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To make yourself better, you have got to ask yourself, “what were you starting from?” There are ways to improve video quality on YouTube and if that’s what your aiming for, this might be the answer to your questions. Nate Woodbury is a YouTube Producer and he’ll be talking about this in today’s episode.
Would you like to improve your video quality on YouTube got some simple ideas of ways that yeah we can we can definitely help you out with that hey it’s Scott Christopher once again along here with Nate Woodberry talking about improving YouTube video quality is that what you’re talking about I want to make things look better sound better that kind of quality or or content quality or are all of it yes Wow where do you want to start well to make to make your videos better this is actually a question that I got from Quora and you have to know like okay what were you starting from so it’s like to make yourself better it really depends on where you’re starting from okay you know so if if you’re at Point a yeah and you want to get to point Z it’s like you want your videos to be better better than what oh why do you want to improve them what is there to improve on is there a benchmark that you set and you go this is this is where I want it to be but it’s not are you saying that you you’re comparing to someone else or just to what your own vision of so this question comes from Quora somebody asked me how do I ever ask the question how do i improve the quality of my videos on YouTube so the first thing I have to know is I don’t know where they’re at so it’s like if they want to improve okay where are you starting from because you can you can make some improvements here to here to here I mean how how far the skill do you want to go let’s just generally say somebody’s videos blow chunks no let’s just say their quality is in the crapper okay so that before we talk about production quality yes you can say that I mean let’s just start there with like the worst videos we’ve ever seen so if yours are just terrible your videos are lousy you’re not getting any views that’s we’re gonna assume your videos let’s just say we’re starting with this one this is worst if your videos like this but they look good but the difference is technically we’ll start we are starting right now technically at a very fairly high level where others perhaps maybe their content based on your own discretionary judgment is better than this but your technical starting point is lower right I mean so let’s just say I’m shooting out on my own iPhone right so that’s my starting point I am I don’t have multiple cameras hi everybody how are you it’s just me on an iPhone and maybe I’m holding out my iPhone with my arm there’s my starting point how do i improve that so before we even jump into that I want to talk about one of the and that is your content okay the biggest improvement that you can make to a video is the cunt well they say the story is everything you know script is everything so to speak if you saw if you’re gonna make a video like we are here talking about this you know you could plan it out we could we could have how could we ever improve this I mean we’re slightly you could have done teleprompting you know we could have could have talked about it ahead of time sure we’ve got something we’ve got some notes but maybe I could have spent more time on those notes you know think about it from a viewers point of view what are they gonna want to watch you know why are they gonna want to watch your video and that’s the kind of your thesis statement right it’s Jimmy we’re what this isn’t necessarily something you’re gonna argue but it is the theme the the subject of the video why does why is someone typing that in and looking for a common one a lot of times on Quora they’ll say why is my youtube channel not doing well or why why am I never getting any views and I’ll click on the link and I’ll go check out their YouTube channel and it’s a guy playing video games or computer games and he’s not talking he’s just you know you know why would I want to watch that you know and there are very successful gaming channels I don’t really know when he to recommend cuz I don’t follow those right but at mice teenage son could tell you right away okay there are some that millions of people watch there’s a personality behind it I guess I know that that PewDiePie guy that I don’t recommend because I checked his channel out to see what’s all the rage and he just cusses a lot and plays video games so but there’s a personality there so I’ll put some personality into your videos create a story like what are you going to show them are you just gonna record us all at two hours of playing video game yeah or are you gonna cut it down and just show the highlight so you’re gonna teach somebody how to keep some chicer code yeah exactly how I got into whatever room blah blah blah yeah that’s good so anyway that I bring that up not because I’m an expert on gaming videos but because that’s what I see a lot of people ask about
so now let’s get into some technical stuff I actually had another point here so this is a struggle that I’ve had I’ve gotten better and better at video over the years mm-hmm but when I by myself I invited you to be on this channel with me we’re working on some projects together yeah and the fact that you and I can have a conversation together makes it a lot more inert oh I agree I’ve had some great feedback already and so I didn’t hear any they have to do me I’m not sure I ever forbid now people have said like I really like the format it’s really fun to watch well and I think and I agree because I’ve seen others that are like this and the fact that you have a sounding board and it does it drives the conversational tone it makes it feel authentic and real which it is but if it were just Nate Woodbury talking to camera you know you might be tempted to either a teleprompt it or be not teleprompt it and really sound awful you know what I mean but either way it’s not a conversation it’s just not natural and real and I think most people find that’s far more engaging perhaps and I try and pick topics we do I do I have a channel Scott has a channel so on this channel I pick topics that I’m the expert on and I try and pick topics and phrase it up in a way where it’s things that you could you could act as the audience right and so if I’m by myself I don’t have somebody here just like well I don’t even know what that word means what does aperture mean like okay well let me explain that or yeah so it’s it’s great to have a Harry yeah another person to bounce things off of and to kind of help fuel the conversation so maybe you could consider that inviting somebody else to to be in the videos with you okay now let’s talk about the technical that the production quality yeah all right so that word that I just mentioned our preacher when I wanted to up my game with video and that’s actually it wasn’t this phone it was a previous version that the iPhone 4s for a year I filmed on the iPhone 4s professionally meaning people paid me right I set up a studio I had the lighting the white backdrop I was filming with teleprompter and I was using my iPhone because it got the job done why not I figured out how to use it the right way to get the s to get the had a quality I want chipset sufficient to make it looking like professional video yeah but then I saw some video that had the background blurred and I wanted to learn how to do that yeah and I learned about DSLR and I learned about aperture and different lenses and how when you have a anyway a higher quality lens and so I bought a DSLR camera I bought a high-end lens the lens that we’re looking at right there or on this camera right there for for his face have very high apertures or wide apertures now that we’re not gonna go into a tutorial on that but I chose to upgrade my camera because that’s the type of look that I wanted and and for my clients as well I wanted to be able to blur that background because just just doing that simple thing really up levels or upgrades the professional is angry just tiny little tweaks that make it that much more professional-looking and it didn’t it doesn’t come cheap I mean you know these these improvements that particular improvement is an investment of a couple thousand dollars to get that look but yeah on this specific camera right here the camera is a $1,200 camera it’s the canon a TD that’s kind of a that’s the body right oh yeah so that’s it’s the 80 is in the number D yeah that’s just the body and then the lens itself were using a 24 millimeter which is a fairly wide angle and to get a higher picture of 1.4 on that wide of a lens it’s a $1500 lens yeah so the lens is more than the body which just goes to show you that that’s really all an iPhone camera is it’s kind of a body it’s really just it’s the chipset with a very standard you know digital zoom and they wear this with these lenses the SLRs you know you have analog zoom you know and that literally magnifies so it’s all this lens is a prime lens meaning it can’t zoom at all and yet it’s still 1500 bucks oh this doesn’t zoom it doesn’t zoom it’s just I just got it because it’s got the wide wide wide aperture and can really blur the background it’s cool but you can change the lenses like right right I can anyway so on this one on the phone here they pack like five lenses in there somehow and they yeah it’s a genius invention it is for sure there they’re still coming at anyway some of the cameras have liked to let two different cameras and they’ll try and do a composite yeah yeah that will blur the background but it’s not it’s not quite it’s better for photos but it’s not there for video yet right yeah it’s still a phone mm-hmm as far as I’m concerned I mean I’m 51 years old to me a phone as a phone I’ve never heard you say your actual age you just say I’m getting up there oh now you heard it Hey and I still look younger than Nate all right I’ve got another idea and I’ve seen a lot of people do this and I’ve tried it myself it’s talk while you walk so you know you could hold hold your camera out in front of you or have it like I use my gorilla pot so funny-looking thing with the camera on it yeah and you’re just walking while you talk to the camera so instead of having it on the tripod and just talking to it sitting there still yeah you can try just walking around just to give it some energy some motion and I’ve done this with my clients as well on the glidecam where where I’m holding the camera facing them and I’m steady and I’m walking backwards as they follow me and they talked to the camera it keeps things interesting a video that I’m thinking of where I first saw this on the channel veritasium Derek Muller it’s actually his second channel where he just has things to talk about they’re not as they’re not as planned he doesn’t travel anywhere he’s just thinking sharing some ideas and he’ll he’ll be in an interesting place like a city or something and so he’s just walking around talking to the camera knee because there’s interesting things and people and noises in the background he can just talk for ten minutes but it kept the video a lot more entertainment but what’s crucial to that is that is this the steadiness you know is to keep it as nice smooth yeah having some kind of gimbal or like you’re saying a glide cam something some apparatus so that it’s not distractingly shaky or yeah this is yes for some reason is more difficult even if you’ve got some type of a selfie stick or something like test it out and see if you can hold us anyway but and also with that if you are stuck with just holding your hand out you can jack up the frames per second which will tend to smooth out the overall shakiest I’ve used that before even shooting 4k right where I’m kind of doing with my hand and I’m I know I’m kind of shaking then I play back later and it tends to remove some of that because they’re so with I just got the new GoPro Hero six black it’s in my bag or I see I’m whacking down over there it’s got an advance of image stabilization that came with it so I hook it to my chest when I go mountain biking and so I’m a little all over the place and I’ve tried it for different anyway it’s really it’s pretty smooth yeah so you can like shake the thing around and it pretty much stays steady I’m telling you though they’re taking away the shaky is a huge way to up the quality of your videos for sure okay so now I want to talk about lighting and all I’m gonna say about lighting is after you watch this video go up in the search bar here on YouTube and type in you know how to fix my lighting or good lighting for photography photographers are really good at making an image look good and then just translate it to video then you hit record but find a simple lighting tutorial but the simple advice that I could give you is put light in front of you not behind you we’ve got we’ve got some soft lights aiming at the front of us we’ve got light on the ceiling there we’ve got some cool color lights behind us but if we had a window a bright window behind us that that doesn’t turn out so you know wreck everything you can you can face a window in a more camera at you or kind of if the windows right here and I’m looking at a camera this way you can kind of put some cool shadows on your face but experiment with that just upping your game with lighting will really enhance the the professionalism the quality of your your videos and and the lights that we have here man I have a set I’ve got dozens of these soft boxes we’re only using reason five right now you might only need one you can get a set of three of these I’ll put a link in the description I think with the 51 year old the more lights the merrier you can get a set of these three soft boxes for 140 bucks on Amazon so I last forever I’ve used them for years and I just increased my that’s great very professional all right now we’re going to talk about audio and the audio the mic that we’re using right here my finger is almost touching it you just can’t see it because it’s on a boom and it’s right out of the shot it’s a zoom h2n so team cue the picture of the h2n right here hopefully you’re seeing a picture of the h2n now I own the h1 in and I use it because it’s small its compact I use it when I attach the lapel mic to my shirt I have the h4 n which is more robust you’ve heard that that’s the big name one yeah it’s it’s overkill for me I’m actually gonna see if I can return it or sell it because I’m just I want another h2 in well hey the two of those equals a four you think you can you can you can plug in through an XLR connection two microphones at the same time in record in stereo or two different people well an h4 rent is kind of the iconic like the two mics then there’s actually and all of them do this has it that way inside but it’s inside the case but yeah okay I know you can’t see what we’re pointing it just looks more but I like this look and feel of this one more than the age for him
so anyway I highly recommend the h4 and now it reports to x2 in ah I just I saw on purpose to see if you guys are kind of testing me so I highly recommend the h2 n for external audio now it records to an SD card so my camera here it’s got a shotgun mic but we’re a little ways away and so the audio isn’t going to be near as good as this right so when you pull the video into your editing software you’ll see the waves from the audio that came with the video right and then you’ll see the waves from this and you can line them up most programs have an auto sync feature so that’s why we put in a clap sometimes in the in the video and there’ll be a spike so you can line them up it’s really really easy it might sound complicated but once you’ve done it once you’re like oh well that’s that’s pretty easy and that’s definitely a way of upping your video perks and quality for YouTube now there’s one other thing that I that I wrote here that I actually wanted to go back to and talk about kind of the structure of your content and so this will kind of be a bonus to wrap up if you do this your videos will give better results you’ll have longer watch I’ll have more people to actually watch the video all the way through versus just clicking on it and leaving so one is the intro make sure that the first thing that you talk about is letting them know why they’re here what they’re going to experience right so if they saw a title that says you know how to eat green potatoes that’s just the first Encanto my mind okay then when you start the video it’s like hey today we’re gonna talk about and show you how to eat green potatoes sounds like that’s in the introduction yeah right because especially if it’s something if somebody searched for a video and they found you know a search for a topic they found your video they hit play and you just start you know randomly talking about things or that it’s like I thought this was gonna show me how to eat potato yeah so you want to that you want them to know that they found what they’re looking for then you can also give them a hook we call it a hook as like so let me give you an example with that with that silly potato okay so in this video I’m gonna show you how to eat a green potato and if you watch to the end I’ll actually show you how to eat a purple potato as well so let’s make sure you stay tuned for that right let me know might break for a video logo you don’t have to but then you come back into the content and you you know make your content good and then you do the purple potato thing at the end deliver on your promise that’s just a little simple thing but by putting an introduction like that or starting your video with that you’ll get a lot more people to actually watch they’ll stick around and they’ll they’ll know that they found what they’re looking for I mean it’s a fairly basic device for any kind of content anywhere really you don’t I mean as I stay tuned you know the heavyweight title bout is coming up next and even when there’s nothing more compelling the ninety commercials you know and there’s you know all these other preliminary bouts it’s like I thought they said it was next it is it’s a hook it keeps you coming it keeps you there when I worked in radio we kind of worked with those all the time still to come that new one from Gloria Estefan and people that can’t wait to hear it you know they listen to sixteen other songs and then you finally give it to them but at least they’re they listened for all that time and in your case on YouTube you know they’re gonna watch until they see it or they fast forward to it if you’re if you’re this is another bonus if you’re doing a vlog or something exciting you take a few seconds of that exciting thing that happens later on in your video and just put it right at the beginning is kind of like a little teaser and something’s about to explode and you’re getting excited and then it cuts you know and they’re okay today what we’re gonna do is set this up and see what happens and you’re like whoa that looked like it got pretty intense there I’m excited too and so your watch so basically what you’re saying is is that you know all of these things that can increase his quality and kind of heighten the experience for the viewer it just takes a little extra effort in time you know it from an editorial standpoint you know you’ve got to put in a little more time to do these things you’re gonna be scrubbing more video to find those little Clips and and to and/or you know we’re making a really cool thumbnail or whatever it is I mean all that stuff that makes this better it takes more of your time which is of course isn’t an issue for you because as we’ve talked about in other videos he has people that do it for him oh yeah so I like with all these things what I don’t want you to do is to feel overwhelmed and think oh I can’t get started because I’ve got to do all these things to start with the best production clutter I would start right now just make a crappy video post it everyone we’ll talk about this in another episode but everyone has to start somewhere and you go back and look at the beginning days of all the successful youtubers their first videos were all crappy so if you want to be successful you got to start crappy and then hopefully these are some tips of ways that you can appear your game away from crappy to awesome set the bar low for yourself he’s saying you know hopefully found this video helpful if you did and you’re new here definitely hit subscribe got some more videos you can check out over there