Security Journey builds video training lessons for safer app development

Consumers hand over a great deal of information to apps every day: email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, and even medical information. If those apps are compromised, it can cause huge headaches and safety concerns for consumers. Security Journey believes that the key to safer apps starts with training people who develop them. The Pittsburgh-based company creates and delivers robust application security education for software development teams in businesses of all sizes, from startups to the biggest names in technology.

Security Journey approaches training through both a hands-on approach — where developers can break and fix software in a live practice application — and engaging, self-paced video courses that dive deeper into complex security issues. As a video specialist at Security Journey, senior video producer Christopher Ledda oversees all video production, from video courses to podcast videos to promotional content on social media, which means that efficiency is an absolute must.

“For me, working efficiently isn’t just about speed but also very much about the quality of work,” says Ledda. “When I can work more efficiently, I can focus on delivering high-quality work with less stress. And with a better work-life balance, I enjoy my job more and find that I have even more time to experiment creatively with all of the things that I love about video production. In the end, we’re producing even better videos.”

That's why Ledda was so excited to add Frame.io to the Adobe Premiere Pro video production workflow. The app reduced time and stress not only for him, but for his stakeholders across the company.

“It saves hours of production time per video — maybe even up to two weeks per course,” says Ledda. “It saves me time as an editor and producer, and it saves our content and assessment teams time because they’re not juggling files. People love how everything is organized and easy with Frame.io.”

Working together to create effective training

Every training path at Security Journey has between five to 18 video lessons, which can range from eight to 20 minutes depending on the content. With such a large volume of lessons, simply keeping track of videos could be extremely difficult and time-consuming for Ledda.

Every video needs to be reviewed by the content team — the security experts who make sure that all of the lessons are clear and accurate for viewers. But Ledda also shares rough drafts with the assessment team, who create questions and tests to make sure that viewers understand the most important points from each video.

When Ledda first joined Security Journey, all videos needed to be fully rendered and uploaded to Dropbox for sharing and review. Content and assessment teams needed to download each video, keeping track of new versions as they’re uploaded. Any feedback from the content team was typed out and shared with Ledda via email, chat, or Microsoft Teams messaging. Because team members are experts in content, not video, they would occasionally recommend edits that were unclear or difficult to achieve — sometimes requiring back-and-forth comments to clarify edits.

Ledda needed to organize all of the edits, share with the editor, then re-render the updated video and communicate changes to all stakeholders. The result was a workflow that was time-consuming and error prone.

“I knew there had to be a better way,” says Ledda. “That’s when I learned that Frame.io was going to be available directly through Premiere Pro. And honestly, it exceeded expectations. I anticipated integrations to be rough at first, but Premiere Pro and Frame.io worked together perfectly right out of the box.”

Improving quality of work and quality of life

The editor now uploads drafts using the Frame.io panel in Premiere Pro. Content and assessment teams are automatically notified about new uploads and they can start viewing videos right away — no downloading required. When giving feedback, the content team can focus on specific frames, adding notes to indicate exactly where they wanted changes, such as cutting specific phrases from the edit. Ledda sees updated notes in real time via the panel, and a simple click brings him to the exact timestamp he needs on the timeline.

In less than a year since starting to work with the collaborative video app, Ledda has overseen 88 individual video lessons. On top of that, he’s supported video components for 15 to 20 podcasts, and created half a dozen smaller promotional videos for social media.

“For a small team, saving time is big,” says Ledda. “It’s the most precious resource we have. Frame.io keeps all of the feedback and versions clear and organized so that everyone is communicating effectively. Content experts know that we understand their edits. The assessment team can check feedback in real time to see whether changes will affect their questions. Everyone can now work better with less stress, and that’s a win for everyone.”

Learn more about using Frame.io with Adobe Premiere Pro here.