Speaker 1: In this tutorial I'm going to teach you how to create professional looking video lectures. I've been teaching my students how to create online lectures for the last 10 years and one of the things people struggle most is in how to make their lectures look professional. Shooting yourself is not that difficult but making sure your video and your audio and the overall professionalism of your lecture is there it's not that easy. So in this tutorial we're going to cover four different elements that are going to help you take your video lectures to the next level. We're going to look at the video quality, the audio quality, your studio where you're recording, and finally the delivery, your ability to teach. And we're going to cover those four things using a checklist with 39 recommendations that cover the four areas. You can download the checklist at remote.com forward slash lesson check. Alright let's start with video quality. My video is in landscape mode with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. 16 by 9 is the default aspect ratio most cameras shoot on. It just means the relation between the width and the height of the frame. If you shoot on portrait mode or square mode you'll get black bars on your video when you upload it to YouTube or most course platforms. Landscape is the way to go. Video is in high definition 1080p or higher. 1080 refers to the height in pixels of the frame and a width of 1920 pixels. If you divide 1920 by 1080 we get 1.77 which matches the idea 16 by 9 aspect ratio. The next step up in resolution is 4k which has twice the resolution of 1080p with a frame size of 3840 by 2160 pixels. It's called 4k because the frame width is close to 4000 pixels. The main advantage of shooting at 4k is that you'll be able to zoom digitally into your subject and still get a sharp image and apparently 4k videos rank higher on YouTube search results. The cons are that 4k files are much larger which take longer to render and upload. 1080p files are smaller, faster to upload and render but lack sharpness when zooming and they could rank lower than 4k videos. So 4k is the way to go especially if you have a powerful computer and fast internet. The camera lens is clean. Image is not cloudy or blurry. Oh no look at that lens it's so dirty. Just grab a lens cloth and clean it. Now much better. The video fills in the entire frame. There are no black bars around the video. If your video is a 16 by 9 this is very easy to fix just make sure your video covers the entire canvas on your project. There we go. Boom. The video is not shaky. Try to avoid handheld shots it can be distracting and can create motion sickness. My face is centered in the frame. If it's not in the center it's because you plan to put text or graphics on the empty area. My eyes are 1 third from the top of the frame. If they're too low that means that you are too low in the frame which doesn't look good or the opposite you may be too high. You want your eyes to be exactly 1 third from the top with a little bit of headroom space on top and if you zoom in your eyes should stay 1 third from the top as well. The camera lens is at the same level of my eyes. Here the camera is too low and it looks unflattering. You can see in my boogers if I had any which is not nice and here the camera is too high which is more flattering but it's not a very natural position for teaching. My face is evenly lit and can be seen clearly. If not it will be too dark and it'll be very difficult for your students to see what you're saying. My face is always in focus. Here the camera is focusing on the books on the background which is not good. Check to see if your camera has face tracking which will make sure your face is always in focus. The camera is properly white balanced. On most cameras you can set the white balance to outdoor if your main light source is the Sun or white studio lights or to indoor if you're shooting using tungsten incandescent lights. With the wrong setting your image will appear bluish or yellowish. Whites should always appear white. The exposure is fixed. If the exposure is not fixed the image will turn brighter or darker as the camera tries to adjust to slight variations in overall light levels. Most cameras have a way to lock the exposure. On an iPhone you can do so by tapping and holding your finger for a few seconds until a yellow square appears which will lock the exposure and the focus. The background is darker than my face. Here the background is too bright and here it's perfecto. Now let's check your audio quality. For that put your headphones on. I can hear my voice loud and clear. Make sure your audio levels are between 0 and minus 6 dB otherwise if they go over 0 you'll get audio clipping which will distort your audio and sound like this. I'm using a dedicated microphone for recording. You can either use a wireless microphone like this one which you can put near your mouth or you can use a shotgun microphone like this one which

Speaker 2: sounds fantastic. Otherwise your audio may sound like this. Not very good. There

Speaker 1: are no background noises. Switch off any sources of potential noise such as fans, TV shows and annoying family members. There are no random pop noises. Sometimes when you join two audio tracks you may hear pop sounds. In Adobe Premiere you can remove them by adding a short constant power transition. Audio and video are in sync. The simplest way to sync your audio is to clap. Then you can adjust the peak in your audio waveform to the frame where your palms contact each other. Olé. Now we're gonna talk about the studio. That it's everything except yourself so everything that surrounds you. Let's do it. I have a dedicated room or area to record my lectures. This is my home studio. You can see it's very pretty. My camera is secured and stable either on a tripod or solid surface. This is the simplest way to avoid motion sickness. I've taken measures to ensure my studio is as soundproof as possible. A simple solution is putting a bunch of acoustic foam panels but you could also use a blanket or several blankets, hang them and that would also help with the audio quality. The background in the video is clean and organized. It goes without saying you don't want people to see your pajamas on the background. The background is decorated either with nothing, a blank wall or backdrop or with items that are related to the topic of my course. Whatever you use as decoration make sure it makes you look like you're a smart individual. I can control the light that enters the recording room. To avoid light levels to change during the day make sure you install blinds or curtains. I'm using at least two light sources which I can control with a dimmer. Here is me adjusting one of my light sources. It looks pretty good. I'm going to adjust a second light source and now it looks a lot better. Yeah. If you're using a chair I made sure it doesn't squeak. My chair doesn't squeak. And finally let's talk about the quality of your delivery, your ability to teach, to not make mistakes, to be engaging. Let's do it. I have a clean professional appearance. If you have any hair left make sure it's combed. I'm wearing proper attire. You should look good but don't overdo it. I have good posture. This is not good posture. I'm looking at the camera lens when I'm talking. This is a very common mistake. People tend to look at themselves on the camera. You should look at the lens so it looks like you're speaking to your students. I'm relaxed and talking in a friendly manner. If you feel nervous when talking to the camera take a deep breath before recording and pretend you're talking to your best friend. I don't forget to smile at least once per lesson. If you feel tense don't forget to smile. When you smile you'll feel better and you'll appear more friendly. I have edited all mistakes. You're going to make a lot of mistakes like for example... Hi. Focus. Focus. What am I talking about? But don't worry you can always edit them out. Go to your editing program, find a mistake, cut it and splice it. I've deleted or avoided filler words. Ideally you can learn to speak without using filler words like... so you know... well... you can always go to your editing program and cut those parts out. I've rehearsed at least once what I'm going to say. Before recording a lecture you should practice a few times. You should rehearse and the best way to do that is to have some bullet points or your script near the camera so you can always be reminded of what you want to say. I get to the point and avoid ranting. If you rant you'll bore your students. Stay on point and get to the point. I have a glass of water near me when recording. Make sure it's water. I'm keeping a positive attitude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a clear idea of why I'm teaching this course. Make sure you have big goals in mind. And that's it. If you follow all these recommendations your next lecture is going to look so professional. Your students are gonna love it. You're gonna look like a top pro teaching online. Now to make sure you don't forget to implement these recommendations make sure to download the checklist at grumo.com forward slash lesson check. Hope you enjoyed this. If you want to see more videos like this like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. Bye bye.