My first youtube video

Ever since I got my canon 7D, I've wanted to play with it's HD video capability. I made this short little video as a test run.



Making a video is a whole different ball game as compared to photography. It took me about a weekend to figure out the nuts and bolts. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

- Shoot in the highest quality video setting. If your camera has HD capability then I highly suggest shooting at 1080P and 30 frames per second. When shooting video you will immediatly notice how huge your movie files are. Don't worry about that. Youtube will compress and optimize it for you. Always try to give them the highest quality video to start with and then you won't get blocking pixelated looking video.

- You will need a video format converting software. The camera will produce MOV files. Unless you use an apple computer, you will not be able to edit this type of file. You will need to use a program to convert it over to another type of file. I converted mine to an AVI file using a free program I downloaded called Prism Video Convertor.

- You will need a video editing program. I downloaded a free trial version of VideoPad Video Editor. It is a very basic program. It lets me cut and splice segments of video and to add music. That's about it from what I can tell. I didn't find any options to add special effects other than captions and narration. I will eventually upgrade and get PremierPro at some point.

- When adding music to your movie, you cannot use itunes music. (You might be able to if you use an apple computer though). Itunes encodes their music in a totally different type of format that is copyright protected which means you cannot mess around with it. I had to find an mp3 file of the song I wanted to use.

That's about it. I shot some short video clips and played around with the video editing software and then waaah-laaaah! I think the whole process would have been much easier and streamlined if I had an apple computer though...but I'm a PC...Doh!