YouTube
We have a YouTube Channel where we upload educational content as well as some of our improvements.
Uploading Videos
Navigate to [www.youtube.com YouTube] and login using lastpass. You'll login to the Bolt GMail account
- Click the Camera with the plus sign in the top right.
- Drag and drop your video clip into the uploader.
Upload the highest resolution you have access to.
- Insert a title, description, pick a playlist if necessary, mark no, not made for kids.
- Click Next
- Click Next
For now we are not doing anything with the end screen, but a standard should probably be figured out here.
- Click Public
- Click Publish
It will take a bit of time for YouTube to process a higher resolution version of your video, for now it will just be in SD.
Making Thumbnails
- Take a photo
You can take a photo that you want to use as the thumbnail of the video.
- Show your Face
Don't use pictures of gear or other photos of equipment, your face should be the main item in frame
- Bring the photo into Photopea
photopea.com drag and drop the photo into the workspace.
- Croping the photo to correct aspect ratio
Select the crop tool and crop anything within the image. At the top there is a drop down menu that says "free" drop down the menu and select fixed size. in the H and W box next to it set the H to 720 and the W to 1280. Now the crop window will be at 1280x720. Drag around the crop window to select the part of the image you want to crop. Once your happy with the crop you have to hit the check icon at the top right of the workspace.
- Save file
Export the file as a jpeg.
- Open Preview
Load the croped thumbnail.
- Add text to the thumbnail
- Keep Text on Left Side
YouTube places icons on the right side that will end up blocking text that you put on your thumbnail.
- Make Text and Items in Thumbnail LARGE
Once you put the thumbnail at the correct size you need to be able to see all the elements.
- Use San Serif Fonts Only (Block Letters)
- Keep Words to a Minimum.
4 is a good goal, basically the less words you have the larger the text can be.
- Create boarders around the text
Use black colored font. Add a white background to the text. Create a border around the text. Use Blue and then Red, alternate the colors if you have more than one text to border. Select the 5th largest border thickness.
Channel Maintenance
If bots ever comment on our videos, feel free to delete the comments.