My Video Content Creation Process

As you may know, I make videos on YouTube (and TikTok) and I stream (although that has been on break for a while). A lot of my contacts have asked me how I make the videos and how I manage to be consistent. I hope to share answers to the first of the question in this blog post. In coming posts, I will write about consistency among other content promotion strategies. Let’s get started.

What and When

The first thing I think about is what I want to talk about in the video – it might be a video to answer someone’s question, or some video about a dev or cloud technology, it might be an unboxing video.

When I think about this, I put it in my To-Do List, so I do not forget about it. I then have to decide if I want to make the video soon or later and set a reminder to do such in the To-do App. If I have things to do to get ready to make such a video, I will list them also as sub-items in the to-do item.

How

The next thing I think about in the process of making a video is how to deliver the content – and it could be one or more of the following.

• Would I record the screen video first and do a voice-over later?
• Do I need to create a script for this video or freestyle it?
• Do I need/want to show my face in this video?
• Do I use my local machine or a machine in the cloud or a sandbox environment?

Tools

After I decide on how to make the video, I would then think of the tools to use for recording and editing. This is mostly from my list of software tools (Check out my media kit).

Do I need lights, do I need the camera (which of the cameras should I use), should I shoot in 1080p or 4k?

After that, it’s pretty much left to creation.

Create

Creating is a lot of work – arguably one of the hardest parts of making content. You can spend 30 min or more recording just a 3 min video if not prepared mentally, physically, and technically. There was a particular time I “recorded” a 1-hour video only to realize I did not hit the record button.

My creation process is easy if I have everything planned out (which I sometimes do in my head).

I set up NCH Mix Pad to and test all the audio II want to record and I close the door leading to my home studio. If I am recording video, I turn on the lights and camera, ensure I am getting the right feed in and set my teleprompter (if running a scripted recording).

An extra step for screen recording is to set up my screen capture software to the right screen and input and verify that it’s getting the right feed. I also verify that I have the right amount space and all unnecessary tasks are stopped.

Next is to HIT RECORD, wait a few seconds to ensure all recording channels are recording and then start speaking and/or capturing the screen. Sometimes, I record more than once when I make mistakes, or my devices just decide not to be nice to me. But on most days, I only record once. For unboxing videos, I most times record the unboxing first, then narrate over it.

Edit and Encode

This most times is the hardest step in the creation process for me. Here are the steps that go into that:

• Remove any noise from the recording: if I am lucky, there would not be so much work here
• Compress audio: so that I have some professional feel to it

- Export audio: most times I export WAV for video post-production, this give me high quality audio.

I get video in from the camera into my storage and post-production software.

• If it’s just a talking video, I use Filmora Pro

• If I do screen-recording, I will use Camtasia

  • I sync audio and video: with Filmora Pro, it’s automatically done most times. For Camtasia, I still must do this manually (I wish auto sync can be added to Camtasia).
  • I cut out the fluffs – all the unnecessary silence, unforgiveable mistakes and I speed up some long running screen captures.
  • I put some background music if I feel the need to

  - I play over one time to be sure everything in place

  Final sub-step here is to export(encode) the video to a .mp4 file.

• If it’s a tutorial video, I mostly do 1080p (that’s 1920×1080)

• Head talk video, I do 4k (3840×2160)

• For TikTok and YouTube Shorts, 1080×1920

Publish and Design Assets

After encoding is done, I upload the video to the target platform – YouTube, TikTok mostly. As upload goes on, I get on Canva to design the thumbnail for the YouTube video. Nothing fancy. Just a text with the title and an image. I then export the thumbnail image and upload as custom thumbnail for such video.

For YouTube, I do the following:

• Modify the title.
• Set description.
• Put 2 or more hashtags.
• Add tags – I use Tubebuddy and VidIQ to help get the right tags based on my title.
• Make the video go live right away or schedule it for a later date (which I mostly do these days)

For TikTok, I put a short caption and some hashtags and post. Most times I leave multiple videos on draft for posting later.

Share

After I’m done publishing, I then start the final bit which is sharing the video link to various platforms. I have set up some automation to tweet and post to LinkedIn once I post a video for YouTube – so I have that bit covered. Next is to share to Facebook – my personal profile and page. I then share on my WhatsApp Status and to my special contacts on WhatsApp.

Over the next couple of days/weeks, it gets automatically posted with some of the automation that I’ve setup.

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if this helped you and the way you create videos.