So you’ve made a video for YouTube, but can't shake the feeling that some details might be missed. This essay will serve as a checklist to make certain your upload meets the threshold of professionalism via editing. Don’t panic. This isn't about pulling a whole ‘director’s cut’ out of nowhere. This is to serve as the translator of your video from final edit to successfully uploaded with maximized potential.
Audio
Sound is famously invisible, so curating sound in a visual medium is often neglected. While most video editing programs will present audio files with waveforms to indicate volume, those volume graphics cannot be relied on to be infallible. That’s why audio needs to be tested on multiple devices. It needs to be tested coming out of the ‘speaker’ of a desktop or mobile device, as well as with in-ear headsets. This multi-prong approach prepares your audio for any output.
Loud sounds do have the potential to cause real damage to the ear, especially with headphones. Preventing harm should be the motivator. While loud sounds can cause damage, extremely quiet sounds can pose similar risks. If a viewer dials up their volume to make out what's being said during a quiet moment, they may leave the volume too high, presenting a ‘perfect storm’ of potential damage with a sudden volume increase.
Helpful hint - monoscopic means your sound comes from one speaker, stereoscopic means your sound is designed to mimic a space using multiple speakers. Headphones are stereoscopic because they have two outputs, left and right. Professional sound design curates levels of stereoscopic sound so expertly that it mimics movement as select sounds peak and dip across the multiple outputs. Monoscopic sound is typically a smaller file size, and most devices will play monoscopic audio out of all available speakers at even levels. This isn't to suggest going back and redesigning your entire audio track. It’s to advise that if you exported monoscopic sound, make sure standard devices play that audio out of all available speakers. Or, if you consciously exported stereoscopic sound, make sure you’re satisfied when it’s played through a device with only one speaker output.
Visual
Sending a video file, uploading it, reformatting it, all have the potential to degrade the image quality. Make sure the video you are uploading comes from as close to its ‘source’ (direct export from your editing program) as possible. That means you are ideally uploading your video from the computer it was made on. After you’ve uploaded your video, but prior to publishing it publically, watch it yourself. Take note of any warping, any delayed audio, and material that is presenting as pixelated. You might need to go as far as to select alternative footage for scenes with moiré.
Much like listening to a video through multiple speakers, it is highly recommended that you review your video on multiple screens. Whether they be on mobile, or a years old desktop, understanding how your work could be presented on different devices is key. Each of these devices can also display the video at varying dimensions. If only certain devices present an issue, then that issue may ve with those devices, and not your video. But if you are able to identify your capacity to correct, this process allows for maximum quality across devices.
Awareness
While you as the creator of the video content can check audio and visual quality, sometimes an outside perspective is necessary. Asking a colleague or acquaintance to review your work allows the opportunity to be presented with oversights that may have missed your radar. If your video centers a certain industry, ask someone in a separate field to give their two-sense. They may notice something commonplace to your peers, but perhaps present as ‘off’ to those without your working familiarity. This cultural awareness of course extends to ethnicity, geo-politics, and context. Asking a member of a marginalized group to offe feedback is valuable, and therefore merits compensation. Compensation is most easily provided monetarily, but can extend to anything of discernible value to who you have contracted. If your video is a passion project with limited funding, consider offering something respectable like a producer’s credit. To make clear why compensating a marginalized individuals’ feedback is a critical consideration- imagine a worst case scenario where they could become a target of their own community because they ‘vouched’ for your ill-received work.
Many topics have nothing to do with such social dynamics. Maybe asking a marginalized person to give their perspective would then feel inappropriate or tokenistic. Maybe the person you’re thinking to partner with has no expertise on a totally unrelated marginalized group of interest. If that’s the case, take time away from editing your video to watch it again yourself with fresh eyes. Use the time in between to research the potential oversights you can independently identify. That research can include finding social media pages dedicated to peer review with individuals who may be happy to voluntarily provide feedback, though this method has the potential to ‘leak’ drafts of your work prior to official distribution. While these considerations might seem intimidating, it makes the case that working with a diverse team from the project’s inception is invaluable. The bigger the entity, the greater responsibility they have to review. That’s because their work has the potential to meet a larger audience, which comes with compounding cultural considerations.
Cultural and self awareness are divided by a thin line. These considerations don’t have to be met with a reluctant, preventative-damage-control approach. If anything, that overcompensation can taint the work with insincerity. Instead, these considerations are the opportunity to reach a wider audience.
Function
If you’ve reached the verge of publicizing your work, it’s almost a guarantee that you can readily explain its function. That function could be to entertain, educate, provide portfolio samples, influence, document, etc. If you know the function of your video, can you identify where that’s made clear? Sure, within the narrative of work, critics advocate for “Show, don’t tell.” But specific to uploading, how have your intentions been translated digitally?
Translating the function of your video to something digitally legible might feel like a whole new language, but is mostly common sense. In practice, it mostly comes down to Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Youtube’s ‘hashtag’ system is a great example. As opposed to Twitter, where hashtags are visible, YouTube’s hashtags are tucked away and unseen by the average viewer, but are still findable. Review videos of Channels with similar functions to yours and use their hashtags as a jumping off point for your own. Pose this as asking yourself what videos you want your own videos to be recommended alongside.
Take this same approach for the title of your video. The title can be exactly the same name of your work, sure. But maybe you can get more specific. If your work is a narrative piece you want to gain traction in highbrow circles, perhaps adding ‘Director’s Cut’ to your upload’s title would help pull the eyes of fellow directors. That sort of qualifier also affords the opportunity to post other variations of the same video, made distinct by iteration.
Titles and hashtags allow your target audience to find your video, but a caption/description allows you to fully articulate your upload in plain language. This field can be considered the ‘back-cover blurb’ typically found with printed books. The description is where the plot can be summarized, where a critic’s testimonial can be quoted, where film festival recognition can be cited, and so on. It’s the place where all the things that your video ‘showed’ instead of ‘told’ can now be told. But most importantly, the Description is where you can directly link external sources. This is what your video’s function comes down to. If it’s for entertainment, don’t squander this invitation to link where more entertainment can be found. You have their attention. Keep it. Direct it along to more of your content or content you support. If your video is based in activism, link where your viewers can sign a petition or register to vote. If your video is for an industry, add links to where products can be purchased. If your video contains interviews with high profile entities, link their web presences to help boost traffic to your video.
Video is an art, and art can exist with no explanation. But when maximizing the function of a digital upload, be prepared to synthesize that intention into a findable title, relevant hashtags/metadata tagging, and an efficient description.
Graphics
The most glaring oversight many first time uploaders are met with is the realization that they lack a ‘thumbnail’. A thumbnail is the image that serves as the ‘cover’ to your work, getting their name for being of meager dimensions. A separate essay on the graphic design of video uploads can be found here, but for our purposes we can single out thumbnails.
In a pinch, Youtube can pull a still image from random parts of your video to suggest a thumbnail if you lack one. But- that image, coming from a compressed video, is professionally inadequate. Take the time to independently select a still image of high quality, superimpose text with the name of the upload, and make sure the dimensions of this image are 1280x720. Those are the minimum considerations. Again, this information can be found in further reading, but the font, color, and composition of your graphics should be consistent with your brand overall. Using a border around the image helps distinguish it from the background color of the platform it’s available on. If your video exists alone without representing some branded entity, then pull from the style of font that might already appear in your video. If you used any captions, credit sequence, or opening title, pull from those established styles. If your video was shot live-action, check to see if any scenes include street signs, business awnings, or billboards that might present textual inspiration.
Make it look intentional. Much like a video’s description, lean into explicitness. Not in terms of vulgarity, but explicit as it ties back to ‘show’ versus ‘tell’. Your thumbnail should both show and tell. While the modern YouTube community tolerates a degree of ‘clickbait-y’ teasers, that tolerance runs parallel to being a ‘YouTuber’ as a full-time job. Channel fans know their favorite creators are competing for clicks. If a creator has already reached video monetization, they are not likely to be the demographic reading this essay. You can build to that industry respect by creating thumbnails that are accurate, succinct, clear, and pleasing.
Afterward
So your work is finally up to snuff. Your finger hover just above ‘publish’. Go for it. And give yourself a pat on the back. You went above and beyond to check that your upload was optimized. Allow yourself to step away and alleviate any possible resentment that came from feeling inundated by this project. But, we’re not done. Before you take a breather, set a timer to remind yourself it’s time to revisit the upload.
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that your desktop or cloud storage has a backed up copy of your final upload. With that folder, include the file for your thumbnail. Create a text document that records the video title, description, hashtags used, and what font and color was used in the thumbnail. If possible, have a copy of the thumbnail project file (InDesign, Procreate, Photoshop, etc.) included. That project file is precious. It can be used as the template for future thumbnails, and offer inherent visual consistency.
Use this revistation to check the comment section, if you’ve left it active. Responding to comments can build profound audience connections. It may also set an expectation, so strive for consistency. You can also open the YouTube creator suite to check how a video is ‘performing’ in terms of viewership. That’s information that could be included in your word document. Use it to discern what an ideal time to upload might be moving forward. Identify if any spikes of viewers track with external promotion.
Your project likely has multiple folders dedicated to it already, but this folder exists to summarize the final upload for the benefit of whatever upload comes next.
Congratulations on your upload- take pride in your attention to detail. To fine tune your uploads even further, check out this essay on the essential graphic assets to operate a YouTube channel. Or, to make sure your upload is within compliance, click here.
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