Since I have been doing a lot of video recording/editing/uploading lately for my Let's play videos I thought that a step by step guide might be useful. It does not take long to properly prep and upload a video to YouTube once you know what is required, and hopefully this guide will help clarify things for you. Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert and there may be better guides, but I aim to keep this simple and with as small amount of 'additional software' being recommended as possible.
Primary steps:
1. Record the video
2. Edit the video
3. Upload the video
4. Annotations & info
5. Publish video
1 – Recording the video.
There are many methods of video recording, what one you use
is up to yourself, and the medium you are recording.
1.1
Recording real life events: A webcam, mobile
phone, camera or video camera should suit your needs. The videos from these can
simply be uploaded to your PC for viewing and editing.
1.2
Recording activity on a PC: The easiest method
for this would be to use recording software. Software I have played around with
most is FRAPS and Bandicam. I find myself having performance issues with Fraps –
but bandicam (as long as you are not setting an FPS lock) seems to run very
smoothly. Additionally, it’s about 50mb a minute (with voice recordings) as
opposed to 1gb+ per minute with Fraps. Note: An unconfirmed YouTube account has
a maximum clip length of 15 minutes, so make sure you cut the video off with time
to add in any opening / closing clips/credits. Video length timers can usually be
set in the recording settings. If you don't have openings/closings for each video and it is a series you are doing then you can use the video editor to dissect the the video into up loadable chunks.
1.3
Recording from games console: Some opt to use
the same methods as recording real life events, but the quality on these tends
to be so poor, people (or at least in my case) leave quite quickly rather than
watch. There is software however designed to cap data from consoles. I will
edit in information later if I can, but I have no experience in this area. Some
say you need a capture card, some say it’s possible without. Heres some YouTube
videos that might help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boh7-LyqNbg
– with capture card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb8vQDiKq4M
– without capture card.
2 – Edit the video
Again, there are multiple methods for doing this step.
Personally I use Windows Movie Maker as it is free and comes with Windows. I
hear it is easier to perform such actions using a Mac as they tend to have
better software for such things, but I don’t have access to one to test.
In Windows movie maker you can add backing tracks, or voice
overs, intro credits / outro credits or clips, edit the movie to cut any bits
you don’t want out (often in a let’s play type video it’s not a bad idea to cut
out monotonous/repetitive steps. An example of this could be my minecraft let’s
play videos… Theres a lot of times I have a video that is 10 minutes of mining…
nothing too exciting, this can be cut down so that the user doesn’t feel their
time is being wasted.
3 - Upload the video
This step is simple enough. Simply go to YouTube, login and click the 'Upload' button. Make sure you give it a good title and description. Tags are useful, but the YouTube search uses the words in the Title, then Description first - so if the title is relatively unrelated, your video might never get found amongst the stream of other videos.
4 - Annotations
In video manager - once a video has been uploaded - you can click 'Edit' on the video and select 'Annotations'
From here you can add a selection of tags on the screen. You can set these up to be links according to the type from the drop down, e.g link to video, link to your channel, etc etc. Make sure you dont litter the screen in annotations, lest people are just liable to disable them. Discrete links to other videos in your series, or of interest can help users find them without specifically searching for them (this is especially useful if you have a series of videos, but they are not numbered... but you wont be silly enough to do that now will you... Will you? *Stern look*
5 - Publish
And finally, once the annotations are in place - click publish to update the video and you are done.
I hope this has been of use. If you have any questions, or your own additions you would like to see, fire it into the comments and Ill check it out.
-V
3 - Upload the video
This step is simple enough. Simply go to YouTube, login and click the 'Upload' button. Make sure you give it a good title and description. Tags are useful, but the YouTube search uses the words in the Title, then Description first - so if the title is relatively unrelated, your video might never get found amongst the stream of other videos.
4 - Annotations
In video manager - once a video has been uploaded - you can click 'Edit' on the video and select 'Annotations'
From here you can add a selection of tags on the screen. You can set these up to be links according to the type from the drop down, e.g link to video, link to your channel, etc etc. Make sure you dont litter the screen in annotations, lest people are just liable to disable them. Discrete links to other videos in your series, or of interest can help users find them without specifically searching for them (this is especially useful if you have a series of videos, but they are not numbered... but you wont be silly enough to do that now will you... Will you? *Stern look*
5 - Publish
And finally, once the annotations are in place - click publish to update the video and you are done.
I hope this has been of use. If you have any questions, or your own additions you would like to see, fire it into the comments and Ill check it out.
-V
