Want To Make Your Own Videos?

Do you want to learn to make your own videos? Here I am going to show you all of the tools that I use to create my videos.  I will go over what camera I use, my capture cards used to capture video game footage, as well as the software programs that I use for editing. I will also try to give you some tips that I have learned over the past year.

One year ago, I had never owned a video camera. I had never captured video game footage onto my computer. I had also never touched video editing software and had absolutely no knowledge of how to properly use any of these things. I decided that I was going to teach myself to edit and put together videos as a hobby more or less, and decided to do this by reviewing video games and uploading the videos to Youtube. If you take a look at my older videos, the quality is far worse than my more recent ones. I have learned a lot over this past year and am hoping to share some of what I have learned with you in this article.

The first thing to start with is deciding what type of videos you would like to do. Do you want to sit in front of a video camera and talk to your viewers? Or would you rather capture game footage and dub your voice over so you don't have to show your face? I will begin with explaining how I put together videos where I sit in front of a camera and speak to my audience.

The first thing you'll want to do is purchase a video camera. Some people choose to use webcams but I prefer using a digital camera for a few reasons. With a digital camera, you are able to freely record videos at any location. Webcams are either attached to a computer or need a computer nearby limiting how and where you can record your footage. Also the quality (both video and audio) is usually better with a digital camera. The camera that I began with one year ago was an aiptek digital camera and the quality on it wasn't very good. I decided to purchase a new digital camera and have been very happy with my choice so far. The camera that I chose to use is a Kodak Zi8 digital camera. This camera cost me $150 on sale and is well worth it. Click here for more details on it. It can record up to 1080p HD quality and the audio quality is quite good. Overall, I'm really enjoying the camera but it does have a few things that I don't particularly like.

The first and major negative the camera has is that is does not have a flash function. This means that I can't take photos in the dark and if I try to, they will be barely visible. This however isn't a huge downfall for me since I mostly use this camera to record video and not photos. It also does not have a light for recording in the dark, but once again that is not what I use this camera for. The second thing that I do not like about this camera is that it auto adjusts the brightness levels. When I hold something bright in front of the screen (like a game or something shiny) the screen will auto-darken when I do not want it to. This is the main problem that I have not liked with this camera. These are all small problems to me so I am still very satisfied with my purchase. One very good thing about this camera is it's high quality video recording and I also really like the option to use another microphone. It has a microphone input so you are able to use any microphone you choose to get exactly the audio quality you like.

The only other accessory that you will want to purchase with a camera is a tripod. I got a cheap tripod at Best Buy for only $15 which allows me to mount my camera up to a height of 12 inches. Click here for one similar to mine. This is all I need since I place my camera on a table to record. If you would like a 3 foot or so tripod, they may cost you upwards of $75. So onto how I record my videos.

It is very easy to just record a video and post it to Youtube. All you need to do is set up the camera at the right angle, hit record, and when you're done... stop the camera, transfer the file to your computer via USB and upload it to Youtube or any other website you may use. What I do with my videos is I add additional editing to make it a little more enjoyable to watch. I use a software program called Pinnacle Studio 14 to edit my footage. Click here for this software. I usually add an intro effect, outro effect and music to the background. I will go into more detail on this software program later in this article.

Now let's talk about the more difficult video making choice...editing reviews. When I edit a full video game review, the process often takes me between 5-12 hours. It can sometimes take even more if I run into technical problems or I am really picky about how I want it done. The first thing you'll want to do is learn how to capture your video game footage.

The capture device that I use is a KWorld DVDMaker. This device cost me $40 and if you'd like to purchase it, click here for the best deal. It is a small device that uses the red/white/yellow cables as input and it connects to my computer using one USB cable for the video and a headphone cable for the audio. This device has worked very well for me and I have never run into any problems using it. The video quality is pretty good for Standard Definition but you will NOT be getting HD capture quality out of this device. It also came with the Cyberlink Power Director software that I use to record my voice overs.

If you would like a cheaper alternative with comparable capture quality, you can purchase an EasyCap device for less than $10. Click here if you would like to buy one of these. The quality is very similar to the KWorld DVDMaker but I prefer the KWorld because it comes with the Power Director software. You could always use the program Audacity which is a free audio capture software if you do not want to pay the extra money. Also, EasyCap has problems working on Windows Vista from what I hear but I have never tested it to see exactly what the problems are. So if you are using Windows Vista you may want to go with the KWorld DVDMaker to be safe.

So that covers the devices that I use to capture my game play. All you need in addition to one of those capture devices is a computer. Everything is very easy to set up and it should only take you about 10 minutes to complete. Generally, I do not capture game footage on my first play through of a game. I do not do this because every one hour of game play takes up approximately 4 GB of storage space. So to capture a full 20 hour game, it would require around 80 GB of memory! So what I usually do is I'll play through a game and make multiple saves before parts I would like to include in my review. This can be a pain, but it has worked for me in the past.

Once I have all the footage captured, I import it into the program Pinnacle Studio 14 to begin editing. I am not going to go into full detail on this program because I would need a full tutorial article to explain how to use it, but it is not difficult to use for the basics and is easy to learn as you go. The basic overview of what I do in this software is I import the video clips I have captured, I then cut and splice out the exact parts of the footage I want to show. I then input transitions like fading, slideshows, etc to make the transitions between footage clips look nice.

The last thing that I do is I use either my logitech desktop microphone (click here) to capture my voice overs or my logitech headset microphone (click here). Both of these microphones create a much different sound to my voice so I use whichever one I think will sound better for the particular review. I am in the process of trying to get some better voice recording hardware, so hopefully I will have that in the future. But for now, I use these two devices. Once the voice over audio is recorded using Power Director, it is very simple to import it into Pinnacle Studio to edit.

If you have any questions about the devices and software I use or questions about putting together videos, feel free to email me at the email listed on my "Contact Me" page. I really hope this helps some of you learn to put videos together and hopefully have fun reviewing videos games.