriad of internal and external stakeholders to ensure the content is educational, intriguing and stimulating for teens in California and across the world. Content on this scale needs a workflow that can keep up with demand.

“Our challenge,” explains Annelise, “was finding an easier, more streamlined way to share video cuts and feedback. We were using an FTP server or DropBox to share video files, and then Google Docs for folks to share their notes. This created a two-step workflow that was super time-consuming and hard to track.”

“We needed a seamless solution that would allow us to share cuts with external freelancers and partners, and gather everyone’s notes in one place that could then be shared with our editor. We also wanted a database where we could archive all the versions of a video along with editorial notes.”

When Above The Noise was launched in 2017, KQED knew they needed to update their workflow and keep content seamlessly moving from conception to delivery. Consultants at Life Noggin, another educational online video channel, recommended Wipster to the KQED team - and the rest is history!

“We’ve been using Wipster since 2017 and our entire digital video team easily adapted to incorporating the platform into our editorial workflow. We didn’t need much in the way of training and could easily navigate the platform with little explanation.”

Wipster is now integral to their post-production workflow, Annelise says. “The intuitive interface requires no hand-holding or explanation for external stakeholders. We can upload rough cuts, fine cuts, and final versions of each episode of our show to Wipster and instantly share a link with our network of stakeholders and animation artists”

“Everyone has a chance to share their notes right on the video timeline, and thanks to Wipster’s integration with Adobe Premiere Pro, our editors can bring those time-coded notes directly into their Premiere timeline.”

“The platform has helped streamline our editorial review process - our digital video producers now spend around five hours less per video. That time used to go towards uploading videos to multiple sharing sites, and especially using Google Docs to compile and share feedback with editors, but now we can focus on what really matters - the content itself!”

With 156 long-form and short videos on the Above The Noise channel since 2017, that’s 780 hours of back-and-forth, confusion, and delays that have been erased from the KQED workflow forever. Now that’s an educational lesson in efficiency we can all get behind! 

Want to get an extra five hours of post-production thanks to efficiencies in your workflow too? Sign up for a free trial today or contact our sales team to ask about our special educational pricing.

To learn more about KQED and Above the Noise, please visit:

https://www.kqed.org/
https://www.kqed.org/education
https://www.youtube.com/abovethenoise