B.J. works up a sweat in my first YouTube video There are few things more delightful than a cat video. Even science confirms that watching cat videos can boost energy and positive emotions. You can make your own simple cat video or even get really creative. My first foray into filmmaking was taking raw footage of my cats. B.J. was hilarious when he seemed to use the patio door as a treadmill. His antics became the first film on my YouTube channel in 2010.
Anyone with a gmail account can create their own YouTube channel, but I started with YouTube and later added gmail. It was easy to pick from the available header photos for something suitable. You can change your username, but I stuck with Kittycatty999. Most cameras and phones these days will let you film videos. Once the file is saved on your computer, go to your channel and click on the upward-facing arrow near the top right of the screen to upload it to YouTube. By default, it uploads publicly, but you might want to make your video private at first to check if everything looks right. It can take a while for the video to upload, depending on how long it is. A ten minute video can take a half hour. Try to keep it short! During uploading, you need to keep your computer window open, and your account logged in. I ended up disabling a screensaver as it was taking forever. You can open other windows, but on a slow computer, it seemed to slow the process. I got a faster computer! While you're waiting, give the video a name and write a short description. When the video is uploaded, change the setting to public, click publish, and voilà! Your video is live. Click on “share” to get the link to share with your friends, family, and fans. You will want lots of people to enjoy it! I didn’t start editing videos until 2014. I wanted to tell the story of Ringo, my orphaned baby raccoon. I used YouTube’s own free video editing app, YouTube Video Editor. It’s no longer available, but many of the features are now found by clicking on Creator Studio. It takes you to Video Manager, where you can edit your film by clicking on the type of changes you want to make. You can trim the beginning or end, get rid of boring content, and add music. But you can’t add titles the way I did to tell stories like Ringo’s. And if you add subtitles (captions) to help people follow along when someone is talking, the words only appear in faint tiny text. I ended up purchasing the iMovie video editor for a low price. It was a bit of learning, but I enjoy it now. The biggest advantage was being able to share a video directly to Facebook as well as YouTube. YouTube videos are stuck there, although you can download them to reshare if they don’t include YouTube’s music content. Uploading to Facebook works a lot like uploading to YouTube, and has some extra advantages. You can select an image from your favourite segment and use it for the video thumbnail, the image that people see before they click on the video. YouTube won’t let you import your own thumbnail photos unless you are very active there. To create the photo, take a screen shot or export a photo from your video editor. Facebook will also offer to create captions for you, if people are talking in your video. The first draft is hilarious and needs editing, but it’s a great feature. I used it recently in Feeding Time at the RAPS cat sanctuary. I was disappointed when music from iMovie was rejected by Facebook. As I wasn’t able to confirm that I had the rights to the music, I lost a Facebook video, and am more cautious about the music I use. Friends with VOKRA cat rescue in Vancouver have nearly 43,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, The Kits Cats. They use a top notch video editor, although their first viral video, A Den of Purring Kittens, needed very little editing. In 2013, the family was featured on a TV show, Animal Planet’s My Pet’s Gone Viral. Humour, heartwarming content, and quality filming make for great entertainment. I hope you feel inspired to create your own cat videos. If you have tips on what works for you, please share them! For more ideas, check out WikiHow’s article, How to Make a Viral Kitten Video. Have fun! - Irene Plett Topics: Cat videos, filmmaking, YouTube, iMovie, video editors, Animal Planet’s My Pet’s Gone Viral, Douglas Brown, VOKRA, viral videos, Facebook
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