Today, I am going to share with you why your videos aren’t uploading. We are going to get technical here because it is a technical answer, but hopefully it’ll give you some insight into why and how you can fix the problem.

When you send your edited video out of Imovie or Camtasia, what the program is doing is something we call exporting.

*It is taking your video and according to the settings you choose making it smaller and putting everything into one watchable file.

Most of the time you will be exporting for the web, so YouTube, Wistia, or Vimeo. Most of the editing programs has a preset for youtube and Vimeo. It’s that .mp4 that you usually end up with.

Those exported files are what gets uploaded to the web. Now, what slows down or crashes the upload process is a combination of two things: your internet speed and the bitrate of your exported file.

For HD 1080p video your target bitrate for youtube should be around 8mbps. That means that every second of your video will be made up of 8mb so for a 5 minute video that’s 2400 mb or 2.4 gb. The higher the quality of your video the bigger it’ll be.

Now, internet speed is broken down into download and upload speeds. It’s important to know both numbers, but what we are concerned with here is that upload number. If your internet upload speed is 2mbps which is usually part of an intermediate package, and you are lucky enough to have it running at full speed when you are uploading, it’ll take about 1200 seconds or 20 minutes. These are best case scenario numbers. Most of the time your internet speed will fluctuate especially during peak hours which are usually from about 5pm to 1am.

So you are going to run into some real upload issues if you are uploading let’s say a 30 minute file and your upload speed is 2mbps. It’ll take about 120 minutes or 2 hours. If you are doing this over wifi chances are your speed, isn’t at its max 2mbps and that 2 hours will increase and maybe even just crash as the speed starts to fluctuate.

But don’t lose hope because there are 2 ways to fix this: 

1. Invest in a higher internet speed. 5-6 mbps should work great for you. It works for me and I’m constantly uploading videos.
2. Export your videos at a lower resolution. You can still get HD video at 720p which is smaller than full HD 1080p. The bitrate for 720 is about 5mbps so for a 5 minute video your total would be about 1500 mb instead of 2400 and would take 12.5 minutes. And you’ll still have a great looking video.

Let me show you in Imovie and Camtasia how to change these settings.

In Imovie, go to share, then export using quicktime. Click on the Options button and then video settings. Make sure the compression is set to H.264. Go to the data rate, change to optimized for streaming and then put in your target rate which would be 5 mbps but its asking for kbits. There are 1000 kbits in a mb so 5mb would be 5000 kbits. So put in 5000 and hit ok. Then go to size and choose HD 1280 x 720 16:9 . Then hit ok, title your file and save it.
In Camtasia, we are going to put in the same settings. Go to Share, then advanced export. Change the file format to Quicktime movie. Then click Options. Make sure the compression type is H.264 and set the dimensions to 1280 x 720 HD. Then click ok, title it, and save. And that’s it!

*My last tip would be to make sure you are hardwired with an ethernet cable to really get your max speed.

So again

Your internet speed + the bitrate of your video = how long your upload is going to take

Don’t let these technicalities get in the way of getting your content online.

 
If you want more tips to creating online video, download your guide to the Top 5 Video Tools that will help you make beautiful online videos for your business Or if you really ready to dive in join my free course to Amp Up You Online Video Presence. By signing up you’ll also get exclusive Tips, Tricks, How-to’s and my personal insights about editing and using Online Videomaking in your business that I only share with my VIP storytellers.

If you liked this post please comment and share. I’d love to hear from you.

Today, we are going to be talking about the YouTube cards and annotations.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the new card feature that Youtube just released that will eventually replace annotations. They both allow you to link directly on your videos to your call to action whether that is to sign up for your email list, purchase your product, or check out another one of your videos.

Originally this was going to be all about how to use annotations properly, but since cards came out I thought I’d tell you about the three things you should know.

1. Cards are mobile friendly

This is huge because the use of mobile devices is growing everyday. Now, all those people who couldn’t click directly to your website before now can.

2. You can upload images to cards and it really is just nicer looking

This is what they look like. You can see that it looks pretty nice, you get an image that’s attractive and a title there, so you don’t have to create an image in editing that you then link with annotations.

3. You can’t move cards around or choose their size

You can move around and change the colors of annotations, but you can’t for cards. AND you are limited to five per video.

Now let me show you how to add an annotation vs how to add a card.

For an annotation click on the edit button for video you want to work with in your video manager. Then click on annotations at the top. Then you can click on a point in the video that you want to add an annotation here at the bottom. On the side you can choose the type of annotation. If you click through them you can see what they do. The one I use most often is spotlight because I usually create the images that I want to link while I’m editing the video. So I create a spotlight annotation over it, set the duration and then link it.

Annotations are as easy as that. One thing you want to make sure you do is have your website verified in your settings so that you can link to it in your annotations.

Now this is how you add a card. Click on cards right at the top. Again choose the time you want the card to pop up, then  click Add Card. THen choose what type of link you are adding. Type in your url and then the rest of your options should pop up. You can upload an image, add a title and call to action text. And then click Create card and there you go.

So let’s recap, the three big differences between annotations and cards are

1. Cards are mobile friendly
2. You can upload images to cards and it really is just nicer looking
3. You can’t move cards around or choose their size

 
If you want more tips to creating online video, download your guide to the Top 5 Video Tools that will help you make beautiful online videos for your business Or if you really ready to dive in join my free course to Amp Up You Online Video Presence. By signing up you’ll also get exclusive Tips, Tricks, How-to’s and my personal insights about editing and using Online Videomaking in your business that I only share with my VIP storytellers.

If you liked this post please comment and share. I’d love to hear from you.