how-to Articles

A how-to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. A how-to is usually meant to help non-experts, may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may also be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic. One of the earliest how-to books was published in 1569 by Thomas Wight and entitled, A booke of the arte and maner, how to plant and graffe all sortes of trees: With divers other new practise, by one of the Abbey of Saint Vin...

How to Use Light Diffusion Gels for Soft Lighting [ReelRebel #39]

Giving your video production value means using professional lighting. However, that professional lighting brings with it an additional problem: harsh lighting that is uncomfortable to your subject, sharp shadows, and makes your subject look unnatural. Diffusion solves that problem.

Vimeo's 10 Tips on Your First DIY Video Interview

Vimeo's Video School once again has a wealth of information for those who would like to make their videos pop. This particular video goes over the DIY interview. And while you've probably heard of a few of these tips, it's always good to have reminders.

Storytelling Tips from Stillmotion and Vimeo's Video School: Part 2

Stillmotion continues to give great storytelling advice in Part 2 of their instructional video series being played on Vimeo's Video School. In this one, they break down the "discovery" process during pre-production in order to come up with 5 keywords that you will follow throughout the production.

How to Link YouTube and Google+ Pages, Multi-Admin Management Now Possible

YouTube and Google+ Business Page Integration is now here, complete with multi-admin user capabilities so that you can have multiple users uploading and managing videos on your channel. People have been able to link their YouTube channels to their Google+ profiles for awhile now, but now those with pages can do it, and there was much rejoicing.

HOW TO: Use Annotations to Increase YouTube Views, Rankings, and More [Creator's Tip #74]

On this week's Creator's Tip, we collaborated with Matt Ballek of VidiSEO to share with you some of the top reasons why you should be utilizing annotations regularly in your videos and to show you several tips and tricks to use YouTube's annotations effectively to increase video views, subscribers, and rankings.

YouTube's Top 10 Lists - Most Popular Videos by Genre for 2012

YouTube Trends announced a whole bunch of other Top 10/Trending lists over the weekend, breaking down the videos into specific genres.  Some of them seem kind of a stretch or too vague, like "Top 10 Eye-Popping Videos" or "Top 10 Awe-Inspiring Videos," but hey, any ...

All You Want For Christmas Are These Videos

Merry Christmas, everyone.  It's no surprise that there is no shortage of Christmas videos to be found this season.  Finding them isn't difficult; paring them down is very much so.  We have videos here that represent food, music, entertainment, and more, all the things that ...

Basic Advice for Choosing the Best Budget Video Camera

If you're shopping for gear to make videos during the sales events this season, you're likely going to be attracted to low cost, budget video gear. Cost is important, and I encourage everyone to make their videos in the most cost-effective way possible, but it's important to know the limitations of the gear ...

The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing YouTube Closed Captions for E-commerce [Step-by-Step Tutorial]

The emergence of YouTube as an e-commerce selling tool has been well documented on ReelSEO as far back as 2010 with "Video E-Commerce and Video SEO for Retailers". Many experts have blogged about using the power of YouTube to promote products and burnish brands. My ...

Tutorial: How-to Create a Custom End Slate for Your YouTube Videos [Creators Tip #64]

Creating a custom, interactive end slate (A.K.A. tail slate, outro, end screen) for the end of your YouTube videos is something that I recommend in all of my talks and to all my clients looking for best practices in YouTube marketing.  They offer a great way to ...

How to Create the Split Screen Effect in Video Editing [Reel Rebel #27]

The split screen effect, also known as picture in picture or video overlaying, is the concept of showing two video streams simultaneously (traditionally side-by-side) in a given sequence.  There are several instances in which you may want to use a split screen effect editing technique ...

How to Diagnose and Fix (not set) Visits from Flowplayer in Google Analytics

Webmasters using Flowplayer 3.2 or earlier may have woken up to a pleasant surprise in Google Analytics the day after implementation. Visits doubled overnight, but how is that possible? Don’t get too excited because half of those visits are most likely fake visits. Flowplayer 3.2 ...

Halloween Trick or Treat or How-To Videos You Can Use

You can always count on a ton of Halloween content to be swirling around this time of year, and the tent-pole opportunities during this holiday might be the best of all tent-pole opportunities in an given year.  The entertainment value provided by the spooky, the ...

How to Analyze & Manage Viewer Sentiment for Online Video Marketing

Have you ever posted new video content and received an immediate reaction from your audience? Whether it was positive or negative, you probably measured this reaction through comments, shares, likes/dislikes, and other data.

8 Awesome Ways to Use Your Car to Shoot Great Video

A lot of times, amateur filmmakers forget the everyday objects and items they use everyday which can be used to enhance their videos.  They are easy to overlook.  After all, that rolling chair in your office couldn't possibly be used as a dolly, could it?  ...