Behind the Scenes: Inside my Video Recording Studio

In just a little over 12 hours, I will begin a never-before-attempted feat of posting a new AccuQuilt-related video every day for 30 days.  Those videos will be posted first, not here, but rather on my QuiltPossible.com site.

Posting a new video every day is not an easy task.  You may think I have 30 videos all queued up, but you'd be wrong.  What I have are ideas for 30 videos - which is not the same thing; especially when those 30 ideas are not necessarily all strong ones!

At the present moment, I have 7 videos recorded - one of which must be entirely re-done, and another which just finished post-processing & will soon be uploaded to YouTube. Basically, I recorded enough video at one time to get me through to a weekend, so I can do it again.  Most of the time isn't spent recording the video - it's all about polishing it up later, so I thought you might be interested in understanding what it takes for me to be able to get a video from idea to YouTube!

First... my videos are sooooo much more complicated now that I have a new-fangled fancy-dancy HD video camcorder with 120GB internal hard drive.  Life was so much simpler when all I had was my 3 megapixel digital camera where it was lucky to get 5 minutes of video shot before the battery died or the memory gave out, whichever came first.  In those days (all of 3 months ago), I could shoot a halfway decent video in one take, and within 40 minutes have it uploaded to YouTube & ready for viewing. Those first videos didn't have music, or neat transitions between scenes (or even "scenes" for that matter) titles, credits - anything.  Just me standing in front talking fast so I could finish before the camera did.

Nowadays... I can record about 10-12 minutes of video, only about a third of which is usable footage, and I haven't quite gotten the hang of looking at the camera lens & not the flip screen that's off to one side.  I worry more about audio, and the lighting, and the camera angle.  I do several takes of a scene before I get through it without bobbles.  Sometimes I leave the bobbles in because I think they're funny; other times, because they're just at an inconvenient spot & doing it again would mean dumping the entire video.  I long for the days of one-take wonders.

Just to give you a better idea, here's what my video day looks like:

1. Set up the studio.  This often requires cleaning off the table, sweeping enough of the floor so you can't see the scrapings, and tidying the shelves in the background.  If I'm doing a demonstration with BigPoppa Studio, I have to physically move it across the room and he's heavy! (He sits on a table against a wall that doesn't allow for good video recording.)  Then, I have to locate the dies I need for the demo, and if a tutorial or example project is involved, I have to make about 3 or 4 samples in various stages of completion so the video goes faster. This can take about 15-45 minutes.

2. Record the video.  It usually takes me 3 tries before I get an introduction that doesn't have me tongue tied.  Mild cursing is usually involved. (Rootie patootie!  Dagnabit & tarnations! That sucked!)  Video where I need to change the camera angle has me running around the table adjusting the camera; I leave it running so I don't have to later patch together 5 or 6 separate videos.  I might spend 20-30 minutes to record one video.

3. Upload the video to my computer. This can take anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour.  Since these days I'm recording multiple videos in one day, the hour is closer to reality.

4. Convert the video from mpeg to wmv.  This step sucks totally, but it's because I only know enough about video to cause myself lots of work.  My video editing software can only handle wmv files (darn you, Windows!) and my camera can only record mpegs - they're just not compatible.  This is about 20 minutes to convert each video.

5. Edit the video. This entails adding the title & end credits, transitions, music, and then mercilessly chopping the video into the usable nuggets of information.  I spend a lot of time doing this; of course, if I got cleaner takes & didn't insist on moving the camera in between, this might not take so long.  I expect to spend about 2 hours on this step.

6. Save the video.  This takes about 5-10 minutes for it to save the new video into a usable format.

7. Upload the video to YouTube.  As if the video hasn't been processed enough, YouTube will also convert & compress the file so it plays nicely with all web browsers & Facebook.

So there you go folks; for each 5-10 minute video, you're looking at about 4-5 hours of my time to produce it.  My three consolations for doing this work are first & foremost - because it's fun and challenging; also, I'm helping people get the most from their die cutters & learn to use this tool correctly; and the free die I get from AccuQuilt for each video doesn't hurt.  Of course, we'll see how they feel after 30 videos!




Happy quilting!