YouTube Keyword Tool and Youtube Creator Handbook

I attended (via a live web stream) a YouTube Partner webinare today.  The tips the people at YouTube gave were obvious and virtually all of it is included in my own videos created years ago.   All the info and more can be found in the YouTube Video Creator Playbook.

One tidbit that was new is a keyword suggestion tool created by YouTube/Google.  This tool suggest optimized or alternate keywords you can include in your video or even blog posts.

Here's the link:  https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

Tutorial: Installing Windows 8 Customer Preview via USB Thumb Driver or DVD Including Install Key in 4 Easy Steps

Today I downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Customer Preview!

Here are the steps to install the new Windows 8 Customer Preview OS via a thumb drive.  I recommend the 64-bit version if you have 4 GB of system RAM and the 32-bit version if you are have less than that.

1. Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview .ISO file here: 64-bit download | 32-bit download
2. Download and install the free Windows USB/DVD download tool.
3. Using the freshly installed USB/DVD tool, write the image to your DVD blank or thumb drive. (Note: your thumb drive must be have at least 4.5 GB of free space)
4. That's it!  Now all you need to do is boot off the DVD or thumb drive.  Check your BIOS settings to ensure your computer boots from either the DVD or USB Drive first, before your Hard Drive.
5. Write this install key down: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J (Note: this is a valid key and is used by everyone for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview)

WARNING: Installing Windows 8 will permanently update your Windows OS to version 8.  I advise installing to a separate hard drive or USB drive instead of updating or installing over your older version of Windows.

A personal side note issue with my installing: I had to manually install the Windows 7 64-bit version my Intel 465 Chipset graphics driver to enable full screen native resolution.  It appears to work fine.  Though I read today that if you check under optional Windows Updates, there are additional graphic drivers to download and install.

Good Luck!

Making HD Youtube videos on the cheap.

New video by me about making HD videos for YouTube, on the cheap.

Tutorial: Recording 720p video @ 30 fps with your webcam

I was recently able to purchase a Logitech C510 webcam for around $25.  This model can record video at a resolution of 1280x720 (720p) at a maximum frame rate of 30 fps.  Perfect for HD video on YouTube. (Check your webcam model's documentation to determine the maximum supported video resolution and frame rate.) 

However, the supplied Logitech software doesn't allow recording at 720p and my computer's CPU is too slow to record and encode video real time at such video high resolutions using Microsoft's newest Expression Encoder 4 in Windows 7.

I did find a solution using the trusty and free Windows Media Encoder (WME) in Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 using the following settings under the Properties option:

 (click on image for larger view)

For more detailed information on how to setup your WME recording, see my detailed blog post on WME HERE. The following WME settings enable 720p @ 30 fps recording, but my computer is too slow to compress in real time, video of this quality and resolution. However, there is another setting in the advanced tab in WME, where can you can defer video encoding until after the video recording is finished.

 (click on image for larger view)

You want to check the 'Store content to hard disk temporarily' check box.  And then check the 'Capture to hard disk first, then encode' check box.  Note: 'path' for the temporary video data, ensure you can the write data to that directory.  (Vista and Windows 7 can restrict write access to C:/, so use a path to your desktop or another folder you have created as an alternative.)  You can change this to any folder path in which you have hard drive write access.

These setting options should allow people with much less powerful CPUs to still record 720p (or even 1080p) video, such as myself.  I'm confident that this setup will work for the wide variety of the HD webcams, such as the Logitech C310, C615, C525 and C910 models, Microsoft's LifeCam Cinema HD models and Creative Live! HD webcams.

If your computer still struggles with recording 720p video.  There are less CPU demanding widescreen (16:9) 480x360, 850x400, 864x480 or 1024x576 resolutions that can be tried that while not true HD, still offer a good resolution for video making on YouTube or Vimeo, etc.

Good luck!

The Secret Side of YouTube

YouTube is obviously a great way to share your videos with a large amount of people.  However, there are times where sharing something to the masses isn't desirable.  So I wanted to mention a 3 ways to limit your videos to a more custom audience.
  
Private YouTube Videos 

This is the most secure way to share one of your videos.  Marking a video as private requires you manually list the YouTube users who can view your video. Private videos do not show up when searched by others.
Positives:

• Absolute control over which user sees what videos
• Video does not show up on your channel page

Drawbacks:

• Requires each viewer to have a YouTube account 
• Maximum number of shared users is only 50 per video

Unlisted YouTube Videos

A second and more accessible way to share a video amongst a more limited audience is to mark the video as "Unlisted".  This allows anyone with the video's URL to view the video.  And like private videos, does not show up when searched for.
Positives:

• An unlimited amount of people can view the video, provided they have the video's URL link which you give out
• Viewing the video does not require a YouTube account
• Video does not show up on your channel page

Drawbacks:

• The video can be viewed by anyone that has the link
• Video link can be shared by anyone 

Invisible Channel Option

A third option is to set your channel to 'invisible'. This can be set in your channel page's settings tab. An invisible channel is one where the channel page can only be accessed by channel's owner.  Invisible channel owners can still mark individual videos as private or as unlisted as described above.  However, any videos marked as public on an invisible channel will show up in YouTube's search.  This option is largely for people who want to greatly limit their presence from YouTube by marking all their videos as private or unlisted but still maintaining the benefits of owning a YouTube account.
Positives:

• Removes public access to one's YouTube channel page
• Allows user to upload videos, and comment on and rate others videos

Drawbacks:

• Only removes public access to one's channel page
• Public videos still can be found in YouTube/Google search
• Not desirable for building subscriber base

Google/YouTube's new beta interface changes

Google is rolling out a redesign for all its major websites.  This includes Google+, YouTube, and Gmail.  Google is also folding its Blogger and Picasa services into Google+.  You can even get a sneak peak:

YouTube beta interface code named: Cosmic Panda!

Gmail users can simply switch to the new Preview theme!

I've been using the new beta YouTube interface for a little while.  I'm not sure I like it.  The channels are radically different.  Not to say I like the current channel design.  Actually I hate the current channel design.  I still think the original channel design was best.

Checking out the newest Linux Distros

It had been over a year since I had taken used any flavor of Linux. So this week, with the release of Ubuntu 11.04, I decided to take a fresh look.

I started with Ubuntu 11.04. Ubuntu is the most popular of all the Linux distributions.  Like virtually all of flavors of Linux, it is 100% free to download and install.  Ya, open source/GPL!  So I downloaded burned the ISO disc image to a CD-R blank (700MB size required).  Sadly, installation was not without issue this time around.  I had issues with the installer saying it was unable to install the GRUB boot loader. This was frustrating because the drive was completely empty and had no MBR.  After the 3rd try, it finally installed without issue. Though I'm still not sure why it failed or finally worked with my 3rd attempt.  I haven't much issue with Ubuntu installs in the past.  Upon boot up, I was surprised to see that Canonical (Ubuntu's maintainer) had to decided to forgo the standard Gnome desktop user interface for their new Unity desktop.  While I didn't use it for very long, I was very much frustrated by the changes.  It has more a Mac OS X feel, which is totally alien to me.  So taken back by these changes, I decide to take a look at Debian Linux.

I had heard good things about Debian from a user that was running it at the cafe where I haunt.  So I decided to install it and take a look.  Again I burned the Debian 6.0.1 installer disc image to a CD-R blank.  It's installer was much smaller in size but required a lengthy download process to fully install the standard set of Linux applications.  Though I did not have issue with the installation.  The desktop interface is very much like the previous versions of Ubuntu since it uses a more standard Gnome desktop.  But there is where my enjoyment ended.  It had a non-standard version of Firefox, called IceWeasel.  It turns out that Firefox uses some non-free software which is antithetical to the Debian free software philosophy.  So IceWeasel is a modified version of Firefox using 100% open source code, I assume.  I could still manually install Firefox but I did having an issue which required me to manually edit the package dependency list to allow for its successful install on Debian, since the Firefox package is for its close cousin Ubuntu.  I also had problems installing the proprietary nvidia graphics drivers.  I couldn't even use the sudo command, without having to manually edit the sudo user list file.  And even then I still wasn't sure it was using the nvidia drivers once I had installed them.  Frankly at this point, I had enough.  So I was on to my third option kubuntu.

kubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu but uses the KDE desktop interface and applications by default.  Again I burned the installer's disc image to a CD-R blank and installed kubuntu 11.04.  The installer did crash on the first attempt but the second attempt installed successfully. While the KDE interface is more like the Microsoft Windows interface, I still found myself struggling with the differences and found myself wanting standard Gnome UI.  Though, I was able to easily install Firefox 4 and the nvidia graphic drivers.  For the time being kubuntu is going to be my Linux distro of choice.  Though as a test, I was unable to successfully capture video from my webcam using the recommended Cheese video recording application.  I was unable to adjust my webcam's settings to produce a proper color video image and I could not get my audio to record at all even after fiddling with the system settings. 

One area that Linux falls short is in the video capturing and editing department.  It's not at all a friendly video maker's platform.  So I definately would not recommend it for YouTube video makers.  Though the YouTube website itself run fine on Linux.