Video Editing Production

Video Production Guide starts from the basics and takes you through the steps you need to do to create a professional video.  Whether you are a complete amateur looking to post a high quality or HD home video on YouTube, or a business person wanting to get in on the huge opportunity online video marketing offers, you will find what you need to do.

Online video has taken huge leaps in demand and quality recently. YouTube alone gets 25 million views per day and is second only to Google in searches performed.

That’s an enormous audience and market you need to be in front of.

If you’ve ever thought you would like to have a video presence online, and thought it was too hard or too time-consuming, or just didn’t know how to begin, then this is the guide that will tell how to do it, get up to speed, know the shortcuts and the secrets to having a High Definition, wide-screen, professional-looking video on the web.

… and be on your way to making great videos!

P.S. Remember that this is an easy video production guide and thanks to the tips I mention above you will learn how to put together videos fast…

P.P.S. If you’ve never done this before, know that you can post a video on YouTube at no cost, without a website, and have it play back anywhere, on any computer. So there’s nothing more to buy. Get your video editing production started now!

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.

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An easier and quicker way to spread your video around to several sites is by submitting it to a video aggregator. What this means is that you upload your video once and it is distributed by them without your having to do more than check off the destination sites. This is what I did with Video Production Guide videos.

TubeMogul is an example of this service. Once you create an account at TubeMogul, and a username and password for each site that you want it distributed to, you can upload your video once and it gets sent to all the video sharing web sites you have selected. Another useful feature at TubeMogul is that you can track the views over time at each submitted site. This can tell you valuable information about your audience and reach.

These are the web sites supported by TubeMogul distribution service:

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YouTube is but one example of a web site that people upload and share their videos publicly. YouTube is the biggest video hosting and sharing site and attracts the most viewers: I placed Video Production Guide videos there as to test for audience numbers, and also to experiment with its HD settings.

But YouTube is not the only public video hosting site. If you want to appear in front of even more viewers there are other possibilities where you can reach more potential customers. These viewers can then be enticed to your web site and perhaps purchase your product, a service, or a subscription. Just like many of the social blog web sites, there are many more video sites that also have certain viewer traits and social aspects.

The following sites are some examples where you can upload your video in the same manner as YouTube, after first registering or creating an account at each web site.

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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.

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If you viewed the previous Video Editing and Production Tips you may have noticed that the opening graphics and closing credits are obviously crisper and in higher resolution than previous years of fuzzy YouTube videos. The other obvious feature is that the included video, although good resolution, reveals how important a good quality camera has become. Now a HD camera is a must. It should be capable of and set to record at a minimum 1280 x 720. Also note that good camera work, or lack of, becomes more obvious, but that’s another report.

So you should have good raw video footage, edited it and added your graphics, transitions, and audio tracks. And as covered previously, you have rendered the output to a MP4 file with H264 compression at a minimum 2 Megabits per second bitrate, and 1280 by 720 pixels for a wide screen 16 to 9 aspect ratio, and at a frame rate of 30 frames per second.

Now you are ready to publish your video to YouTube.

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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.

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At this point I want to summarize the steps involved in this video production campaign to promote a fictional product or service.

Traditional methods would include creating a blog or Web site, optimizing for on-page factors and promoting off-page, using link building with keywords, tags, and bookmarking. The goal is getting to the top of Google results for your product name or phrase keyword.

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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.

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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.

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