How I Make My YouTube Videos (Part 2)

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'm going to share the second part of how I make my YouTube videos.  This part will discuss editing and posting.

In my last video, I discussed the first two steps of creating a YouTube video: scripting and filming.  In this video, we'll talk about the last two steps.  First,

Editing

Okay -- so now I've recorded my video on my iPad.  I move it to my computer by attaching my iPad with a USB lightening cord.  This IS the fastest way -- believe me, I've tried a bunch.  I have a YouTube folder in my C drive and each video gets its own file with this naming convention -- date, dash, shortened video title.  I drag the raw video footage into this folder.  If it isn't obvious by now, I work on a PC.  Now, when it comes time to edit the video, I use an app called Filmora by Wondershare.  They have several options, but I went ahead and bought the Lifetime one-time plan for $70.  Again, I made this decision 3 years ago, so I'm sure the video editing software landscape has changed since then, but Filmora seemed to be the most robust, easy to learn software that fit into that mid-price range.  So, not free, but also not $300 or $20 a month.  Okay, so this is not meant to be a tutorial for Filmora -- perhaps I'll do one of those at some point -- but I want to point out the options that I use regularly for my videos.  If you are serious about making videos, there is a fairly steeping learning curve on the editing software side.  I didn't have much experience with editing video or photos prior to this, so learned A LOT from YouTube videos and trial and error.  So, just a quick spin around the software before we dive in, this is the video timeline.  From left to right it is the chronological display of the video you are producing.  So this is the beginning and this is the end of the video.  All of this stuff happens in the middle.  These are the tracks.  They are similar to layers in photo editing.  This is how you build up the content in your video from the background, to the videos, images, and text.  There is a specific track for music -- you can see down here, all of the other tracks that I have are video tracks.  The bottom layer is the background and everything else builds upon that.  Up here are the categories of things you can add to your videos.  Media is images and videos.  Audio is just that.  Titles refers to text, but also to some shapes and animation. Transition is how you switch from one video element to another.  The last three: Effects, Elements, and Split Screen, I don't really use, but are other fancy ways that you can add pizzazz and interest to your videos.  So, the first thing I do is decide on a

• Background - I use a lot of blue backgrounds since they work best given the way I film, but you can use anything you want.  Filmora has a couple of background options built in if you look under Media at Sample Colors.  Also, you can download a background from the Internet, or use Canva to create your own background.  More on that later.  Just make sure the background is the correct size.  To import a background, click Import -- Import Media Files, navigate to your folder and double click on the image.  Anything you import will now be in this Project Media Folder under Media.  Now I drag this background down to the first track.  I also import some Marble Jar specific elements: my short intro video, my outro video, and my logo.  Then I import the video itself.  Okay, so in order to get the green screen effect throughout my video, I use Filmora's
• Chroma Key - so I have a background image on Track 1.  I drag my raw video footage down to track 2 and extend the background so that it now goes the entire length of the video.  Now you can see that the background isn't showing through, so I need to activate Chroma Key which will make my background transparent.  Double click on the video to bring up more options, click the checkbox for Chroma Key, click on the color dropper to select the color you want to make transparent, click on the blue screen of the video and viola!  Now all the blue parts are transparent and we can see the background from the first track.  This worked well, but because it is an automatic feature, there is only so much you can do to manipulate the results.  This is why sometimes my videos look ghostly or pixelated.  As long as the sound is good, I generally just go with it.  I'm not running a professional operation, after all!  I use the scissors tool to trim my video and the garbage can to delete portions of the video that I don't need.  I drop in my intro video and drag down a fade transition so that the jump between the actual video and intro video is not too harsh.  After that I begin to
• Layer Images and Text - anything that I want to appear layered on top of my video needs to go in track 3 or higher.  Images in the upper left are referred to as a Picture in Picture effect.  If I drag a photo onto a track, I can extend it or trim it to how long I want it to appear in the video.  I can also double click to apply motion to it which governs how it pops, slides, or rotates onto and off the screen.  Under Titles, you can also choose text to add.  Filmora gives you some to choose from, but you can also buy packs of themed effects and text titles to add to your videos.  A lot of the text comes with animation, which is kind of fun.  I like a lot of the animation, but in practice, I tend to stick with pretty boring lower third titles.  The last thing I wanted to touch on in Filmora is
• Adding video screen records - as picture in picture effects.  So what this means is that the video is playing as I'm talking either here on the side or taking up the whole screen.  I use this feature to show how to do things on a device or computer as I'm talking through the steps.  For a device like an iPhone, I use the iPhone's screen record and email the video to my computer.  For a video of my computer, I use Filmora's Record PC Screen option, which will record either the whole screen or a portion of the screen.  I time this to coincide directly with my voice over from the video and drag it to start at the same time.  This process is pretty complicated, so let me know if you want me to do a video just on this.  Okay, so once I finish editing my video, I watch it through one full time to make sure I didn't unwittingly drag some weird thing into the video or erase a bunch of stuff by mistake and then I use the Export feature to upload it to my YouTube channel.  I upload it as Private since I do some other things to the video before going live.  Okay -- onto 

Posting to YouTube

So, once my edited video is posted to Youtube, there are some things I need to go before going live.  First, I have to create a

• Thumbnail - this is the photo that you see next to a YouTube video title when you search.  If you don’t create a thumbnail, YouTube will just pull a random screen shot and use that.  Thumbnails help to make your video look professional and keep your branding consistent.  I use a photo of myself for each one — not because I like looking at myself — but to provide consistent branding across all my videos.  To make thumbnails, I use Canva.com.  I find that the template for Facebook posts is the right dimensions for a thumbnail photo.  Drag in a background image (Canva has a bunch of good free ones), create some text for a title, and import some images.  Now, I have the photo of myself that I took, but I need for the background to be transparent.  For this, I use the Magic Eraser app on the iPad to get rid of the background, save it as a PNG file and then I can import it into Canva, and layer it on top of the background for my thumbnail.  Save the thumbnail as a JPG since that will give you the smallest image size.  I have a folder under my YouTube file where I save all of my thumbnails.  Okay, so after I have created this, it’s time to 
• Edit YouTube Video Details - YouTube has a site to deal with all your videos called YouTube studio.  In the videos tab, to prep my video for going live, I choose to edit the details, put as much of the script into the description as possible (I use lettercount.com to cut the script down to under 5,000 characters), upload my thumbnail, apply tags, assign the video to one or more playlists, and put on an end screen that recommends another video or playlist.  And the final thing I do is 
• Post Script to Marblejar.net - I figure some people learn better visually or want a reference to the video, and since I've already gone to the trouble of writing out the test to the videos, I post all of my scripts to my website: marblejar.net.  I recently moved my website over to Google's Blogger platform.  Posting is usually just as easy as adding a new post, copying and pasting the entire script and hitting publish.  I usually don't have to adjust the styles or anything -- they seem to port over from Evernote perfectly.  I also update old posts to include the video links to YouTube videos that have gone live.

And that's it!  On Mondays, I go into YouTube Studio and change the status of one of my videos from private to public, which make it go live.  This seems like a lot of steps and a lot of work -- and it certainly took up a lot of brain space at one point, but now it is fairly routine.  It takes about an hour to write 3-4 minutes worth of script and about an hour to edit 3-4 minutes worth of video.  So, I can choose to do this all on one day (like today I spent 5 hours writing scripts) or spread it throughout the week.

Let me know if you have questions or would like any parts of the process expanded on.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!