Tools I use when creating videos and podcasts

Over the last year or two I've experimented quite a bit with video recording and audio recording and tried to use the equipment or tools I have at my disposal. But also leverage free tools where possible in order provide the best experience for me and the audience.

Recording Video

Recording video is something I do quite a bit, whether that be just me or me plus my screen or just my screen. There are a lot of tools out there that can help you, I talked about screen recording software in a previous blog. Depending on what I am doing, I use a combination of just filming straight to my mobile phone (for videos of me), and Camtasia for screen recording.

Although I have started to use StreamYard for some videos of me and screen at the same time as it means I have less editing before release.

Streaming Video

My only choice here is StreamYard. There is a free tier of the software that allows you to stream videos to your platform of choice, but I choose to pay for the next tier to remove the StreamYard branding from my videos. Honestly I can't recommend StreamYard enough, I did dedicate a whole blog as to why I use StreamYard.

Optimising videos on YouTube

There are a ton of things that you need think about when creating videos on YouTube to try and get them more visible. I use TubeBuddy to help guide me on some of the best practices. It helps me check I've got the right keywords/tags in my video configuration, analyse the SEO of my video, and see where it ranks against other videos on YouTube.

It also helps me understand what others are doing on YouTube and how I could use the same techniques. There are free tiers and paid tiers for this tool, so it's entirely up to yourself if you want to pay or not. For me this has really helped me learn how to optimise things around my videos.

Captions/Subtitles

Having different language subtitle options or transcriptions of your videos and podcasts can be important. For those that don't speak the language your video/podcast has been recorded in, or for those that have hearing difficulties. Or maybe even people who are watching but can't have sound on because they are in a public place etc.

YouTube will do auto subtitles, or captions are they call them for the following languages, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. But they only do it for one language, so if your audience doesn't speak that language then there are no subtitles available, unless you add them.

There are services you can use that can help you translate your videos into other languages for subtitles. For that I use Rev. The cost of translating your video into other languages can be expensive, so it's a trade off between your budget and the benefit you think it will add to your audience.

What I would recommend is look at your YouTube analytics and see where your visitors are coming from and maybe concentrate on those languages or look at the audience you would like to attract to your videos and concentrate on those.

Transcriptions

Transcriptions are slightly different, they are essentially the script from your video or podcast without the timestamps you need for Subtitles/Captions. If you have a blog site for your podcasts then posting your transcriptions up alongside the episode can help with accessibility and also help make your podcasts become more discoverable within search engines.

I've been using the free tier of Otter for my transcriptions, but it has it's limitations. So if you have any great services you'd recommend for transcriptions I'd love to hear about them!