Video Editing Production

You may be wondering what video production can do for you. If you are a sales type personality then you know that you are always looking for benefits. In this second in a series of promotional videos we look at a presentation of a products benefits to a prospective customer.

“Why would I buy this?” Continue reading “Video Production Sales Benefits” »

YouTube announced on their blog that video uploads have reached 35 hours per minute.

That’s amounts to over 50,000 hours of video content per day, or more than 25 full-length theater movies per day.

Where is all this content coming from?

YouTube credits the increased time limit going from 10 minutes to 15 minutes and the larger file size limit of 2GB per standard upload, plus easier uploading from mobile phones and integrating with their API for easier authoring.

Who is watching all this content?

YouTube doesn’t mention this aspect but it’s likely that the continued and dramatic climb in video hours per day would not occur unless people think it is worth their time creating and uploading video. But is it for fun or profit?

Image: youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-scott-over-35-hours-of-video.html

Are you creating longer videos, higher (HD) quality, and uploading more frequently?

Here we continue our discussion on creating a 5-part video series for a simple video production campaign.

Last time I mentioned using Microsoft MovieMaker to import images and render to a video. The biggest issue with MovieMaker is choosing the output options for file format and resolution quality. Microsoft likes its proprietary WMV format for Media Player, and most video hosting sites accept it for uploading, but the compression locally and conversion at the host site can result in poor quality. Opinion is that WMV files are good for high motion and makes for smaller-sized files. But the program does not offer rendering to MPEG4 or flash format, which can be played on all computers and at a high quality. Continue reading “Video Editing and Production Tips” »

Once you uploaded your HD video to YouTube it becomes available for viewing. If you have titled and tagged your video with popularly searched keywords then it may be found by people searching directly on YouTube’s site, or on Google search.

Depending on how many other people have videos and websites with your topic you may be listed in search results where no one will see it. Not many people search beyond the second page of search engine results. About 42% of searchers click on position one, and fewer than 5% look at the second page of results.

In order to have people find your video you need to get to page one, and the commonly believed way to do that is to get “votes” for your content. These votes of popularity are links from other web sites. This can take some time to happen naturally but there are some tips to help get you started up the list.
Continue reading “Video Promotion” »

Google Video crashed stopped accepting video uploads in May 2009. Recently an email went out to Google Video account holders that their uploads will be burned removed May 13, 2011.

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.

Here’s how to download your videos:

Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.

Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.

If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.

Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.

Thank you for being a Google Video user.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Unfortunately there is not a way to easily migrate content from Google Video to YouTube (which Google owns). There will be no public archive of the videos that existed on Google Video so if content is not manually downloaded and uploaded to a new video host by May 13 then the content will disappear. What is not clear is if Google will retain their own private backup archive of contributors’ content.

For a review of other video hosting sites see Video Production Guide Hosts Test.

UPDATE: Google changed its mind before the deadline. See Google Video Reverses Policy.

There’s always some in the crowd who ask the ‘what-if’ questions. Can I use your product for this application, or in that environment? Maybe it can do your dream scheme, or perhaps it can be used for alchemy, or to reform congress.

They think that if you say your product can do so many ordinary things so effectively, then why not try to do fantastic things even more extraordinarily?

Watch this video to stimulate your creative mind into thinking outside the box. You creative types know who you are!
This is the fifth in a series of short video productions that demonstrate simple editing methods to create promotional videos for your product marketing online.
Continue reading “Video Production of Creative Use” »

I edited some Video Production Guide clips together and uploaded the video to TubeMogul in order to compare the quality of the results at different host sites.

In this test case I used Sony Vegas Pro 8 as the editor software. The reason I used this over MS MovieMaker was that I wanted to create an MP4 video file, which MovieMaker cannot do directly and which would require a separate conversion. This is no big deal but it does take time.

I took slides created in MS PowerPoint that were saved as TIF files and imported them into Vegas. Before doing the import step, I decided on 3 seconds as the viewing duration and set that in the editor options. The duration can be modified in the timeline but each slide has to be touched.

At a few points I added a transition cross fade, and a fade out at the end. I also placed an overlay text watermark at various periods.

Then I added an audio track of music, with a fade down at the end. The end result is a video of about 2 minutes 30 seconds.

Here is an image of the editor timeline. Continue reading “Video Production Guide Hosts Test” »

How do you use a video production to present a products function? This is a presentation of “How do they work?” Use function to cover straight forward facts and specifications of features that provide a specific role. This is the step of how a feature becomes a benefit.

In this fourth episode in a series of promotional video productions we look at the functions of a products design, why they are included, and what do they accomplish.

If you want to understand the process behind a product, then watch this video to learn how to do the installation steps for a fictional product. Continue reading “Video Production of Process” »

After looking for video production and editing tips for awhile now I came to the conclusion that there was not a lot of good information available. I knew where to look but soon found out everyone else was saying similar things that just didn’t help me get far.

The techniques and strategies I found were often too simple, missing important steps, or just plain wrong froma marketing point of view. Continue reading “Video Production and Editing Techniques” »

Video productions can consist of many different approaches to content. Here is an example that is a video as an end result but uses only static images edited in a slide show format with titles and credits text overlay.

We’ll use this scenario to look at ways to use simple and free material without even a web cam or camcorder to create, edit, and produce a promotional video.

Watch this video and see how video production can be approached with the most basic equipment. Continue reading “Free Video Production Challenge” »