Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Miguel Hernandez, and I've been teaching on Udemy for the last five years. And my students ask me all the time, Miguel, how do you record online lectures? What software do you use? What tools? How do you deliver an awesome lecture? So I decided to create a little lecture to teach you how to do that. And I'm going to cover exactly the checklist to help you choose the right equipment and tools, prepare your lecture, deliver an awesome, engaging lecture, edit the lecture, and then finally export your video lecture so it looks fantastic. To follow along, make sure you download this checklist at grumo.com forward slash teach dash webcam. Let's do it. First, you need the requirements checklist. You need the screen recording software, either Camtasia for Windows or ScreenFlow for Mac. I've made links available for all the tools and software that you need and all the equipment. Then you need presentation software, either PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides, which is free and you can use. It's just like it works on the web. Then a good microphone, good external microphone like the Blue Yeti or the Audio-Technica AT2020. A webcam, obviously, because you're recording slides plus webcam. The one I use is a Logitech C920 or a newer version, and there's a link there to Amazon as well. A basic three-point lighting kit. This is not 100% required if you're just using your webcam, but you want to make sure that your face is properly lit. In many cases, I just use one light, but if you want to do this properly, click on this link to be able to see what a basic three-point lighting kit looks like, and then you can use that as well. And optional, if you don't have a good background at home, like a clean white wall or it's too messy where you are, you can actually get a background paper at Savage, right? So that's one way to get started with your equipment. Obviously, you can spend more money and get it more complex, so this is like the basic bare-bones requirements in order to get started. Now, before you record, these are all the things that you need. So first, you're going to create your slides. Make sure that less is more. Make sure that they're not cluttered with information. Use large sensory fonts. This is a sensory font, by the way. It doesn't have the squiggly things. It's easier to read. And if you're going to use photos, make sure you get royalty-free photos from either pixabay.com or pexels.com. Then use the three-point lighting setup. So you're going to need a key, a fill, and a backlight, and the explanation of how to set that up is here on this link. Important, the webcam should be at your eye level. The background should not be distracting. Use either a solid color or whatever is on the background should add to the story, shouldn't be distracting. So if you're talking about photography, you should have maybe camera equipment on the back. If you're just talking about writing, maybe you should have books in the back, something that is not distracting, but it matches the theme of your course. Your head should be right in the middle of the frame. Your eyes should be aligned with the top one-third of the frame, following the rule of thirds, and there's a link to explain that. Start in a quiet room, so no noises from air conditioners, street. Ideally, the place you're shooting is carpeted. If not, bring pillows or whatever. You can absorb the sound and get rid of the echo. You can also get foam acoustic panels at Amazon. Use an external US microphone. I repeat this because it's very important. You could use your internal computer microphone, and that's how I started recording my courses, but now, really, you should start using a better microphone. Check your audio levels before recording. When you speak, the levels shouldn't be too low or too high. Typically, when you're speaking at normal voice, they should be anywhere from 70 to 80% of the entire possible levels. Then you can adjust the cropping, exposure, and white balance of your webcam using either eyeglasses for Mac or minicam for both Mac and Windows, and that way, let's say that your webcam is not looking right or is taking too much of your room, then you can adjust exactly the cropping, and you can control that webcam a lot with a lot more fine-tuned detail than without that software. Finally, make sure your appearance and attire are appropriate. Avoid bright colors, plate shirts, reflecting jewelry, bad hair, food in your teeth. I'm actually really bad at this because I look always like a bum, but I'm not a good example. If you want to look professional, you know what I'm talking about. Then during recording, this is when you're going to teach your lecture, and I get a lot of students asking me, how do you record a good lecture? How do you sound properly and nice and friendly? Well, take a deep breath and make sure you're relaxed and happy, in a happy mood before recording. Rehearse at least once to warm up. Make sure you look at the camera so your students feel you're looking them in the eye to establish that personal connection. Avoid using complex jargon or fancy words. Speak casually, like if you were chatting with your best friend who doesn't know anything about your subject, which is true in many cases. A lot of your students are taking your course because they don't know what you're teaching, so now it's up to you to find the right wording and way of expressing what you're teaching in a way that anybody can understand it. That is the challenge of a good teacher. Speak loud and clear with confidence and passion. Try not to mumble, speak too fast. In fact, it's probably speak slower than too fast because you can always speed up these videos nowadays on Udemy or on YouTube, right? You just click twice the speed or one and a half times the speed, and then if it's too slow, people can speed it up. And the other way around, if you speak too fast, slowing things down actually sounds pretty weird. So better speak slow than too fast. Make sure your lectures are between five and 10 minutes. If they're considerably longer, try to break them into more lectures. Remember, Udemy doesn't allow lectures over 20 minutes, and people will be able to pay attention more likely if the lecture is less than 10 minutes. If you make a mistake, pause, breathe, and resume from where you left off. Take a break and stretch off in between takes. Many times you start getting frustrated, just walk for a little bit, you know, and never lose sight of the big picture. Why are you doing this? How is your course going to make people's lives better? How is the potential revenue will impact your wealth and freedom? These are the big things. These are the big why of why you're going through all this trouble. So it should be always in the back of your mind to keep you motivated, you know? And then when you finish recording your lecture, you're going to have to edit it. Make sure your canvas is set a 16 by 9, 1080 format, 1920 by 1080. You can also use 720, but if you want smaller file sizes at the expense of some resolution loss, you can use 720. It just makes it easier to upload large files if you're shooting at a lower resolution. When you're editing, the main thing you're doing is editing out any mistakes. It's possible to remove errors and obviously when you're making like big mistakes. Only show up the webcam layer when you are addressing your students and remove it when you want them to pay attention to your presentation slides. People don't need to see your face all the time, only when you are addressing them directly. If you're showing software or something on your screen like a website, now you can remove it using ScreenFlow or Camtasia so they can pay attention to the screen and not to your face and get distracted. Finally, when you're exporting your video, these are the typical video export settings. Choose either H.264 or MPEG-4, data bit rate 3,000 kilobits per second, dimensions either 1080p or 720p. Make sure always the 16 by 9 aspect ratio, frame rate 30 frames per second, 24 or 25 or 30 frames per second are fine. Remember, the lower the frame per second, the smaller the file size. The minimum is 24 frames per second, which is actually what films in theater are usually shot at, which is the minimum before you start noticing flickering. If you want more information, just check this link, which will take you to the Udemy official video export settings. There you go. If you want to download this checklist, make sure you go to grumo.com forward slash teach dash webcam, and now you're ready to record an awesome lecture using webcam and slides. How was that? Did you learn a lot? I'm sure you still have lots of questions regarding how to implement a lot of these steps. I also invite you to go to grumo.com forward slash teach to be able to get an amazing discount for my most popular course on how to create awesome online courses on Udemy, which has been taken by over 8,000 people. It has eight hours of content, tons of PDF downloads, step-by-step guides, and over 93 lectures, tons of positive reviews, and it's been updated recently so both Mac users and Windows users can take advantage of it. You learn how to use Keynote or ScreenFlow or PowerPoint and Camtasia. There's an entire new module on course validation to make sure you create a course that people will actually buy. There is also now a new Facebook community to help you get support to make sure you finish that course. I even created a lecture challenge where I encourage you to record your first lecture today, and if you do so, I will give you my personal feedback. There's also tons of new marketing strategies. Anyways, just go to grumo.com forward slash teach to be able to access the course today and an amazing discount. Then you'll get there and you'll be able to see all the contents, all the amazing reviews, and hopefully that encourages you to join as well and start learning today to monetize that knowledge and to have a great impact on tons of people like I've been able to do over so many years now. Let's do it.