Why, and how, to use the Youtube video editor

I’ll start with the ‘why’. Once you upload a video to Youtube, any changes you make will require that you:

1. delete the original video, and
2. upload the new, updated video

Why is this a problem? Because any views or comments you get on the old video will be lost.

The only exception to this is if the changes you want to make are minor. In that case, you can use the in-built Youtube video editor to make small changes to the existing video.

What kind of changes? Let me show you in this 4 minute, how-to video that I created:

I decided to have a little fun with the ‘speaking bits’ so used one of my gaming avatars to ‘animate’ the boring bits. Ahem…

In the example shown, the ‘tail’ of the video was too long. The tail is the bit right at the end which is where you want to display end screen information:

These ‘elements’ encourage viewers to see other videos you’ve created, or subscribe to your channel. The last thing you want is for viewers to switch off without seeing more of your content.

So the end screen elements are very important, but they can only be added after you upload your video. This makes getting the timing right a bit of a challenge. I’m sure professionals know precisely how long to make the ‘tail’ of the video, but I always seem to make them too long.

According to my research, end screen elements need to be on-screen for a minimum of 5 seconds. Anything less than that and they simply don’t appear. The maximum time they can appear is 20 seconds, so you need to find the sweet spot and time your ‘tail’ to match.

After much messing around, I finally got my end screen elements to appear just after the ‘blow kiss/goodbye’. And I had to use the method shown in the video to do it. 🙂

And finally, this is the video that made me scoot down this rabbit hole in the first place:

I’m having a lot of fun creating these gaming walkthroughs, but I’m also learning the skills I’ll need once I start making how-to videos in earnest.

cheers,
Meeks