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Before you begin to upload the videos, you have to know how to shoot for the small screen, which is what we’ll be showing you in this edition of tips and tricks.

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One of the more important aspects of online video is the fact that unlike standard shooting for a television, you’re shooting for a much smaller medium. This means that online videos should stray from things like wide, landscaping shots. With videos ending up being so small, wide shots generally lose too much detail to capture the beauty that they’re intended to. The fix here is more descriptive close-up shots to retain the detail on a typical 2 x 3 inch video-sharing screen.

Another aspect that is different from the standard screen practices is the use of long, time-stretching transitions and dissolves in between scenes. Again, on a small screen, compression problems generally occur leaving the nice looking dissolves looking muddy and more like a mix of random pixels or damaged video. The solution is to use straight cuts, avoiding any potential compression issues.

Another concept is that of the length of the online video versus the length of a standard TV show. We only five to ten minutes max on certain video-sharing sites, so it’s best to be brief since there isn’t as much time to drag things along. If you’re not sure if you should leave it or not, that means cut it. Use only what matters. Remember, just because you shot it, doesn’t mean that you have to use it. This is the entire purpose of editing video. You’re editing to improve your clips, not to include all of your shots.

Another concept that requires some attention is the use of titles in your video. Try to avoid them if at all possible because with the small screen, you’ll find yourself straining to read the tiny letters. If you do need to use titles, make sure that they are big and be sure to leave them on the screen long enough so that they can be read. The general rule of thumb is to leave them up long enough so that they can be read. The general rule of thumb is to leave them up long enough so that they can be read three times over. This should give the audience enough time to be able to read the titles.

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Last, but not least, people generally tend to sit through a bad video, but not through bad audio. If you intend to post video online, make sure to use a mic to capture any and all voiceovers, narration tracks and foley. Most consumer camcorders above the $500.00 price range come with an eighth of an inch mic input jack, which can accept any standard mic from karaoke machines to toy instruments.

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Now that we know how we should be making our videos for the small screen, let’s be sure to utilize these techniques next time we shoot a video for uploading.

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