Sunday, February 26, 2012

Top 10 tips and tricks for making a high quality Youtube experience



Youtube is a juggernaut of epicness that is likely to last forever. Aside from being the largest video platform, it is the 3rd most visited website in the world, as well as the 2nd largest search engine. Youtube has over 3,000,000,000 views . . . every single day! Ever wonder how much video footage is uploaded every minute? A whopping 35 hours. Every minute, buddies! Does any of that footage belong to you? If not, you're missing out, my friends. Youtube is an awesome opportunity to show off your creativity. Anyone can do it, and I'm sure you would be surprised with how easy it can be. For those of you who are just starting out, here are some good recommendations, as well as interesting tips on how to make Youtube a better experience, for you and your future viewers.

1. When uploading your video to Youtube, make sure it is in HD.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but when I search for anything, I always include ", HD" after everything in the search string. That will only pull up videos in 720p or 1080p, and those are the only videos worth watching in my opinion. This goes for music, as well as video. Nothing is more irritating that finding a cool song to listen to on Youtube, only to hear it crackle, fizzle, and be ruined by low quality audio.

2. Adjust your settings to always play in high quality

Watching videos in high quality is the only way to go. Youtube allows you to set your playback settings to always play the highest quality setting available. You can make that change by logging into your account and going here:

http://www.youtube.com/account#playback/quality

Another great tip to know about is &hd=1. When you’re sharing a link to a video with a friend, family, neighbor, a dead relative, or anyone else, send them the link and add &hd=1 at the end of the link. This will automatically play the video in HD when they click on the link. I use this often, especially when I’m posting links to my videos in blogs or facebook.

3. Have the proper rendering settings.

I know through experience that getting this just right can sometimes be difficult. Once you have found a video editing software that works for you, I would recommend checking Youtube for tutorials on the best rendering settings, and then uploading test videos to a proxy channel to make it look the way you want. Also, find videos you like and politely ask that user for advice. I found that most people are willing to help in that regard.
Youtube has outlined what video formats they prefer for their videos:

• WebM files - Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
• .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files - Typically supporting h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec
• .AVI - Many cameras output this format - typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM
• .MPEGPS - Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio
• .WMV
• .FLV - Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio

4. Crop the image to fit the screen.

Nothing sucks more than having a large T.V., then having to watch something that only fills up half of your uber-epic-awesome screen. Make sure the aspect ratio for your video is 16:9. The size you will want for HD is 1280 X 720. This will allow you to fill the screen and avoid any of the black bars. Depending on the video you’re editing, you may need to crop the image to fill the screen, as well.

5. Enable your player to watch a blocked video.

Copyright is a good thing. However, there are many great videos online, which harbor no ill will to the copyright holder, that have been blocked in certain countries. I have a video uploaded that is blocked in Germany because a certain small portion of the video contains music composed by Hans Zimmer. Here is a link to view the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsANNlRl4Ak&hd=1

And here is how to bypass the block if you can’t view it properly: Simply paste the video's URL into this proxy website:

http://proxy.maxproxy.net/

Another thing that may work is by using google translate. You can paste the video URL into the translate section and it can work, depending on your location.

6. Getting a video to auto-replay

When it comes to good music, sometimes it is nice to have it on auto-replay during a good gaming session, cleaning the house, or just sitting back and enjoying all the wonderful imaginations that come to your head while its playing. Something that nice should be available, right? Check out TubeReplay and let it help you out. It will even keep a running total of how many times it repeated the epicness for you.

http://www.tubereplay.com/

7. How to Download A Youtube Video

There are many ways to do this. A lot of people ask me where I get my cinematics from. The majority come from Youtube, buddies. I use a site called keepvid.

http://keepvid.com/

One thing I really like about this site is it makes it easy to see what quality you're downloading, as well as the format you want it in. I use MP4 for downloading, editing, and uploading. Keeping all of these things the same is crucial to making sure your video turns out great in the end.

8. Playlists

Playlists are a must-have for any Youtuber. It allows you to sort videos into a group, one which you can click play-all. If you use Youtube primarily for music like I do, having a good playlist can make it very easy to enjoys hours and hours of epicness during a good gaming session without having to tab out and reload a new song. I'm currently replaying through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to get ready for the new release of Mass Effect 3 (woot, woot). Having epic music constantly going in the background makes it much more enjoyable. I especially found this true when I used to play World of Warcraft. Creating a playlist is easy. Next to the "Like" button on any video, you will see a button that says "add to". Click on that and make your playlist. Easy as it gets. Here are links to view playlists for my music mixes:

Epic Music Mix Of Legend
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL553EB59EFBD7930B&feature=view_all

Epic Music Mix Of Majesty
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0D491920B696D127&feature=view_all

Epic Music Mix Of Sadness
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDF8706C22633ADFA&feature=view_all

Epic Music Mix Of Darkness
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD5A2787EC26BB68A&feature=view_all


9. When creating a video, make sure you yourself really enjoy it

This is a key ingredient to any successful video. Don't ever settle for something mediocre, especially when you know you could have done much better with the video. My first account, Revennaras, has some videos with decent moments, but as I learned more and more, got better at editing, and saw how to truly make a good video, I grew to despise some of my earlier videos I had created. I couldn't even enjoy the mixes I spent hours and hours creating. So, I decided to create my new channel Sindrannaras.

http://www.youtube.com/sindrannaras

I revised a lot of my older content with higher quality audio, video, and creativity. It will have taken me almost a year to revise everything I want to, but I'm very happy with what I've done. Another great example of not settling for mediocre is DragonstarDT. His new video Epic Music Mix XVII - Retribution has a cinematic beginning, which is amazing. The first draft he did was amazing compared to many other similar videos out there, but he didn't think it was as good as it could have been. Thus the end result is truly great, mainly because he didn't settle for anything less than DragonstarDT-worthy-awesomeness. I salute you, good buddy!

10. Practice Makes Perfect

Although I received good praise for m very first epic music mix, it was terrible. I'm very happy I kept at it, though. One great way to practice is to upload parts of your video to a private Youtube channel and watch it over and over, see what you do and don't like about it, then adjust accordingly. My videos nowadays go through several drafts before I upload them to my channel.

Youtube will only get better with time. The more users who decide to upload, the greater it will be.

1 comment:

  1. Great tips, buddy. Very detailed and interesting. See you around ;P

    Thai

    ReplyDelete