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Soapbox by Wistia — Chrome extension to record, edit, and share videos.
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I have been loving Loom for quick screenshare with video and loving it. I am also a multiple times daily Droplr user. Droplr 's screenshare/recording functionality was always janky and screenshares with video is a super great way to break through the clutter with customers, partners, remote team members, etc. However, massive business crush on Wistia @brendan and the team. Everytime one of my companies had an opportunity, it wasn't a question who we were going to be using and anytime I see a friends site that is using vimeo or YouTube embed, I aways tell them to drop it like an old habit. Excited to see that Wistia isn't resting on their laurels (from a product perspective) and is moving things forward. What does pricing look like? Lets say I want every employer at my company to use the tool, for these types of videos. Planning centralized admin? Pricing plans that work for this product in conjunction with the other products?
@jcwinter @brendan thanks Justin! Delighted that you're as pumped as we are. Pricing plans are currently under consideration, but we're certainly going to keep the core product free. Things like admin control, teams and integrations are exactly the kind of things that we're thinking about for a paid version.
Such a killer product idea. This is a royal pain to do right today, and given the native Wistia integration (which we already use at Moz), I think we might have a solution to showing off products and SEO tips & tricks that's gonna be as easy to make as it is to watch.
Nice work Wistia crew!
The problem this product solves already has so many damn solutions out there, but still remains challenging to handle right. One thing Soapbox seems to capitalize on is the desire from tons of people to want to show their face as well as their desktop/screen when they make these videos. Managing that split has been a pain and this seems to make it easy. Excited to use this on one of my projects soon!
This looks fantastic! But running into an issue when I finish recording. The upload status keeps getting stuck on "Uploading (NaN%)".
@willhoekenga Oh dang. We're definitely pushing Chrome to the limits with this extension. I believe that happens when we can't capture one of the streams (screen or webcam). We're working on being able to better catch that error, but unfortunately the only fix when that happens is to restart Chrome 😬.
@brendan Yep, thanks, that did the trick! Working like a charm now. Really looking forward to using this more.
@brendan - Big fan. Great work, once again. We'll figure out how to use this, immediately. Couple of questions:
1. Probably missed it during my test video. Is there a way to just go full screen on the subject vs screen. Even for an entire video?
2. Any chance this will have integration capabilities? We're currently using a different video capture for clients to upload their own content quickly to Uncubed.com. But since all Uncubed Original Content uses Wistia, it would be great to have all content, whether created by us or our customers, using Wistia. If this is the case, can we capture analytics as well?
3. Perhaps all of this is answered already and I missed it. LMK.
Thanks.
Tarek
@tarekp Hey Tarek! Excited you're using Soapbox.
1. Yep, if you click the icon that looks like a person when selecting the layout (on the bottom bar), you can show just the webcam feed fullscreen.
2. Yes! We have big plans here and definitely will make a way to push these videos to Wistia proper. Stay tuned.
3. Haha, don't think so. Great questions!
Soapbox looks great, and voiceover guy sounds great too! Loved the video (as always!). 😻
Congrats on the launch.
I am probably bang in your target market for this product as I make screencast videos pretty much every day. I'm afraid Soapbox is not yet at a stage where it could replace my existing software.
Main issues:
1) I often need to switch between app windows and tabs during a recording. I can't seem to do this with Soapbox and there is no way to pause, change settings and resume.
2) Unless you know to change the settings the option to "select a window" only shows the full screen option.
3) No ability to pause the recording and start from where I left off
4) The example videos on your website only show the webcam output on mobile and not the screen share. I assume it would be the same with any videos I created.
5) No ability to download the video or import it to my Wistia account
Early days I guess. Looking forward to seeing how this develops
@dannyrichman Hey Danny! Thanks for checking us out and for the feedback. You pretty much nailed it.
1. This one's tricky. We might experiment with pausing, though if we can figure out a simple enough UI, being able to remove parts from the middle of the video seems even better and more flexible.
2. Glad you found that. We ran into some stability issues with tab and application recording during our beta, so we've relegated it to an advanced setting. Once we get those issues ironed out, we'll likely bring it back.
3. What's your typical use case for this? Is this for longer recordings?
4. Hmm, all Soapbox videos should work fine on mobile (unless you're on an old version of iOS). What device/browser were you using? And this was on wistia.com/soapbox?
5. Coming soon 😉
Thanks again for all the feedback. Early days for sure! Got lots planned for Soapbox.
@dannyrichman Great feedback, Danny! Here's how I deal with #1 and #2 in my own Soapbox videos. I *always* use the zoom function in Soapbox to zoom in on my screen content when I'm editing, which crops off the application chrome or the background of the desktop. Looks cleaner! And it takes the pressure off picking an application window. By always recording the whole desktop, I can switch between, say, a spreadsheet and a keynote presentation. In that moment, I just add a transition from the full-screen-capture view to the just-my-face view, and then back to full-screen, so that the viewer doesn't see the transition. Does that make sense? I also use that trick anytime I find myself saying "uhh....." or staring off into space - the flashy screen transitions can smooth over all sorts of rough edges.
@jringenberg Makes sense but a) sounds like a faff with lots of editing I don;t otherwise need to do and b) suspect the quality would suffer
@dannyrichman Soapbox records the desktop at 1440x900, so you can actually zoom almost 200% before it gets fuzzy (since the max size of the video is 840px wide). And our hope is that the editing is the fun part! Or at least pretty easy. Give it a shot and let us know at soapbox@wistia.com
@brendan
3) Training and demos. From 5 mins to 1 hour
4) Latest version of iOS on iPhone 6+. All example videos showed webcam only when viewed via Nuzzel browser
Recordit.co did this with gifs. Happy to have an actual video option now. Will check it out.
@brendan @philnottingham Great.. But no way to test it. You should not force users to use Webcam, There are many people using desktops without a webcam. Let them record screens only.
Does that make sense?
(I'm just uninstalling for now)
@surjithctly @philnottingham Thanks for the feedback, Surjith. In an earlier version of the product, we had a way to record just the screen or just the webcam, but we decided to remove those options since the appeal of Soapbox is being able to record both and transition between them. If you're just looking for screen sharing only, I think there are better products out there!
Love this - there are plenty "record your screen" chrome extensions. Soapbox adds a simple editbar and blows everything else I've seen out of the water! I'll definitely be using this for quick little videos to share out. Thanks Wistia!
So fantastic. We've just started to record tutorials and screencasts for Reaction and this seems like the perfect tool.
@spencernorman Nice! How's Soapbox been working so far? Have you had a chance to try it out?
What are some of the most common ways teams use Soapbox? Sales follow ups? Customer training videos?
@brianpbosche Hey Brian,
Yes - precisely! We think Soapbox is a great tool for any comms where you might want to put a face to a name, or actually show and demonstrate something, rather than just "tell" someone. It's a good replacement for long, convoluted emails - and so definitely helps sales people, customer success, support, account management etc...
Powerpoint/Keynote is also a core use-case, one can quickly record a presentation and it'll look a lot nicer than doing it with a go-to-webinar or Webex etc. So, here we see managers and marketers probably using it for internal and external facing presentations.
Meryl in our team has also used it to send a video to her Grandmother showing holiday snaps... so there are plenty of possible unknown use-cases too.
Some more details and ideas for you here: https://wistia.com/library/make-...
@brianpbosche Sometimes at the end of the workday, I make a video journal for myself to look at in the morning to make it easier to pick things up again.
@bhas Not yet, but we likely will build a way to export the videos soon and possibly add push to YouTube functionality.
Soapbox is a fantastic new product by the awesome people behind Wistia!
It's a free Chrome extension that enables anyone to record, edit, and share high-quality videos in minutes.
Wistia