Starting Your YouTube Channel
The Basics:
You suddenly got the inspiration to put your video-making talents to good use and are serious about making good content on YouTube. Today's blog will give you some great information on how to produce good-quality videos using basic premium services that make a great final product. You will also see how and where to post your YouTube content to gain a much faster following.
Know The Type of Content You Want To Make:
In order to try your hand in this field and gain a group of subscribers and followers, you need to have some sort of a budget allotted. Depending on the type of video that you are going to make, there will be certain expenses that will apply to you, but maybe not to others. For instance, if you were going to make a gaming channel, you would have to buy certain screen recording devices for your consoles in order to edit your content; someone who posts vlogs about their daily lives on YouTube would have no need for a device like that, but they will definitely need to invest some money into a decent camera. The type of content you want to make will determine the equipment you will need to start your channel.
Even though the type of equipment for the different content genres on YouTube willl differ, never underestimate the importance of sound in a good video. Many people who will frequent a channel are willing to put up with bad video quality if there is good sound. However when the situation is flipped, many people will not put up with a bad sound quality even if the video quality is good and click off the video. This is why so many well known YouTubers all use a similar mic or use similar miking strategies which we will cover in the specifics.
The first people you should share your videos to should be the people you know. Knowing the type of content you want to make will also help you gauge who you want to see your content more. For instance, if your channel's premise was that you made political podcasts with political scholars as guests, you probably wouldn't show that to your 12 year old little brother.
The Specifics of Production:
Miking:
As I said before, never underestimate the power of good sound. Almost every type of content that you want to deliver needs to have some sort of recording device in order to produce it. Below I am going to list a few of the types of mics that there are and what content will suit them best. These classifications are based off of the way that it receives sound signals in certain settings.
Condenser Mic:
A condenser microphone is a high quality microphone that creates sound by hitting two conductive metal diaphragms together and creates a sound signal. This is essentially how all microphones will work at their core, but the difference is that condenser mics make a far superior quality sound quality than a dynamic mic which we will cover later. These types of mics are preferred by YouTubers who perform work in studios, music production, and podcasts. They are not designed to be moved around very much, and certain plosive sounds like the "P" sound with your mouth or drastic noise changes period can break the conductive diaphragms. Condenser microphones have a much much flimsier diaphragm than any other type of mic.
Joe Rogan using condenser microphones for good sound
Dynamic Mic:
A dynamic microphone differs from a condenser mic in that it has a much denser set of metal diaphragms. These mics are literally made to be dynamic, hence the name dynamic microphone. For instance, if you are going to be singing, giving field interviews, reporting a scene, or just recording loud things in general, this type of microphone will suit your content much better and create a decent sound.
YouTuber Lauren Southern interviewing with dynamic mic
Headset Microphone:
The lowest quality microphone that we have listed on this list so far. The only time that this headset should ever be used is if the user is wanting to do something revolving video games or voice-over content. This is a viable option for many YouTubers to use, but there are no YouTubers with a fair amount of subscribers that will actively use this for recording.
Once you have learned the different types of mics that there are, it can be very fun and productive to search up different recordings of well known microphones. The absolute best prices for decent recording equipment I have ever seen on the internet come from a website called musician's friend. It will come with all kinds of questions as well as many microphones that you can buy that don't require you buy a mixer.
https://www.musiciansfriend.com/search?typeAheadSuggestion=true&typeAheadRedirect=true&sB=r&Ntt=at2020.
One more thing. If you are going to be using a condenser mic that you are going to be talking directly in to, you need to make sure that you are using a pop-filter. A pop-filter is a piece of equipment that has a couple layers of mesh in a circle that you will place in front of a microphone. Pop-filters are essential for mics because it makes the plosive noises like "ck" and "p" sound much more smooth and is easier on your listeners' ears. Here is a comparison of what plosives sound like without a pop-filter versus with one. Below is also a picture of what most pop-filters will look like.
Comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURouUP4skU&ab_channel=NuclearDwarf
If you are outside recording, a pop-filter is not required, but you will definitely want a wind filter instead.
Images and Video Recording:
Great sound should come first in your production of videos, but great video is immediately up next especially if you are wanting to film the world around you. Many different YouTubers will use different cameras depending on the type video recording that they are wanting to do. Taking your $1000 Canon camera into a paintball range in no way should be done, but perhaps it would make sense for you to take your GoPro camera inside the range. There are many YouTubers who will take a central focus on photos instead of videos, and that is definitely okay! We are going to examine the different ways you can record your videos and capture your photos.
Photo Camera:
There are two main types of photo cameras: DSLR and mirroless. The DSLR camera is one of the most common types of cameras used among most photographers. The large acronym stands for "Digital single lens reflex." All this means is that there is a mirror that will reflect the image onto a sensor that will capture it. The bonus to these cameras is that there are several different lenses that can be used to create certain effects in the pictures that are taken. As time goes on, we will start seeing more mirrorless camera in the future that will accept more lenses than the stock. There are several channels that will use this and make videos about their photography. This channel is a great landscape photographer and offers several different ideas to make photographers think about the way they pick their content:
Video Camera:
There are several different types of video cameras that are available today that will offer a plethora of different performance. Unless you are making short films on YouTube, the main aspect of video cameras that you should pay attention to is definitely the resolution. Some of the best YouTubers right now make their videos look extremely nice by having a high video resolution as well as 60 frames per second in their videos. When looking at a video camera, you need to ask yourself what resolution you want to offer in your videos for your subscribers.
Screen Recording:
Not all YouTubers record their footage with a camera. Gaming channels can use a camera if they want to record footage of themselves playing a game of course, but most of their content that comes from playing video games is through special screen recording software or hardware. Many people who are avid PC gamers on YouTube will record their videos with a program called Fraps which will record all of the screen activity on your application at a given time. One thing to watch out for is to make sure that you have plenty of space on your computer for this program because the video files on these recordings tend be insanely large files and take a long time to render. Console gamers are a little different when it comes recording game footage. For recording footage from your consoles, you will need a special piece of equipment called a capture card. A capture card will allow for you to get your footage of you playing recorded and put onto a computer ready to be edited. A very common series of capture card that is used today is the Elgato.
Elgato capture card.
Editing Software:
Basic Editing Software:
Windows Movie-Maker and iMovie are the basic editing software that come with your windows or your mac computer. While they should not be used for professional stuff, you would be surprised of some of the final products that can be made with these software. If you are wanting a free way to put together all of the multiple clips that you have filmed, these are a very great place to start. Some of the things that these will do very well is add music to a video, trim video clips, compiling multiple short videos, and one very important thing that most people don't think about is file compression. While some quality can be lost when you are using these simple editing software, they will function as a great way to get high quality video files without the insanely high file sizes. This is especially great for gaming channels who will use Fraps. A 10 minute Fraps recording is around 40-50 gigabytes. When using iMovie or Movie-Maker, the program will render these files, trim most of the fat from them, and convert them into an HD .mp4 file.
Premium Editing Software:
Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe Premier are two of the most commonly used premium editing software that are used today. Scores and scores of good YouTubers have created many great videos out of these software. Some of the things that can be done with these software are backwards editing, green-screening, slow motion editing and some special effects. While there are several pricing options that are available for these programs, they are for pretty pricey for the most part. Since there are so many features that both of these programs and programs like it can offer, it can be very intimidating at first. It's so much information that you might need to experiment with little clips before you start making your own videos.
To somebody who has never touched Sony Vegas Pro before, this can look very very intimidating and downright confusing. One of the things that you can do to help familiarize yourself with this software is to start with little projects and work on certain techniques that you want to work on. For instance, a great place to start is to make an intro for yourself using one of these editing software. Our first step in this project was to create a logo using photoshop. Below is a tutorial on how to create a logo and intro for your YouTube channel. Our logo is not bad. What do you think of our logo? Feel free to use our logo for practice before you start on your own:
How to make a custom account intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbF-GI558q8&ab_channel=JustinBrown-PrimalVideo
Just a quick tip: If you want to learn how to add special effects to your videos, Adobe After Effects is a great way to add special effects to your videos and to create cool 3D effects. This is an advanced way to start with an intro and here's a good way to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA2kVwJPBkg&ab_channel=Cinecom.net
How to Share Your New Videos and Gain an Audience:
The Power of Views:
You've just edited your video, and you are ready to go and post it to YouTube. Now all you need to do is get your views to come in. So right off of the bat, one of the ways to get your name out there is to have a regular schedule that you keep to. Give your viewers a reason to subscribe. Viewers like to know that content is going to be released on a regular schedule an astronomical amount more than videos dropping randomly. So make sure that you keep to this schedule, you are more likely to get people to watch your content.
Another thing you can do to add a following to your videos is to purchase views for a couple of your early videos. Viewers are more likely to follow you if your content already has a lot of views. Think of it this way, what video are you more likely to click on? The one that has 17 views? Or the one that has 1 million? Here is one of the sights that you can submit your video to and it will add views to your early channel. This is a great way to make your channel look professional and get your name out to more people. Buying views is cheap, legal, and fair. To save money, it is not recommended that you buy views all for your videos.
Reddit:
There is a very good sub-Reddit called r/NewTubers that allows for users to post their channel and their content for other people to see. The sole purpose of this sub is to allow for new users to get their content out there to some sort of audience that isn't strictly colloquial. There are over 60 thousand people who frequent this sub with many of this sub's posts getting to the front page on Reddit. This also allows for users to give and receive constructive criticism from other early YouTubers.
Good Housekeeping:
As I said before, you need to make sure your videos are going to be out on a regular basis. Sticking to a set schedule is the sure fire way to create an early following with your viewers. There are several other small things that you can do to make sure that your videos receive plenty of views. When you actually up-vote your videos, make your titles simple, captivating, and non-clickbaity. There is nothing that viewers will hate more than a title on a video that overhypes the actual content it delivers. Try to avoid long titles as well. Many viewers will see this long viewing of a YouTube video and will immediately lose interest in it.
Never underestimate the power of tagging your videos when you upload them. Tags are essentially the way that people will find your videos when they type something into the search bar. Try to think about things that people who like your video will also like. If your video shares something in common with something that is already trendy, do not be afraid to what the video has in common with the trend in your tags. Don't go too crazy with your tags though. Many YouTubers such as Leafyishere have caught a lot of flack from his following for being over zealous with his tags on his video.
Website:
Build your own website! Nothing will gain followers faster than a website that shows what you are all about. This is something that is can be done after you have been in the YouTube game for a little while. You can use website-producing sites like Weebly or Wix, but many viewers may see the .weebly or .wix extention in the link to the website and have a bad taste in their mouth. It can make other viewers think that you are still an amateur and that you don't know what you are doing.
There is hope however! Basic HTML can be learned in less than a month with a series of YouTube videos. All you essentially will need to do is purchase some domain and have a basic understanding of how the HTML 5 programming language works. Don't be afraid to resource as well and have someone else contribute for you.
Thanks for the read on today's blog! Tomorrow we will be showing you how to produce your music with free applications like Audacity and listing other premium applications on how to produce your music. We will also show users how to put together sound using third party mixing hardware. Thanks for the read! See you tomorrow!
