Best Filming and Editing Practices

Lighting

Good lighting can make the difference between selling clips and not selling clips. A customer is typically more likely to purchase a clip that they can clearly see versus one which is dark or poorly lit. See the links below for some inexpensive lighting options:

• Clamp Light – Amazon
• Light Kits – Amazon

Staging

You may not think about it when you are shooting a clip, but customers do look at the background of your video. When you are setting the stage for a clip, look around you to make sure you are setting the right scene for the type of clip you are shooting.

• Backdrops – Amazon
• Room Divider Curtains - Amazon

Filming

Always film your clips horizontally!

If you are using a cell phone to film your clips - always - rotate your cell phone to the left so your clips will be right-side up! Even though you can rotate a cell phone either way horizontally (left or right) only clips which are rotated to the left correctly positioned. Just remember that home or start button should be on the right side of the screen when filming. 

It's important to remember that if you shoot clips vertically, there will be issues with the clip preview and the clip image. By default our system is set up to display videos horizontally and by this we mean the clip_image and the clip preview would be turned horizontally, not the actual video.

Regardless of the type of cell phone and which of the duel cameras are used during filming (front or rear), this is all about the aspect ratio 9:16 vs 16:9 of the video and how our system handles it.

 

To get the clip_image and the clip preview to remain in a 9:19 position (vertically displayed with a 9:16 aspect ratio), you would have to edit the clip with video editing software and either set the letterboxing (the black lines on the side of the videos) to keep the correct aspect ratio or do something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVGOFrNrtow via post-production editing.

 

However, using a raw, unedited video uploaded directly from a cell phone, the clip_image and the clip preview would not display properly on our site, by default as the the GIF and preview would be automatically displayed horizontally. IMPORTANT - the clip itself would still be vertical on download for the customer - this issue only effects the clip_image and the clip preview.

 

You can also just create your own GIF and preview outside of the website to use as the advertising imagery on your store for the clip if you didn't want to fix it in post-production editing.

Even though you could hold a regular video camera the wrong way as well, this note is primarily for anyone that is shooting clips with their phone. On a phone you have the option for a vertical clip (Portrait Mode) or a horizontal clip (Landscape Mode), always hold your phone horizontally! Clips that are shot in portrait mode will have black bars on either side of the video, you want to avoid this common mistake. So remember, shooting clips vertically may also cause your GIFs to not display properly and they may be turned horizontally in and effort to fit the screen properly. Lastly, your previews will look small and the customer may skip over your content all together.

• Just for fun – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

Editing

MP4 HD is the preferred format for your clips. Most editing programs have a default set for exporting a clip after editing, please make sure you choose the information below for exporting your clips.

MPEG-4/H.264 Video 

Refer to: http://www.velleman.eu/downloads/3/h264_vs_mpeg4_en.pdf 
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

H.264 is a new standard for video compression which has more advanced compression methods than the basic MPEG-4 compression. One of the advantages of H.264 is the high compression rate. It is about 1.5 to 2 times more efficient than MPEG-4 encoding. This high compression rate makes it possible to record more information on the same hard disk. The image quality is also better and playback is more fluent than with basic MPEG-4 compression. The most interesting feature however is the lower bit-rate required for network transmission. [Excerpt: Stack Overflow]

So the 3 main advantages of H.264 over MPEG-4 compression are:
‐ Small file size for longer recording time and better network transmission.
‐ Fluent and better video quality for real time playback
‐ More efficient mobile surveillance application

AAC Audio

Refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

If you’re interested in some more resources and information about filming, check out:

• Raindance.org
• IndieWire.com
• PremiumBeat.com