This blog series about running my new YouTube channel is going to be interesting to probably only about 5 people, with me being one of them. But I blog on here all the time about stuff that might not be applicable to everyone. You’re getting “Authentic” Richard here and on the YouTube channel.
I’m trying to stay about a week ahead with my videos. That way if I get behind, I have a little wiggle room. Three videos in, I already need it. I haven’t been super organized with my files, and it’s biting me in the ass right now. I’m going to need to reshoot a bunch of video content because I can’t find some stuff. Live and learn.
Here’s how most good quality YouTube channels operate. You record a video segment on your camera/iPhone/whatever, an while you’re doing that, you record the audio separately on a higher quality device. In my case, I’m recording on an iPhone for video and on a Mac laptop running Logic Pro for audio. When I’m done, I bring both recordings into Final Cut Pro and glue them together, with the Logic audio replacing the iPhone camera mic audio.
But I recently recorded a whole bunch of video and audio files and didn’t pay much attention to where or how I saved them. The video files were all on my iPhone, but I appear to be missing some of the audio files.
To make matters worse, my video files are all named by iPhone, so they look like “Image 3302” or something similar. Useless.
Being able to quickly put your hands on the appropriate files is super important when editing. The iPhone won’t let you name your video clips unless you bring them into an app on the phone, but I don’t like that, so I need to rename the video clips as soon as I have them in Final Cut Pro. In terms of Logic, I do like to have all of the audio for a specific video in one Logic file, with each segment on its own track. In this case, I didn’t do that, and I got burned.
The solution is pretty obvious – I need to use one of those little boards that you hold up to the camera before each scene that contains the scene information on it. They often have that little snappy thing on top on a hinge that you bring down when you say “action”, but I can work around that. For now, a small whiteboard would work, or a clipboard with a piece of paper. That way I don’t end up with marker on my hands.
I need to name everything I do, and label everything I do. That way it’ll make editing easier and I won’t have to re-record stuff. If you want to do videos, it’s a good idea to plan this stuff out in advance.
I think it’s a good idea for me to put all of a project’s stuff in one place – all the Logic and FCP stuff in a single folder for each project. FCP makes a folder by default, so maybe I’ll just use that.
I’m off to find a small dry erase board or clipboard.
