I explain why I started my Youtube channel and how I create videos
Updated: Jul 3
You can access my channel here
In this month's blog post, I thought I would revisit the topic of video, now I’ve covered this topic before when I focused on how you could use video with your students and you can read that post here.
However this time I am going to focus on video production and how I go about creating my videos. I can’t believe I’ve now been actively recording and sharing videos for YouTube for just over six years and in that time I’ve amassed almost 1,000,000 views. What started initially as a New Year’s resolution has ended up being something that I’ve just kept on going with.
Before I go into to the detail of how I create my videos I thought it was worth touching on what inspired me to start creating videos. Despite having written over 100 hundred blog posts I actually find I am better at conveying information or explaining something verbally which works well with video. At that time my role was focused on supporting Teachers with using technology in the class room, being able to quick share a vidoe guide on using a particular piece of software had lots of benefits including providing a consistent message and them being able to rewatch mutiple times if required.
Even now when I get an enquiry from a colleauge I will more likely record and send them a video in place of a written reponse via email.
The need to find content for my latest videos helps me to keep up-to-date with what’s happening within the ed-tech space. Thankfully it is an ever-evolving space so there is no shortage of material as apps always changing and new apps are being launched all the time.
Every so often I’ll get asked a question about what software I use to record and edit my videos so I thought I would go through it and explain my workflow for creating videos.
So first off how do I record my videos, there are many great screen recorders out there, if you click here you view my favourites on this YouTube playlist. However, I work on Mac and that comes with QuickTime Pro already installed so I tend just to use that. It also offers the facility to trim the video so I can top and tail them if needed.
I typically try to record my videos in one take however if I do need to edit them then I use iMovie as it already comes installed on the Mac. To give all my videos a uniform look I like to add a thumbnail image, which I create using Piktochart. Piktochart is an online graphic design tool with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface similar to Canva. I also use it to create images for my end screens which I then insert in iMovie with a flip screen transition.
Piktochart recently introduced a video element that has a number of features, one of which is a subtitle creator. I simply upload my finished videos and click edit and it enables me to review the subtitles it automatically detected and make corrections. I can then export them as either a vtt or srt format ready to be uploaded to YouTube once my video has been uploaded.
When it comes to creating shorts I follow a similar process in that I use Quicktime to record the video and then use the other video features within Piktochart to alter the screen ratio to generate the subtitles which I have appearing on the lower portion of the video.
Just recently I have been experimenting with an all-in-one solution called Flexclip, it contains a screen recorder and editor, and it can also generate subtitles so it is very much an all-in-one solution for producing videos. At the moment it will only allow you to export your finished video at 1080P which is the only reason I have not moved over to using it as I record my video at 4k and don't want to lose the quality. You can view my Flexclip video playlist here
Finally, when it comes to sound, I initially used a Blue Snowball microphone more recently I upgrade to a Blue Yeti microphone which I find gives a rich sound.