Some Observations for Best Practices in YouTube (or other platform) Videos
A video has a very short period of time to catch a viewer’s attention, and a number of things can make a viewer click away. Here’s my nope list:
- Obvious click-bait title
- Badly-shot video with dizzy, jerking camera motion
- Bad audio without noise cancellation
- Unpleasant, grating voice or difficult to understand accent
- Disorganized content, slow & boring
- Too-loud or poorly chosen background music
- Video is just too long
- Choppy editing
- Too common topic / overdone content
Good writing, some investment in basic equipment and software can avoid many of these. An honest assessment of the speaker’s voice and delivery is needed.
Showing, not telling, can be very effective. One channel that I watch regularly has no narration at all, not even captions. The projects shown are interesting and the pace of the video allows me to follow the steps. I am researching, not plagiarizing their ideas. I’ll be making my own videos with my take on the content.
Using tripods will cut way down on the annoying camera motion. Where I would normally hand-hold, I’ll help stabilize my camera with a monopod. My camera also has an anti-shake program. I also have an inexpensive “B” camera for a different angle.
I just got a decent set of wireless lapel mics, and I will be taking advantage of the audio processing within Adobe.
Rahn and I both have pleasant speaking voices without a lot of accent, though Rahn is unmistakably a Texan. I’ve picked up some Texanisms, but I’ve bounced around the country enough that my own accent has been moderated.
Practice of scripts and experience will improve pacing and understanding. Another help is using titles and text within the video and staying off camera. If a craft video, hands and art work with off-camera narration would be more effective.
When speeding up motion to edit the duration, make sure camera audio is off. Few things are more annoying than unintelligible squeaks.
I prefer instrumental music for background. Vocals add another layer of complexity during editing. Adobe has some powerful tools to adapt and remix audio to match audio with what is going on in the video.
Edit, edit, watch again, trim the length, edit some more. Study other videos. Compare with as honest an appraisal as possible.