If you are going to be shooting the type of video that could be described as talking head video for things like tutorials then the technicalities are pretty easy to nail down.
A reasonable lighting setup, some form of decent audio recording system and an “OK” camera or smartphone and with a little tweaking you are probably good to go.
As I say, that’s the “technical” part of it and these days, pretty easy to get under control given that the subject being captured is in a relatively fixed postion.
The real problems start when it comes to what is called in the industry, “set design.”
What the viewer sees in the background has an enormous effect on how that viewer is going to perceive both the subject and the information they may be relating.
In this video from Video School they cover a few choices they made for their own set design with a good explanation as to why those choices were what they were.
OK, so the guys at Think Media are pretty prolific in the sheer amount of content they produce so I think their opinion on the current batch of useful A.I. tools is relevant to us all.
The current sate of A.I. tools for video is that there really is no current state other than a constant state of flux!
It is just evolving so fast with new applications of A.I. to video related problems coming and going almost on a daily basis.
So for what it’s worth and given that by next month it may all have been replaced, here’s their take on the current batch of tools that can actually make your video creation easier.
I have a friend who has been an editor for a very long time now but the difference between us is pretty vast!
I cut, dice and splice little YouTube videos whereas he works at the Hollywood blockbuster end of the scale.
Over the years he has shared a mountain of tips and tricks with me but starting out there was one that really stuck with me.
At the beginning of a new project he may spend up to a month full time organizing and naming all the assets available to him for that project.
A lot of that time may be spent with the director present and basically what they are doing is mapping out every step they will be engaging in before they start.
The point he was making to me was that no matter how complex or simple a project is, unless you have all your ducks in a row organizationally, you will sink faster than the Titanic in a sea of “where did I put that thing!”
Here are some more advanced organisational tips for use in PowerDirector.
Obviously this tutorial was aimed at being used for a New Year Countdown but that’s selling it a little short I think.
There are numerous situations where you may need or want some kind of countdown effect so this how you can do it in PowerDirector.
When I first started helping my wife shoot videos at home for her YouTube channel I had already been video editing for quite some time.
So for the editing I was fine but as far as shooting went, I had pretty much no idea what I was supposed to be doing!
We started off using a Samsung phone for video and were kind of lucky because that phone was pretty forgiving as far as quality went.
However it was obvious that the overall quality needed to be raised.
That was the beginning of a journey in search of the equipment we really needed to achieve the standard we felt acceptable.
These days we use a good Sony camera, a Hollyland Lark lavalier mic setup, some good quality lighting and a dedicated space to shoot in.
We didn’t get to this point in one go. It was a process of slowly upgrading and improving and one thing we did learn was that going for an expensive item more often than not, was just wasting money.
Here’s a great guide through the process from the guys at Movavi on getting only what you need at a budget price.
Filmora, like just about every other consumer level video editing software at the moment, has certainly dived into the deep end of integrating the latest in A.I. features.
Personally I think some of these new features are pretty cool, some I think are pretty useless and some quite handy to have up your sleeve.
For me the bottom line of any feature in video editing software A.I. or not is whether I would actually use it.
The danger with A.I. video features is that they are often presented as “total” solutions to video creation.
What I mean by that is that the user is coaxed into believing that the A.I. is going to create your video or completely edit your video… none of which is true.
Any A.I. functionality has to be viewed as a tool rather than an end unto to itself although that’s kind of hard when you don’t really know what it can do!
In light of that here is a pretty complete run through of the current A.I. features in Filmora, what they can do and a few examples of how they can be used.
This is a particularly long livestream video from Daniel Batal for this week so be warned!
It goes for about one hour and forty-five minutes but the reality is that it is full of great information if you are using DaVinci Resolve as your primary editor.
The reason this one is so good in my opinion is that is solely concentrates on the Edit Page in Resolve and covers just about everything you can do in that Page.
The tendency with most Resolve users is to jump around the various pages to carry out actions that one would logically think belong in that Page.
That’s fine in itself but there has been a fundamental change in the way Resolve has been developed over the past year or so.
What has slowly been happening is that access to a number of settings and tools has been added to the Edit Page based on user data.
That data was showing what I just described with people jumping from the Edit Page to another, completing a task then returning to the Edit Page.
To improve workflow efficiency the folks at Resolve have been identifying tasks that could be made accessible on the Edit Page and making it so.
In light of that, this run through of the Edit Page from Daniel Batal is a great way to get a total grip on what you can do without having move around from Page to Page.
If you are working with DaVinci Resolve, pretty much the answer to most questions relating to being able to perform some action is, yes!
Of course that where the fun begins because with all of that awesome technical ability comes an interface that has to cover a million different things!
Sometimes even the simplest of action can be a bit of a task to unravel although once you work it out, it then makes perfect sense.
Here’s a tutorial from Jason Yadlovski covering one such seemingly simple actions, creating a transparent video with and alpha channel.
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