You will find different types of videos on the internet nowadays: Funny videos, viral videos, educational videos, interviews, product and services reviews, happenings and events, and more.
Businesses are also using videos like never before to promote their products and services. So there’s a lot of opportunity in Video Production. You can get into wedding, corporate AV, products video, or shoot portfolios.
Occasions like birthday parties, house-warming, catch-up with old friends, holidays are also now the perfect occasions for capturing videos, and watch it with friends and families.
While every smartphone today can capture videos, how about editing it a bit, making it crisper, adding some captions and sharing it to friends?
And being able to create good videos can also help you in your career (those in the corporate world) and also for students:
- How about making a video resume?
- How abut making a video out of a PowerPoint presentation
- What if you’re at some location where you’re witness to some incident/accident? You can capture it even before the paparazzi covers it
- Students can shoot videos of their projects or crafts (from start to finish) and share it on YouTube
- Students in schools and colleges already have photography and filmmaking courses
With more experience and contacts, you can venture from making personal videos to professional videos as as well.
Here you will learn how to make your own videos, including tips and techniques for creating quality, professional-looking videos.
Video Creation Process
Video Production is basically the act of creating videos/movies/presentations using a video camera and editing software.
Depending on what you are shooting, there may be other factors to consider such as the story, lighting, artists, and so on. But any video creation process consists of a few mandatory steps.
The end-to-end process of creating a video can be broken down into various distinct steps: Buying your equipment, shooting/filming, capturing the footage (on computer), editing the video, and finally sharing the video.
Step 1: Get the right Video Equipment/Software
You will need the right equipment for creating videos (have listed them in another section).
Step 2: Shooting/Recording Your Video
Next is to shoot/record video using the video equipment.
Videos are usually marred by poor techniques such as shaky hand movements, excessive use of zoom-in and zoom-out, poor lighting, etc.
You can easily avoid most of these mistakes and create good videos, by learning basic video shooting skills (lighting, zooming, hand movement, etc.) that will help improve your video quality.
Step 3: Capturing Your Video on Computer
Next step is to take the video onto the computer to edit it.
You need a capture device such as a Firewire card to transfer the video to your computer. Most high end computers have a built-in capture card, else may need to buy it separately. A Firewire cable will then connect your video camera’s DV output port to your computer’s DV input port.
Step 4: Editing Your Video
Once you have the video on your computer, you can edit and polish it further using software. You can trim scenes, remove unwanted frames, add special effects, transitions and titles, add soundtrack, etc.
Once the final edit is done, you can create the final video that is ready to be shared.
These software can also convert the videos into a variety of other video formats.
Video Production Studio Setup (Equipment List)
Whether you are an enthusiast or a serious video producer, having suitable gear is also important. You will also find useful tips on buying (and using) video camera, video capture device, powerful computer, video editing software.
Creating a professional quality studio is less expensive today than ever before. Here’s what you need to create great videos.
- A good video camera
- Lavalier or tie-clip microphone (minimum visibility)
- Good lighting is important
- Camera L bracket: For mounting external flash for better lighting
- Tripod for stability (shakiness often results in bad videos).
- Computer with good configuration to efficiently edit and create your final video.
- Video capture card.
- Video Editing Software
You want the captured audio to be good. The built-in mics (of a camera) are okay but for best results experts use a good external camera microphone. Depending on what you are recording you may require clip-on mics, hand held mic or boom mic, but the important thing is to have good mics.
You could use you cellphone camera as well (if you are on a tight budget), but then it may not capture the audio very well. That is why you need a camera which allows you to connect an external mic.
You could easily setup a 3-Point lighting without investing in expensive gear. It’s possible using natural light and other simple tools available in most homes.
You need good professional lights, such as aluminum scoop lights or halogen lights. For best results, your lighting has to be good and that is where these come in handy. Whatever you shoot, just make sure you have several lights for the video production job.
Computer is the heart of your video production system. It is where you will do things like editing, adding effects, adding soundtrack, etc. and come up with the final video.
It needs to have excellent configuration else it will take ages to do all the processing and rendering.
To be able to capture your video on the computer, you will need a capture card to transfer the video to your computer (Firewire gives you extremely fast transfer speeds than USB).
For editing the videos you may use a free editing software, but I recommend you use a paid version.
Final Cut Pro (Mac) and Adobe Premiere (windows) have high end features and are used extensively by pros. On the other hand, if you are an amateur or intend to make home videos, Pinnacle Studio Plus or Roxio would be more suitable, considering your requirements and budget.
From a long-term perspective and if you plan to create a lot of videos, you should invest in a better video camera and computer.
Video File Extensions, Formats: Simplified Guide
When working on a computer, all your information and data gets stored in files; depending on the application you use, the file extension varies.
Media files can be huge and the original format may not be practical to save, edit, or upload on websites.
That is why you compress these files for different purposes, which produces different video file formats (which also affects the overall quality of your video).
Though there are several types of video file formats and extensions, you can basically categorize those in two buckets: Container Formats & CODECs (Compression Formats).
Container Formats
Examples include: AVI, WMV, QUICKTIME (MOV), etc.
These store and interleave different types of data.
Compression Formats (CODECs)
Examples include: MPEG, MPEG-4, DV, etc.
- These files are much smaller
- Video is compressed using a special software program (known as CODEC)
- Easy to store and transmit
There are several file types out there, the more popular video file types include:
AVI – Audio video Interleave (.avi): Windows focused video format. It however has compatibility and synchronizing problems on other platforms.
Quicktime is popular because top entertainment and news sites use it exclusively on their web pages, and also because it can also be used on either a windows or a Macintosh computer. It is also cheaper to digitize video into the Quicktime format and put it on your website, compared to the mpeg format.
MPEG (Motion Pictures expert Group) files have better quality and are used on video games and other media that require high quality output. The disadvantage being their huge file sizes and you may need sophisticated hardware and software to convert plain videos into mpeg.
Flash Video (.flv)
The flash video format (.flv extension) is the file format used by Youtube for all its videos. This format works with the Adobe Flash Player!
Windows Media video (.wmv)
This is Microsoft’s proprietary video format, playable with Microsoft’s windows media player.
How to Create Videos That People Will Love and Share
The new YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands is packed with invaluable information for content creators and marketers. In this weeks Creator’s Tip, we take a look at section two, which guides brands on the fundamentals of content creation and marketing.
Apple is one company that produces great videos for its products. Having videos like that displaying your products or simply just advertising your business can make a big difference for making your videos look more processional. Now even you can create amazing videos with nice white as snow background and crystal clear quality images.
Here’s how to make your videos look more professional using some very simple, and also affordable, equipment. This video shows you how you can start making your own videos at home, and what you need to get a good professional video.
Things to Keep in Mind
Here are certain things to keep in mind, especially if the videos are going to be uploaded online.
- The video needs to be short and to the point, to keep visitor attention
- Needs to be smaller in size, for faster loading
- Video needs to have a good storyline and proper wording
- Need to be well-lit and properly shot
- The audio quality needs to be good
- Depending on the topic & purpose, you may also use a webcam or screen capture software
- You Need to Promote them to get more eyeballs
Useful Video Resources: There are many useful links and video Resources online that you can refer to enhance your knowledge of video production.
Video Producer: How To Be One?
Video production involves the creation and editing of videos (television commercials, documentaries, movies). Here are the more popular role that people play in this industry.
Videographers
They are also known as video camera operators, and as the name suggests, they shoot videos/movies. Experienced Videographers are comfortable shooting in a variety of different genres.
As far as employment is concerned, video camera operators are required in TV stations, movie studios, and even news media to record newsworthy events.
Usually employers prefer candidates with both creativity and a strong technical knowledge of the industry (most prefer at least a bachelor’s degree). Extensive travel may be required as part of the job description.
Video Editors
Once the video footage has been captured, it needs to be edited, and that is where Video Editors come into picture. A video editor plays an important role in shaping up the final product, and needs to have a good understanding of the various editing tools available (in addition to film-making).
Most TV stations & movie studios hire video editors with good experience, creativity and preferably a bachelor’s degree.
Producer
A Video Producer can take up several types of assignments such as shooting corporate, wedding or music videos, producing video games, and even movies.
Lot of video producers work as freelancers.
Producers main responsibility is to help in getting a project executed. They help set up shoots in various locations, and in some cases may be required to keep a track of the expenses (to ensure the project finishes within the planned budget).
The producer is usually responsible to liaise with the various actors, arrange funding and manage the costs, and ensure the project is taken from conception to completion.
In some projects, they may also be required to be involved in the marketing and distribution processes.
They could also be referred by various names depending on the size of the project. So if it’s a big-scale movie, you will hear several terms such as executive producers, producers, co-producers, associate producers, writer-producers and so on.
On smaller projects, they may don multiple hats and could direct the assignment as well besides handling the project operations.
In case you want to become a movie producer, you usually have a couple of options:
- First is to produce the project yourself, that is pay from your own pocket
- Second is to find an interesting literary property and get exclusive rights to it, and then look for financiers to fund the project
Working for Media
Some of the biggest media giants serve millions of visitors through their network of broadcast, digital, mobile and publishing properties.
Such media and marketing companies employ experienced Video Producers to create top quality videos.
They create videos for live distribution and for on-demand video content for all their digital properties and platforms.