How to Create a Video for YouTube Channel?

How to start creating YouTube video content yourself? Everything a beginner YouTuber needs to know.

YouTube has been in the top three most visited sites in the world for several years. It’s no surprise that video hosting has become one of the most powerful channels for promotion. Not only individuals but also entire companies come here for PR.

Video content helps to draw attention to yourself or your product, to present information in a user-friendly form.

In many cases, it is more interesting and more useful to watch a video than to read a text. For example, a clay sculpting workshop in video format is more useful than an explanation in the form of an article.

And shooting a video is sometimes much easier than writing a guide. It is easier to show how to plaster a wall than to describe the process in detail in several paragraphs.

A YouTube channel is needed not only for companies or individual bloggers. For informational sites that need traffic, video content will help not only increase the permanent audience of readers (viewers) but also get a large number of links.

If you already have a well-promoted site, it will be easier for you to get views and subscribers. And it’s completely free.

Many entrepreneurs and website owners ignore YouTube, believing that creating video content is difficult and costly. In fact, there are quite a few ways to get it, and among them, you can find simple options even for a zero budget. We will talk about this now.

If you want on YouTube, play by its rules

The main rule of YouTube is that the content must be unique. This does not mean that when you use someone else’s video you will be immediately blocked, but problems will arise sooner or later.

The biggest mistake for beginners is to use someone else’s music. You can’t just take any melody you like and insert it into your video. Without permission to use, this amounts to theft. Music should be free. Where to get it will be discussed at the end of the article.

The video sequence also cannot contain fragments of someone else’s material, since in this case a complaint may be received from the copyright holder. If quoting is necessary, try to use no more than 10 seconds of third-party video. And only in those cases when it is really necessary.

When posting, also keep in mind that the player’s aspect ratio on YouTube is 16:9. Do not take this moment into account – you will get black stripes on the sides.

In general, before starting to work with YouTube, it is useful to take a look at its Help Center.

Where to get material for video

There are several ways to create videos:

• Shooting with a camera. The availability of equipment in this case plays an important role. The user has already got used to the high-quality picture.
• Animation. It is relatively expensive. One of the most common options is video infographics, which are used, for example, to describe the operation of Internet services.
• Screen video recording. Perfect for a visual demonstration of the process (in videos from the how-to series).
• Presentations. For some it is boring, but for others it is pleasant. Not everyone likes to look at the broadcasting face. The presentation is more informative. If you need to show numbers, statistics, screenshots, etc. – she will perfectly cope with this task.
• Video sequence from a photo. Simple and fast. May be appropriate for individual cases. For example, to showcase a photographer’s portfolio or handmade ideas.
• Podcast. Some podcasters upload audio to YouTube with a static image. Such videos can also be of interest to users.

Shooting on camera

Before you start filming, decide how you will provide information. This could be:

• blog (conversational format),
• lecture (show something on the board or add text notes during editing),
• demo (product overview, how-to, city/office trip, etc.),
• interviews, etc.

The list can be continued for a long time, since the formats can be different, up to full-fledged films and programs.

It should be borne in mind that for different niches a different presentation of the material is applicable. Somewhere the video blogging format will be appropriate, somewhere it is better to submit information in a different form. Of course, you don’t have to be limited to one format. If you are an expert in a specific field, you can record both lectures and short video blogs on a specific topic. The main thing is to interest the viewer.

Shooting with a camera is expensive. The minimum set of equipment is an SLR camera, tripod, light, softbox.

Why can’t you limit yourself to a simple camera or even a mobile phone? The fact is that the viewer almost always has a choice in the form of a list of related videos in the right column. The competition on YouTube is great. Therefore, any advantages, including high-quality shooting, are suitable to stay ahead of the competition.

Screen video recording

There are quite a few programs for capturing video from a computer screen, and they practically do not differ in functionality. However, there are several problems here:

Most of the programs are paid. The trial version is either limited in time or has limited functionality (watermarking, recording no more than 5 minutes, etc.).

Camtasia (Windows, Mac)

Camtasia’s video capture interface is simple and serious. You select the capture area, whether to enable webcam and microphone inputs and click Record.

The built-in video editor is another matter. There is an exhaustive list of editing options that don’t seem overwhelming. Click and drag effects and a decent selection of standard media are located on the left side of the app, while detailed properties and settings appear on the right when you select an item in the timeline.

Camtasia provides great tutorial videos for anyone struggling with editing tools, but it took a few seconds to create amazingly professional intro and end segments and add them to our test video. The only problem was the interactive features allowing you to add tests or clickable buttons to the project. Setting up these elements was easy enough, but previewing the video and exporting the final product was noticeably more difficult after adding interactivity.

Screencastify (Chrome)

If you have a lot of short screen recordings that you want to share, but don’t need a bunch of bells and whistles to edit, you can’t go wrong with Screencastify. For example, if you provide customer support, you are probably less interested in flawless videos with long lead times than in quick and easy screenshots. Screencastify changes editing options for a concise desktop recording and video sharing interface.

Since this is a Chrome extension, you can set everything up in a minute or two. Install it, select what you want to record (Screencastify can record video outside of the browser window), enable or disable webcam and microphone capture, and click Record.

During recording, Screencastify places a toolbar in the lower-left corner of the browser that includes cursor settings (toggling the focus bubble, adding click animation, and auto-hiding the cursor when inactive), as well as a content annotation brush in the Chrome window. …

When you stop recording, Screencastify opens the video in its web player and downloads the file to your Google Drive (or stores it locally on your computer if you’ve changed the settings). You can upload to YouTube or Google Classroom if you like, or download the video. There are also some simple editing tools: crop, split, and merge.

OBS Studio (Windows, Mac, Linux)

What OBS Studio lacks in editing features is compensated for by streaming and recording options. First, the open-source application allows you to create your own “studios”, preset audio and video configurations that you can switch between while recording.

During testing, we created three studios (shown above): one for the primary display and webcam, one for the secondary display and webcam, and one for the displays and webcam. To resize and position the elements in each studio, simply click and drag and scroll through the recording session using a hotkey.

With enough preparation, these audio and video preset eliminate the hassle of fiddling with any settings when streaming live video through robust integration with OBS. There are 44 (!) Platforms in the streaming menu, from well-known sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to little-known streaming platforms like watchpeoplecode.com and Sermon Audio. Opening the settings menu and pasting the streaming key into the text box is all it takes to customize the One-Click Start Streaming button on the main toolbar. Changes you make to the studio, like audio mixing or webcam placement, are streamed live, so make sure you’re ready.

Apowersoft Unlimited (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS)

Any modern Android device or iPhone has a built-in screen recorder and some basic video editing tools. But for those looking for more functionality, Apowersoft Unlimited has a lot to offer.

It includes subscriptions to all 17 Apowersoft applications (eight of which provide video capture or editing) that can be launched from a single control panel. There is one screen recorder app for Android and another for iPhone, both of which include settings that we haven’t seen in any other app, such as resolution control, bit rate throttling, frame rate selection, and camera configurations.

If you have the Apowersoft Unlimited package, you can wirelessly transfer data from your mobile device to your computer screen and use the voice recorder to capture your computer’s webcam, microphone, sound, and mobile device at the same time. This is especially useful if you want to show someone how to use an app that has desktop and mobile versions. If there are similar functions with different interfaces, displaying them side by side will eliminate the confusion.

The video editor in the package is pretty basic, but it lets you crop segments, add text overlays, and adjust contrast, brightness, and saturation.

ScreenFlow (Mac)

Telestream’s ScreenFlow adds a wow factor to your screen recordings but requires more training than the other options on this list. While its editor looks minimal at first glance, there are many features that need to be analyzed.

By far the most valuable of these tools is the Telestream Standard Media Library, which includes over 500,000 images, sound clips, and videos (some in 4k) to give your screen recording a professional shine. Open the library in the application in the Opportunities panel, search for the keyword, then click and drag the media file onto the timeline.

Other standout features include the ability to record your desktop in retina resolution (i.e. very high resolution), as well as some impressive templating capabilities to reduce production times. Style and template tools let you group settings and video components so that they can be applied in a couple of clicks. Styles allow you to preserve audio and visual settings for specific elements, such as color filters or shadows for a video segment. Templates allow you to pre-insert, arrange, and customize groups of elements such as branded lead-ins, lead-ins, text placeholders, and background music.

Movavi Screen Recorder Studio (Windows, Mac)

Movavi Screen Recorder Studio is a great mid-range screen recording app with a built-in editor that gets the job done. But there is one thing it does exceptionally well: scheduled snapshots.

This tool allows you to record webinars or live broadcasts when you are away from your workplace. You will find this feature in the settings under the “Scheduler” section. You can set a time limit for the next recording, or specify the start and end times of the recording. You can even set it up so that your computer shuts down or goes to sleep after the capturing is complete.

It’s convenient and unambiguous thanks to Movavi resolution settings above average. If you need to record a webinar at an inconvenient time to share with others, you need to make it look good.

Bandicam (Windows)

With the rise in popularity of esports, most modern screen capture software includes in-game streaming functionality. It’s useless for productivity-minded workers, but HD video capture – such as available from Bandicam – works wonders for creative people.

Whether you’re preparing a Photoshop tutorial or webinar on web design, 144 fps at 4K will make your content stand out from the rest. Bandicam needs top-notch equipment to record this high quality, but most people in the creative field should have no problem.

While you might expect a complex interface from an app that pays so much attention to video quality, this app has a sparse configuration window. This is a very simple application that only lacks a built-in editor.

FlashBack Pro (Windows)

FlashBack Pro’s screen recording interface looks a bit dated and the editor is just a couple of steps above average, but it comes with invaluable audio editing tools.

Recording your voice while capturing your desktop creates a lot of minor problems. The proximity of keystrokes to the microphone makes them sound like a jackhammer, unwanted noises from across the room are difficult to prevent, and the system sound often has a completely different volume than your microphone. Most editors can help you minimize these problems, but none are as detailed and easy to navigate as Flashback Pro.

For example, decreasing the volume of the system audio track is as simple as highlighting it in the timeline, right-clicking it, and choosing Change Selection Volume. You can also remove background noise by applying a filter, or normalize the microphone and PC sound to match the volume.

The app also has several new video editing features, such as automatically highlighting inactive areas on the screen for deletion and rewriting the mouse cursor without changing anything else in the video.

CloudApp (Windows, Mac, Chrome, iOS)

CloudApp, as the name suggests, automatically uploads every recording you make to the cloud. This makes it a handy tool for quickly recording and sharing information. It also offers Zapier integration, which means you can automatically send these recordings to other apps if you want.

You can start recording using the notification area icon or menu bar, or with a custom keyboard shortcut. Record the entire screen, or choose which part of the screen you want to record. There are a few basic image editing features – cropping and cropping – but the focus is on quickly uploading your recording to the cloud.

There are several restrictions. For example, you cannot record system sound, and there is no way to add annotations to your recordings. But that doesn’t matter if you just need to demonstrate something quickly, and this is where CloudApp thrives.

The main reason we chose this app is its integration capabilities. By connecting it to Zapier, you can create automated workflows that do things like posting to Trello, Google Sheets, or Slack for ease of use.

Zappy (Mac)

Sometimes you just want to quickly take a recording and send it to someone, without having to edit or fiddle with a bunch of settings. Zappy is perfect for this. This application is launched using a keyboard shortcut or icon in the menu bar. Choose which part of the screen you want to record, press the camcorder button, and then press Stop when done. Optionally, you can record a voiceover using a microphone.

If you are a paid Zapier user, the entry will be uploaded to the cloud and the link copied to your clipboard. If not, you can get the video file locally and share it however you want. You won’t find many customization and editing options, but you can add arrows, fields, body text, and obfuscation during recording (or after the fact for a screenshot). It’s just a quick way to share something.

Cards on the table: this is our application. We built Zappy for internal use mainly because we couldn’t find a tool that worked the way we wanted. We thought people would find it useful, so we posted it.

Presentations

A PowerPoint presentation can be turned into a decent video sequence by moving away from the familiar templates used by the program.

For example, in most cases slide backgrounds are not needed at all. Minimalism is encouraged – text and pictures (tables, diagrams). And forget about old-fashioned bulk fonts. And also about the special effects for the “cool” appearance of slides such as checkers or rotation.

An example of a simple and attractive presentation design:

As you can see, there is nothing superfluous: text and images. You can call up picture slides or icons, but only if absolutely necessary. For example, if the slide is boring and just got a cool image of the topic. There are presentation templates that you can use so you don’t have to create them from scratch.

We will not dwell on the process of creating PowerPoint presentations. Any student with this sign. Let us dwell on just a few important points.

The first step is to set the resolution to 16:9 (4:3 by default) in the Design tab. This must be done in such a way that there are no black bars when displaying a video on the site.

Avoid common mistakes – consider the resolution provided by the video hosting.
It is important to dilute the boring text of the presentation with pictures, diagrams, and other visual materials. On YouTube, you can find videos that periodically cause dissatisfaction with viewers.

The main rule when creating presentations for YouTube is not to get bored and move on to themed videos. And there are always a lot of them.

How to turn an article into a video using PowerPoint

An informational website or blog is a great source of video content ideas. Any article you write can be turned into a video. Here are some guidelines:

1. Plan your article. Identify important points to be noted on the slides. You don’t need to put a lot of text on your slides. Write down thoughts in a thesis. Leave the explanations behind the scenes – voice them with your voice.
2. Place the title on the first slide. Make the font large. Do a little styling. You can add a picture.
3. Format your text. Highlight the important in bold. Label the headings (if any) and style them nicely. It is advisable to use a style without shadows and volume – limit yourself to the type of font and color. Add lists as needed.
4. Add illustrations to the slides. These can be photos, screenshots, diagrams, graphs, tables – everything that is needed for clarity. Icons and vector images are great for designing slides.
5. Use simple shapes to decorate your slides when appropriate — lines, arrows, rectangles, and more. If you use them well, you can add some variety to a boring design.
6. Don’t get carried away with animation. It is needed to a minimum. The best option for transitions is fade, cut, shift, or twist. These are the most neutral and non-distracting effects. Avoid effects in which a black background is visible (as in “checkers”, for example).

Video from photo

And now the simplest thing is to create a video from several photos. What is available to everyone. Selections of photographs, for example, are great for showcasing creative ideas.

There are many ways to create videos from photos, but here are some of them:

Google Photos

1. Visit photos.google.com.
2. Sign in to your Google Account.
3. Select the Assistant option, and then click the Movie option.
4. Select a movie theme.
5. Click Get started.
6. Select the photos you need.
7. Click Done.

Android Users Make a Video with Pictures

Android users also can use the Google Photos app to create videos with photos.

The steps are:

• Open the Google Photos app on your Android phone or tablet.
• Sign in to your Google Account.
• Select the Assistant option at the bottom.
• Select Movie at the top.
• Select photos that you want in the movie. (If you like, you also can select videos to create your own movie.)
• Now, press the Create button at the top-right.
• Then, type Play to watch your movie.
• Select the Untitled to add a title to your movie.

iPhone and iPad Users Make a Video with Pictures

iPhone or iPad users can try the following steps to convert image to video with music by using the Google Photos app.

• Open the Google Photos app.
• Sign in to Google Account.
• Select Assistant > Movie.
• Select the photos (or videos) that you want to use to create your cool video.
• Select Create and then click Save to save your created video.

Convert Photo to Video Online

Want to make a video with pictures online? Photo to video online converters can help you. For instance, you can try the following steps to make a video with pictures online.

1. Visit Animoto and select Make A Video.
2. Sign in to your account.
3. Select a template to tell your story.
4. Upload your pictures to convert photo to video online.
5. Drag and drop these photos to replace all simple content.
6. Edit your video if you like.
7. Preview the video and then save this video.

Thus, you have finished converting photos to videos online.

Adobe Premiere Pro (Windows, Mac)

If you are a professional, you might need to turn to some professional photo video maker tools. A study shows that industry professionals always select Adobe Premiere Pro because of its great interface, learning resources, and high-power tools.

Adobe Premiere Pro is used by Hollywood filmmakers, TV editors, YouTubers, videographers, and others.

Adobe Premiere Pro make a video from pictures
The above window is the main interface of this professional photo slideshow maker. This tool indeed can help you create a wonderful video with pictures as its powerful functions.

However, you have to spend time learning this tool. And, you can’t purchase the software outright – you must subscribe to Creative Cloud.

Video files used

Along with photo stocks, there are also video stocks where you can choose suitable frames for videos. Videos are short frames or animations for editing. For example, if you have a video of a conversation, you can use related video clips or just abstract animated images as backgrounds.

For quality footage, video creators go to Place it by Envato, Filmpac, Envato Elements, Pond5, VideoHive, Shutterstock, and other services, but finding good free footage is real. Here are some good promotions for video bloggers on a budget:

• Pexels Videos. A large selection of videos on various topics. No attribution required can be used for any purpose.
• Videvo. In addition to the footage, you can download motion graphics (including effects on a transparent background), music, and sound effects for videos. All the most “juicy” for the money, but there are also many good files.
• Free HD Stock Footage. A group on video hosting Vimeo, where they post good free footage.
• IgniteMotion. A very meager selection of background videos, but you can download quickly and without registration.
• Free video materials. There is only 3D animation here, mostly not of the best quality.
• Clipcanvas. The free footage section currently only shows 172 files, but the quality is very decent. Registration is required to download.

Fragments from other people’s videos: how to use them correctly

Sometimes you may need to take a fragment from someone else’s video for your video. And here you need to be careful.

You can find out more about the rules for using other people’s content in the YouTube help itself. In short, it all comes down to the principle of fair use. For example, using someone else’s content to illustrate your point of view can be considered fair. Therefore, the producers of films, TV series, broadcasts, videos are not offenders – they use a fragment to visually show.

But the problem is that such fair use is very blurry, and according to YouTube itself, even if done correctly, it can get in trouble. In the case of litigation, various factors are taken into account.

Therefore, be careful with third-party content and only use it when necessary. If you displease someone very much, in court copyright infringement will be a strong argument against you.

There is also a version that there will be no problems if you use fragments less than 10 seconds, however, even for such inserts, you can get a strike.

Video editing

Video editing is always necessary, no matter whether you are filming or recording video from a laptop screen. In any case, after recording, something will need to be cut out, somewhere to tweak, add or remove sound, etc. But for these purposes it is not necessary to acquire a set of programs, it is enough to install one, and which one you can choose after reading this article. I personally recommend exploring Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. These are the main tools that have proven themselves in the market over the years. Editing a video is a rather laborious process; to talk about it in general terms, it needs to be trained. You can find many training courses on the Internet where a beginner will gain the necessary knowledge.

Preparing audio for videos

We figured out the video sequence. Let’s move on to audio.

Sound is a very important part of a video. If the visual range can be presented using a presentation and somewhat simplify the task, then audio recording must be approached with all seriousness. Often it is the bad sound that causes the video to close at the very beginning.

The audio track of the video can be presented in several versions:

• recording your own voice on a microphone/dictaphone,
• using someone else’s voice (for example, freelance announcer services),
• background music,
  lack of sound.
• With the recording on the microphone, everything seems to be clear. Not really, though.

Which microphone to choose

A previous blog post has already provided examples of good microphones for recording podcasts.

The listed models are professional equipment, so they will be expensive. There are options for a more modest wallet.

Cheap microphones are a roulette game. You never know what will fall out. Although if you buy an external sound card and carry out a number of manipulations, then everything can work out.

Getting a good microphone is clearly a good idea if you plan to shoot videos regularly and use your own voice. If a few years ago it was possible to keep the viewer’s attention with any quality, now the viewer has a choice.

Where to get music for videos

As mentioned, YouTube is very strict about copyright, and you can use ‘Royalty Free Music’ or ‘No Copyright Music’ in your videos.

Where to find background music, read this article.