How To Make Custom Training Videos at Scale

Custom training videos are effective but difficult to scale, especially across cultures and language barriers.

Still, companies often need to scale training fast and discover they lack resources. That might sound like a tall order, but thanks to AI technology, the scalability of video content is no longer a thorn in your side.

And this isn’t some AI fad. This technology has helped real companies overcome real issues.

For example, Beyond Retro, a Swedish vintage clothing retailer, was grasping at straws when they had to quickly up-skill 140 employees in three different markets to take on 80% of the store running responsibility.

And (predictably) they had to get those employees trained like, yesterday.

Curious about the solution? Keep reading to find out how they released their first employee upskilling course in just 2 weeks.

Why are personalized training videos so useful in corporate environments?

Corporations typically work with large teams and people from the most diverse backgrounds.

You can’t teach every employee the same lesson at the same time because everyone has a different level, different needs, or even something as simple as a different language.

A personalized training program via custom videos places your employee at the center of their experience and meets them where they are.

And because your training is more specific to someone's knowledge base, your training will likely:

✅ Better capture attention (thereby increasing retention).

✅ Shorten the time it takes to learn a task, tool, or procedure.

✅ Provide fair and productive upskilling opportunities for every employee demographic.

Custom live-action videos won’t deliver great ROI

Customization in video creation adds a new layer to an already complex process. To produce a unique video for each employee can easily feel like a fool's errand.

Screenloop, a hiring intelligence start-up looking to create employee training videos, hit a brick wall with live video production because of two reasons:

❌ The time spent traveling to multiple locations, and long hours in-studio.

❌ The “absurdly high” cost of hiring actors, tech teams, and studio equipment.

Traditional video filming was never designed for easy updates to training courses. In fact, often, you have to repeat those hours of live training and recreate the video. And even the simple insertion of a “Hey, Name” requires lengthy and costly creation and editing work.

And when you need to ask your voice actor to say “Hi Name” for 200 unique employee names… that’s hours and hours of studio work and editing time.

Budget blown.

How to use AI video makers for custom training operations

AI video makers like Synthesia are the key to personalizing custom training videos at scale.

Forget complex video software, you pick a template and personalize it with the employee’s first name, department, location agency, or actual course content, generate the voiceover and actor, and you’re done. You can even translate it into another language for your target audience.

Using Synthesia, you can create training videos entirely from your desk. And you can edit and update existing videos within seconds.

Here are the best practices on how to do that step by step 👇

Step #1: Prepare the course materials

It’s best practice to gather all the information you want to convey in your course as your first step.

Begin by writing the entire script and start collecting any visuals that are essential such as screen recordings or product images. Your team members can often help create tutorials for your video-based learning strategies.

Step #2: Select your desired template

Browse through Synthesia’s 55+ video templates library and select the one that will best fit your course content.

Feeling creative?

Create your own template with your branded colors, logo, and preferred style elements. This option helps maintain consistency across all your custom training videos.

Step #3: Paste or type in your script

Copy and paste the text you wrote in step #1 into your template’s slides. Or you can directly type your script into the text box of each slide.

Step #4: Complete with custom visuals and training materials

Using pictures or videos in training videos can increase the amount of information retained by employees.

Visuals enhance your understanding of complex concepts and ideas in instructional videos. Ultimately, this can lead to better performance and real-world applications of the learned skills.

Pair your video  narration with powerful visuals such as:

1. Graphics you have created to support the content: Charts, infographics, or other relevant images.
2. An AI presenter: Choose from 85+ AI avatars of different ethnicities, ages, and styles.
3. Text on screen: Duplicate the essential parts of the narration and add them as on-the-screen bullet points. You could even add quotes from subject matter experts!
4. Stock video clips: Incorporate stock footage into your presentation without creating anything yourself.
5. Screen recordings: Record your screen while demonstrating training content. You can then edit the recording with crop, trim, or loop functions right inside the editor.

Step #5: Generate your customized video

This is where the magic happens. After you’ve put together all the pieces of your training, click ‘Generate’. Within a few minutes, you’ll get to watch your video.

From now on, you can use it as is — share it with others by embedding it on your training platform or learning management system, upload it on social media platforms like YouTube, or share the link via email.

To customize the video with names or personal employee details, just duplicate it, adjust the text, and hit generate again.  It’s that simple.

Examples of custom training videos you can personalize today

You may know the theory, but practice is one of the best ways to make it perfect. So, begin practicing with one of the following templates.

#1 Orientation video template

This video provides a simple framework for outstanding employee onboarding.

Customize it to make your new hires feel welcome. Also, set expectations well before the first day of work to reduce their anxiety and ramp up their excitement.

Apart from adding your new employee’s photograph and mentioning their name and function during your presentation, you can customize all six video slides in terms of:

• Placeholders for logo, text, images, and other visual elements.
• First-day schedule timeline and first-week checklist.
• Narration language and AI video avatar.

#2 Learning journey template

This video makes the perfect intro to any e-learning module.

Customize it to introduce the learning journey and all the stages. Tell your employees the benefits of acquiring that knowledge using an engaging video format that’ll make them more receptive and involved.

The editable template allows you to customize and organize information by tweaking:

• Key slides for the intro, timeline, objectives, the “why factor,” & encouragement.
• Graphic elements like logo, text, images, and shapes.
• AI avatar, language, and music.

#3 Modeling a dialogue template

This video facilitates narrative-based learning experiences.

You can integrate it into various training modules and customize it to spice up boring concepts with dialogue.

Or you can use it to create practical training scenarios in a safe environment.

Given the dialogue frame, this template allows customization of:

• Dialogue participants’ names and job titles: Manager/employee, employee/customer, etc.
• Number of slides and content for as many rounds of replies as necessary to demonstrate the dialogue.
• Learner engagement questions with four answer choices for the final assessment.

Create your custom training video

You’re on a journey to scale custom training videos, and Synthesia will help you start on the right foot.

Excited about what you can accomplish?

Channel all that energy into producing your first custom training video right away. Use this free demo to create a video in the next five minutes.