'Net Features : video editing

10 Tips for Overnight Web Video Superstardom

Allison Howen — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:30:00 GMT

If you want to spice up your Web presence, it may be time to consider implementing a video strategy.

If you aren't convinced, consider this: A recent comScore study reveals that Americans watched 33 billion online content videos in February alone. Moreover, Invodo research shows that consumers watch video 60 percent of the time when it is available, and that 52 percent of consumers who watch product videos claim the videos make them more confident about their purchases, which helps to reduce return rates.

In addition to those stats, implementing a video strategy can help your enterprise drive site traffic, improve time-on-site and engagement metrics, increase conversion rates and grow its social fan base. That said, producing videos can be a complex and even an intimidating process if you’re just starting out, which is why Website Magazine has compiled 10 tips that will help you become an overnight Web video superstar, just check them out below:

1. Get Good Equipment

While a simple Webcam along with a free online editor is suitable for composing basic videos, you should consider purchasing higher-end equipment if you intend on producing videos on a regular basis. For example, if you are creating product videos that include a lot of detail, you should invest in an HD camera. Also, there is nothing worse than trying to edit a shaky video, and since shooting a steady video with a handheld camcorder is harder than one would think, a sturdy tripod is also a good investment. In addition to those pieces of equipment, some of the Web’s free video editors, such as YouTube or WeVideo, don’t include as many features as you might want, in which case you should purchase a more robust video editing platform, such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro or Adobe’s Premiere Pro. Lastly, if you’re struggling with capturing sound, a microphone will certainly help with this problem.

2. Make a Plan

Before your jump into the production stages, you must first create a plan for your video. For example, what is the goal of your video? It could be to drive more traffic to your website, to inform your audience about a new product or to foster a better relationship with your customers. Once the goal has been identified, you must decide what type of video will allow you to reach this goal, such as a demonstration, an advertisement, a comedy or just a straightforward informative piece. You might still need some inspiration for your content, in which case you should check out TubeRank. This platform enables users to set three conversational triggers in order to view similar videos that have been successful on the Web as inspiration.

3. Write a Script

You may be good at giving off-the-cuff speeches, but that is not the best strategy for video content. This is because online videos have the ability to be seen by millions of people, and you don’t want any flubs to take center-stage over your content. By writing out a script, you can make sure that you include every important piece of information into the video and that your thoughts are organized so that the video isn’t too long and turns your viewers away. Additionally, you might even be able to find a way to fit some quirky or entertaining tidbits into the script that would be harder to implement when improvising. That said, don’t rely so much on your script that you come off as stuffy in your video, because it is important to show your personality in order to be more relatable to your viewers. This is where practice comes into play…

4. Practice Makes Perfect

Before you start shooting, make sure to practice because you need to be confident in the content that you’re selling. While you should practice in front of an audience at least once so that they can give you some tips for improvement, the best way to self-identify areas of improvement is by simply reading the script aloud and recording yourself with a Webcam. This will not only get you familiar with being on camera, but it will also give you an opportunity to analyze your voice (did you pronounce every word correctly?), as well as an opportunity to identify any nervous ticks you might have. Furthermore, by reading the script aloud, you will feel more comfortable with its content and be able to edit areas that don’t sound quite right.

5. Just Do It.

This step is pretty self-explanatory: Just do it. While your first video will most likely end up not being your best in the long run, it will help to give you confidence, which will go a long way in future productions.

6. Put On Your Editing Pants

After your video is shot, it’s editing time. It is important to note, however, that the amount of editing you will have to do depends on your video’s quality, content and purpose. For example, if you’re a skincare line that is shooting a product demonstration, you may want to splice in some close-ups of a model’s skin during a step-by-step demonstration. Conversely, if you’re a pet store that is putting together a video of your customers with their pets, it might be appropriate to use some unique effects, such as custom graphics, or attention-grabbing transitions when switching between photos and videos.

7. Don’t Forget About Audio

While you should certainly make sure your audio is consistent throughout your video during both the shooting and editing processes, you might also want to consider adding background music or sound effects to specific parts of your video. If this is the case, make sure you have permission for any audio you add to the video. YouTube, for example, allows users to access select audio from Creative Commons for their videos.

8. Ask for Feedback

After the video is edited, it is a good idea to show it to colleagues before publishing it to the ’Net. This is because an extra set of eyes and ears might see or hear something that you didn’t, such as a black spot between transitions. Furthermore, outsiders might suggest adding an element that you had previously overlooked, like captions or additional images or video footage.

9. Distribute

Once you are mentally prepared to become an overnight Web video superstar, it is time to start distributing your video across the ’Net. If you are not hosting the video on YouTube, then you will need to use another hosting platform like Vzaar or Brightcove. Once the video is up, it should definitely be featured on your website, but you should also create social and email campaigns around it too. By sending the video to your subscribers and sharing it with your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest fans, you are increasing its audience reach and its chances of going viral.

10. Measure

After your video is published, it is time to start measuring results. While you should definitely evaluate metrics like views, time watched and completion rates, you should also analyze traffic spikes on your site because of the video. It is also important to monitor the devices and channels customers are using to view the videos, as this can help you tailor future video content and promotion strategies based on the audiences who respond best to this type of visual content. Additionally, to measure the popularity of your video across the social Web, you should analyze popular engagement metrics, such as shares, likes, comments, retweets and replies.

Video: Camtasia for Mac 2.2

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:25:00 GMT

Screen recording and video editing software solution Camtasia (from Techsmith) for example just released version 2.2 for the Mac and it comes with quite a few new and interesting features to dig into. Let’s take a look!

Camtasia for Mac 2.2 now includes the ability to create clickable objects (aka hotspots) so video marketers can embed hyperlinks within their creation, sending them to online content and one step closer to the end of a conversion funnel. This release is also focused on optimizing the cross platform experience but providing one output that will work on any device, be it iOS or Android, smartphone or desktop. The entire list of featuers is available here.

“This edition of Camtasia for Mac brings completely new marketing, sales and teaching capabilities for business professionals and educators. It’s important because video is quickly becoming the fastest growing, most popular content on the web,” said Shane Lovellette, Camtasia for Mac Product Manager at TechSmith. “Interactivity, and hotspot linking, along with a lot of interactive and ease-of-use features such as smart sharing, table of contents, closed captioning and search put video-creation in the hands of novices and intermediate users. We can’t wait to see what kind of creative things people will do with interactive video.”

A free, 30-day trial of Camtasia for Mac 2.2 is available with discounted pricing options available for EDU and nonprofit organizations. New users can purchase the software for $99 and existing Camtasia users can upgrade to version 2.2 for $49.50 per user.

Vimeo Adds Cloud Tool and New Soundtrack Options

Michael Garrity — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Growing YouTube alternative Vimeo is looking to attract more video creators to its platform with the addition of some new features – a cloud-based enhancement tool and new soundtrack options.

The Enhancer will allow video publishers to make changes to their content without having to edit them on a desktop and then re-upload them onto the site. In other words, creators can edit from Vimeo’s website, which includes being able to instantly add music to their videos, update audio levels and control a song’s starting and ending point.

Through a collaboration with music partner SmartSound, Vimeo has also added almost 4,000 new soundtrack options on top of the 50,000 titles that were already available through its soundtrack tool. These new options are supposed to make way for improved flexibility.

At the price of $1.99 per song for a personal license, or $19.99 for a commercial license, users will be able to create custom soundtracks for their videos using SmartSound songs. For greater customization, users will be able to control the length, arrangement and instrument mix of the tracks.

Final Cut Pro X Updates Released

Michael Garrity — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Recently, Apple released the first major update to their wildly popular Final Cut Pro X video editing software. The upgrade includes a host of new features that Apple says have been highly sought-after by professional customers.

Probably the biggest new feature is XML support, which adds the option to import and export projects and events in the XML format. This will allow users to work on XML formatted projects in Final Cut Pro X, thus addressing one of the biggest concerns among the users of the software, who often found themselves unable to open old Final Cut Pro projects in their new version of the program. Though it is indirect, the update will let users export a file from Final Cut Pro 7 in XML, and then open it up by importing it into Final Cut Pro X.

Additionally, Apple has been working to make Final Cut Pro more compatible with new technology being released by camera manufacturers by offering a new software development kit; this kit lets camera makers write plugins for their new cameras into Final Cut Pro X.

But, that's not all.

Here is a list of some of the other new features added to Final Cut Pro X:

- Support for projects and events through Xsan
- Support for media stems (or audio channeling) that lets users assign roles to media after it is imported into a project, which makes it easy to export things like dialogue, sound effects and soundtracks in a single pass
- Custom starting timecodes
- Toggle for a full-screen view (only for Mac OS X Lion users)
- GPU-accelerated export
- A new theme known as "Tribute"
- One-step transitions on connected clips

In an effort to entice people to switch to Final Cut Pro, or for users of Final Cut Pro 7 users to upgrade, Apple is currently offering a free trial Final Cut Pro X, as well as publishing a PDF guide called "Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 Editors."

Those interested in checking out Final Cut Pro X, with all of its new updates, can access the 30-day free trial here.

In-Browser Video Editing Added to YouTube

Michael Garrity — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:00:00 GMT

Big news from YouTube about a hot new feature that allows users to edit videos from within their browser.

Among the tool's editing features are rotation, stabilization, brightness, contrast and temperature controls and adjustment of a video's start and end points. Also, there are an array of color effects that were created in a collaboration with another Google-owned digital media enterprise, Picnik.

This upgrade appears on video pages as a cleverly identified "Edit Video" button. Clicking the button brings up the editing tools, which are easy to operate by featuring simple sliders. It provides a window to display a preview, so you can watch your changes as you make them. It even takes a page out of it's big brother's book, offering its own "I'm Feeling Lucky" automatic color correction button.

Editing videos on YouTube that had already been uploaded used to be a pretty arduous and unpleasant task; they would have to be edited in outside software and then re-uploaded to the site, which erased all of the views, comments and links that it had already racked up.

Fortunately, this new editing feature does away with those issues, saving users both time and effort.

After one finishes editing his or her video, he or she simply saves it and then YouTube will being processing the changes. However, users still have the option of reverting back to the original in this time, just in case the edits aren't quite right.

There's also the option to save the edits as a new version of the video, unless you're a "popular video," which they define as being one with over 1000 views, or third-party content; in those cases, you can only save your edits as a new video, leaving the original version unaffected.

Within the industry, there is some scuttlebutt that these new features will eventually replace outside video editing software for "everyday users," although its hard to argue with native video editors like Apple iMovie or even Windows Movie Maker still offer more features and options than the current changes YouTube is launching.