With around 250 subscribers at the moment, my YouTube career is still in its infancy. Despite having a long road ahead of me, I continue to enjoy recording and producing videos for my main YouTube channel and the YouTube channel I recently launched for Rise Forums.
I still have a lot to learn about recording, producing, and editing video and audio. I have been on autopilot with my videos for a while now and not looked into how I can improve the look and feel of them, however I am hoping to change that and start improving the quality of my YouTube videos.
It won’t happen overnight, but I want to start looking at how I can be better.
Becoming the Best I Can Be
One thing I am going to do is pick up some good books about producing videos. Up until now I have just relied on figuring out things through articles online. Even if I pick up one little tip from a book, its purchase will be justified.
Another thing I am going to do is spend more time producing some of my videos.
In most of my tech related videos, I have recorded one main clip using my camera and one audio clip using my audio recorder. I then sync the video and audio up in Adobe Premiere Pro and then insert relevant images (I occasionally add a related clip or two as well).
Here’s an example of what a typical tech video of mine looks like:
The video above was quick to record. It was recorded in one take and the editing process was painless. It has performed relatively well, but that does not mean that all of my videos should be recorded that way. If I had spent a little more time producing the video, I may have gained even more views.
Shaving Off the Fat
In one of my latest videos, I did things a little differently.
Instead of recording one main clip and one main audio recording and then adding in relevant images and video clips, I recorded a large amount of short clips for the product.
I then put them all together and recorded a separate audio track. It was more time consuming to do this because you need to ensure you familiarise yourself with the video clips you just put together; however, the end product looks much more professional.
When I just click record on a video clip, I find it difficult to keep the video short as I naturally chat away. In contrast, recording an audio track at the end makes it much easier to cut out unnecessary points as I can record the audio track in stages and plan everything out better.
In my first attempt at this new recording method, the video I produced was just around four minutes long. If I had recorded this video in the usual way I record tech reviews, I suspect it could have been ten to fifteen minutes long.
Without doubt, shaving the fat off from my videos will help me gain more subscribers as people want to digest the information they crave as quickly as possible.
You can see the video I am referring to below:
I will still record videos in the old method from time to time as there are still some topics that I believe will be better served with me giving a more thorough overview of a product in real-time; however I am pleased that I am now capable of producing more concise videos when the need arises.
From time to time, I will record videos quickly too if I need to. For example, today I published a short video about the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5 phones being launched.
I’m on holiday at the moment so the only way of covering this story was to use my smartphone. The news about these smartphones would be outdated next week and I wanted to continue to be productive with my channel whilst I was away. Therefore, it made sense to just record a short video about the news instead of waiting until I was back.
Panning and Tilting
The video tripod that I reviewed above is going to allow me to produce videos with professional looking pans and tilts. You can see me testing panning and tilting towards the end of the video.
Recording a pan video clip, that is, recording slowly horizontally from left to right or right to left, helps you produce great looking slow clips. Tilting is the same kind of shot but is recorded vertically instead of horizontally.
This recording technique will help give my product reviews a more professional look and feel; something which was lacking in my videos up until now.
Striving to Be Better
It is easy to become complacent and stop trying to improve the quality of your YouTube videos. You get into a routine of recording videos and do not make time to learn new techniques. The quality of my own videos has not improved in over nine months because of me using the same procedure and same routine whenever I produce videos.
I want to make a conscious effort to get better. I want to move forward, not stand still. Long term, the success of my YouTube channel will be highly influenced by the quality of the videos I produce; therefore I need to reach a high standard that demonstrates to people that my channel is one which they should be subscribing to.
I don’t want to become just another amateur YouTuber who never gains subscribers because the quality of their videos does not match the knowledge they have of a particular subject. From time to time I need to take a step back, re-evaluate my position, and review whether I am going in the right direction.
Hopefully, the steps I am taking over the next month will put me on the path I want to go down.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin