Break a long lesson into chapters

A long lesson is easier to watch when a learner can see its shape and jump to the part they need. Chapters do that — named markers on the video's progress bar, each one the start of a new topic.

Two ways to get them

Let Bernard suggest them. Ask Bernard to add chapters to a lesson and it reads the transcript, spots where the topic changes, and proposes a set of markers with titles. You look them over, tweak any wording, and keep the ones that make sense.

Set your own. If you know exactly where the sections are, just say so — "a chapter at the start, one at four minutes for the demo, one at nine for the recap." Bernard places them in order with the titles you gave.

Either way, you can come back and re-do the whole set at any time; the new set replaces the old one, and nothing changes for learners until you're happy with it.

What you need first

The video has to be uploaded and finished processing — chapters are built on the same reading of the video that produces the Captions and transcripts, written for me and the Where do I say that? Search inside my own lessons search. If a lesson's video isn't ready yet, ask Bernard for its status and it'll tell you what's still cooking. Adding a video in the first place is covered in Put my own video file into a lesson.

Keep them short

Titles work best when they're a few words — "Loading the kiln," not "How to safely load the kiln for a raku firing." Learners scan them, so the shorter and plainer, the better.