How to make good YouTube videos

Michael

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This article will discuss how you can make good YouTube videos and hopefully help you put out better and more thought out content to your audience.

It is in no way intended to be an all in one for everyone and every niche(genre/type) of video going but it will apply to many and perhaps yourself. I am not a professional at making videos myself but I have learned a lot from watching others and through my own experiences and hopefully this will help some of you.

Planning and Preparation

Always plan your videos well taking time to draw up any scripts you may be using, props, clothing/costumes, scenery and any other special equipment you will be using. Break down your videos into sections for example Introduction, branding info, main content, ending and then outro. It doesn't have to include those nor be in that order but setting things out earlier on will help make your video as good as possible. If youre on camera think of the things you will be talking about and how you will present that information to your audience, for example if you were going to talk about a specific product and tell your audience about it you might want to say 5 things you like about it and then 5 things you dislike and tell them your reasons, think of different ways you could present the content/information to the viewer, perhaps be critical of your own video presentation in these early stages, you will often find thinking about alternatives will lead to better ideas and presentation overall.

During the planning and preparation stages come up with a plot and consider talking about it with your family and friends getting ideas from them on how you could improve it, you could also ask about this here on the forums. Make sure the way you are going to be presenting the content/information will make sense to your viewers, poorly presented information can turn people away.

If you are adding any music to your videos make sure to use music you own the rights to or you are able to use freely with credit or no credit for commercial use. If the license allows you to use it commercially for free then that is ideal if you ever intend to make any money on YouTube. Now is also a good time to gather any sound effects and plan where they will come in including any funny lines or jokes you might want to throw in there.

Lastly make sure that the content you are planning is suitable for YouTube and by that I mean it has no sexual/adult content and is suitable for most viewing ages keeping swearing to an absolute minimum if you dont plan on bleeping it out.

Once you have finished planning, writing any scripts and making sure you're ready to record then you can go ahead with it and move onto the next stage.

Grabbing Your Audiences Attention

You want to grab your audiences attention right away, our attention spans are very short especially online and we can be distracted by almost anything, if your video is good in the first 10-15 seconds it should keep people watching it, if it isnt you will get people going to view it and then leaving almost immediately, on websites this is known as the "bounce rate" and it applies to YouTube videos. Have something at the start that will keep their attention and try and keep that throughout the video perhaps a peek at the info that you will be revealing during the video but always make sure if you do grab their attention over something specific that you dont later let them down and by that I mean make sure the hype and suspense is relevant to the content, fulfil the reason they decided to watch in the first few seconds and keep things interesting and engaging as much as possible.

Recording

Now you are ready to record you will want to make sure you have the best lighting for your subject, many people use three point lighting using one above the subject (you most likely) for the hair and shoulders so you stand out from whatever is behind you, one key light and one fill light, these normally tend to go diagonally opposite the subject on the left and right, one lighting the left and one lighting the shadows cast by the other almost fully illuminating the subject. If you are going to be using a green screen/Chroma Key make sure to have its own illumination and that the green screen is evenly lit, otherwise you will find yourself disappearing into the green.

If you are recording in front of a window with sunlight coming through you should use a daylight balanced continuous light such as a softbox with a daylight balanced bulb to illuminate the subject, no one wants to turn out as a shadow on their videos.

If recording alone try and set the camera up on a tripod so that you have less issues when recording, a high table wont always suffice and as a YouTube video maker you will learn that flexibility in your equipment is key so you dont end up with a lot of headaches in the recording process.

If you have drawn up a timetable/schedule for your recording try and stick to it as much as possible, if recording at home choose a time when the house will be most quiet preferably during the day and place a do not disturb sign on your door when you are recording so others dont interrupt.

Use a good quality HD camera if you can or if youre doing gaming then record in HD, not many people these days enjoy watching low quality videos and will only do so if they have to, if they can find similar content in considerably better quality then they may opt to watch that instead. The same applies to sound, you want to be clearly audible, not too quiet and not too loud and use an external microphone for your camera if you will be moving around wherever you are recording and away from the internal microphone. If there are loud sounds coming into your video from unwanted sources record another time so they dont spoil the audio of your video for your viewers and if you plan on adding music make sure to lower it so you are audible in the editing stages. I am sure you will find the right sound levels for your videos in the editing stage although sound doesnt always need tweaking.

Try and engage your audience whenever you can, tell them to leave a comment or ask them questions, give them a reason to respond to the video whether that be by a video response or a comment, this will allow you to add links for subscribing later in the editing stage.

The Editing Stages

Editing your videos is very important today, people want to see videos that are to the point and are free of any bloat and that includes any "umms" and silent pauses when thinking about what to say and you will want to edit out as many of them as you can.

When editing apply effects where needed but dont go overboard unless the video calls for it. Use an editing program that allows you to make all of the changes you would like in your video, if your video editing software is somewhat limiting it could be time to consider an alternative. If using sound effects or music you can opt to edit them to your liking with software such as Sony Sound Forge or any other free audio editing software.

Watch your raw video(s) throughout and look for parts you should add in or remove, remove any parts that shouldnt really be left in such as you switching on the camera and sitting down to talk, getting up to turn the camera off, your parents or partner calling for you or your dog barking loudly outside. If there are any parts you truly cannot edit but wish to keep try and re-record them if you can or do many takes during the recording stage.

Most people try and keep their videos short and to the point these days so keep it lean as possible and perhaps around a goal time, for example an advertisement for this forum I could have a goal of 15-30 seconds length and keep whatever I do for it as close to that as possible removing anything not 100% needed for the video to be its best.

Rendering your final video

Okay so your video looks great when played in the editor and preview and you think you are finished, now it is time to start rendering it, the long process that can be so annoying for everyone especially with all the re-renders needed at times hopefully these next tips will help you.

Firstly make sure you have the render loop region only turned off if your video editor has this feature and make sure there is no 1 second clips on the timeline that aren't part of the video hidden at the other end of the timeline, sometimes I haven't realised and had a video rendering for 60 minutes or so because of a 1 second clip being out of sight.

Choose a time to render your video when your computer can stay on for a while if it is a long video, most editors give you an estimated time until it finishes, if you are leaving your PC on overnight for a render you could use the estimated time along with a free PC automatic shut-down software to turn the PC off after however many hours is needed for it to be completed, saving you electricity and you needn't worry about it being on all night.

When rendering choose a format that is of high quality if not the best quality possible but something that also results in a small file size. This applies to both the video content and audio. For example a 30 second avi on best quality could produce a 2GB video file that would take hours to render, the same video could be formatted as wmv (Windows Media Video), have similar quality to the avi file but only be around 20mb. That is a considerable size difference and will allow you to upload it much faster pushing your final video out to your audience much quicker.

Post Production Tips

If at any point in your video you have a CTA or Call To Action (instructing the audience to do something for example comment, subscribe or like or post a video response) try and use YouTube annotations to link them, for example you could add a Subscribe link annotation when asking viewers to subscribe for more videos and updates and have it link to your Subscription URL for example this one here:

http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&add_user=YTDesigner

They can easily subscribe to you from there and you want to make things as easy as possible to your viewers, if you have multiple videos, show them previews of previous videos at the end in your outro linking them directly to your own related content, try and keep them on your videos as much as possible.

Before Uploading

Before you go ahead and upload the final video render to YouTube watch it throughout on your computer you dont want to have to reupload it due to a small mistake such as the end being cut off abruptly or the sound is too high or low, watching it before uploading is an absolute must especially when you have an audience.

Make sure you are 100% happy with the final video, you dont want to realise you have missed something important after your viewers have already started watching it which is normally almost right away when you have an audience.

Good YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

YouTube has its own search engine and that is what people use to search and find your content with. The YouTube search engine organises things similar to how Google search does, you search for something and it gives as many relevant possible results to the search terms.

YouTube uses your video Titles, Descriptions and Tags to provide search results and that is why it is 100% necessary to have relevant information for each of your videos. Some YouTubers do abuse this but a lot of the time will end up flagged for misleading content and with thousands of dislikes so dont even try it unless you wish to annoy people on an epic scale.

Here is an example of a good title:

Shark Bites Off 2 Year Old Girls Arm

And two bad examples of the above title:

Sharky oh no!

This is what I like watching

You want to keep things sharp and to the point, as lean and engaging/enticing as your video content and this consistency should lead to an excellent YouTube experience for you as the creator and your audience.

Now you have done most of this it could be a good time to start promoting your videos as best as you can, so if you are reading this why not take a moment to post your video up in our forum here:

http://yttalk.com/forums/video-channel-promotion.9/

And if you have any videos you would like reviewed in depth please post a request here:

http://yttalk.com/forums/free-video-and-channel-reviews.25/

I hope you enjoyed reading this and as I mentioned earlier this isnt an all in one guide by any means and I am not a professional, I just hope it can help you in some way :)

Thanks for reading.
 

Michael

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Youre welcome, thanks for bringing one of my old articles to light after so long, hopefully it can help more people now than it did back then when the forum was still a baby :D