Better production tools, a mature science of how people learn from video, and an audience that expects it. Technical training video has come of age.
Anyone commissioning training content right now is working in an unusual moment.
AI-generated video is everywhere. Volumes have never been higher. Production has never been cheaper. And underneath all the noise, something more interesting is happening: the conditions for genuinely great technical training video are aligning for the first time.
Three things have converged. AI has collapsed the cost and time of the production process — storyboarding, voice, iteration, rework. The cognitive science of how people learn from multimedia, established over more than two decades of research (e.g. Mayer), gives us confidence about what actually makes video teach. And learners themselves now expect video as the default mode of learning anything, from how to use a new software to how a network handles packet routing.
That matters more than it might sound.
Training Magazine’s 2025 Training Industry Report shows ILT rising for the first time in years — 28% of training hours, up from 27%. A small uptick, but directional. Teams responsible for genuine technical depth — networking, hardware, security, anything where a wrong answer costs the business money — have been quietly choosing instructor-led training again, because nothing else has been able to carry the weight. ATD’s 2025 State of the Industry report shows organisations spending more on outsourced content production at the same time, with 29% of L&D budgets now going to external suppliers, up from 27%. The appetite for better content is there. The question is whether what gets made is good enough to take pressure off ILT delivery.
Done well, it absolutely is. The best teams start with design — the structure of the video, the topics covered, the depth of coverage — validated by people who understand both the pedagogy and the technical content. Storyboarding follows once design is approved. Visuals come last. These teams segment content by complexity, matching how working memory handles new information. Introductory videos run two to three minutes for orientation. Conceptual videos run five to eight to build depth. Visual elements are chosen because they signal something specific, and not to embellish for the sake of it. AI sits inside the workflow as an accelerator rather than as a replacement for craft.
The L&D Global Sentiment Survey 2026 by Donald Taylor, makes clear that L&D leaders feel the pressure of the moment. Respondents wrote more about their challenges than in any previous year of the survey — much of it about the difficulty of cutting through what Taylor calls “AI noise.” But the same survey shows them taking action. Teams are getting more deliberate about what they produce, more rigorous about how they measure it, and more strategic about where video fits in the wider learning architecture.
The organisations pulling ahead in 2026 are not producing “more video.” They are producing videos built on the principles we know work, made possible by tools that finally let craft scale. That is what coming of age looks like for a format.
The question for L&D leaders this year is not whether to invest in technical training video. The conditions have answered that. The question is whether the work you commission is good enough to take advantage of the moment.
Sify works with global technology organisations to produce technical training video at scale.
Contact us for more information on how we can help with your project.
