Video

Tips to make, edit and share videos

Tips to make video to share on social media

Objective → Being able to produce good media/visual content to connect with your audiences. Digital content includes photos, videos, animations, infographics, visual essays, etc. We'll focus on recorded videos.

Recommendations

  • Starting point → As with written content, start by building your visual content around the identified needs or interests of the target audience.

  • Materials → It is always better if you use a professional camera, but nowadays you can also get outstanding photos and video on most phones.

  • Shots → It’s better to use different angles and shots, instead of recording the whole thing in one position.

Content → Non-professional videos require humane content.

Technical specs

  • Duration Facebook: 2 min. length Instagram: 1 min. length (30 sec recommended) | IGTV 1 to 10 min length Twitter: 30 sec. length

  • Dimensions Facebook: 1280 x 720 (landscape aspect ratio 16:9) Instagram: IG 600 x 315 (16:9), 600 x 600 (1:1) or 600 x 750 (4:5) Twitter: max. 1280 x 720 (16:9) or 640 x 640 (1:1)

  • Formats → .MP4 and .MOV

  • Light → Natural better than artificial. Harsh lighting will create dark shadows. The window should be in front of you when filming in the interior with natural light.

Tips to add subtitles and closed captions

Objective → Adding subtitles, or closed captions, make your videos more accessible to a wider audience.

Recommendations → The easiest way to add subtitles to a video is by using YouTube. If your video is on YouTube (or you are willing to upload it there), YouTube can automatically create your subtitles.

How to add subtitles in the same language as the video audio → Make sure the video and your YouTube channel are in the same language. Then, follow the step by step provided by YouTube help:

  1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.

  2. From the left menu, select Subtitles.

  3. Click the video you’d like to edit.

  4. Click ADD LANGUAGE and select your language.

  5. Under subtitles, click ADD. Play the video and enter your captions. Don't forget to add text describing other sounds happening in the video, like [applause] or [thunder] so viewers know what's going on in the video.

  6. Repeat step 5 for additional captions, then click PUBLISH.

How to add subtitles in a different language → You need to download the automatically generated subtitles as text, then translate into the desired language (use Google Translate), edit and correct any mistake, and upload the file again. See our step by step guide:

  1. Click the three vertical dots (⋮) on the fourth column. See previous image.

  2. Click Actions on the top right and download the .art file.

  3. Open the file, copy the text and translate with Google Translate. Copy into a new text file.

  4. Click “Add New Subtitles” and select “Upload a file”.

  5. Select “Subtitle File” from the popup menu. Upload your file.

  6. Adjust your subtitles

  7. Publish

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