Guides
Practical guides
Step by step where a procedure exists, and honest about where the answer depends on your footage or on a platform's current rules rather than pretending there is one number that fits everyone.
Exporting
What Bitrate Should I Export At?
There is no single right number, but there is a right way to arrive at one. It depends on resolution, frame rate, how much movement is in the shot, and where the file is going.
2 min read
Working with Audio
Turning a Script into a Voiceover
Synthetic speech has become good enough for narration, and what separates a usable result from an obviously robotic one is mostly how the script is written.
2 min read
Working with YouTube
YouTube Thumbnail Size, and What Actually Matters
1280 x 720 and under 2 MB are the requirements. The thing that decides whether a thumbnail works is that it is usually seen at a fraction of that size.
2 min read
Working with YouTube
How to Get a Transcript from a YouTube Video
Most YouTube videos already carry captions, generated or uploaded, and the text can be pulled out as plain text or as timed subtitles. Here is what is available and what it is worth.
2 min read
Working with YouTube
YouTube Banner Size, and the Safe Area That Actually Matters
A YouTube banner is uploaded at 2560 x 1440 and almost none of it is seen on a phone. The part that survives every crop is 1546 x 423, and that is where the design has to live.
2 min read
Working with YouTube
How to Download a YouTube Thumbnail
Every YouTube video stores its thumbnail at several fixed sizes, and they are reachable directly. Here is how to get the largest one, and why it sometimes does not exist.
2 min read
Practical
Archiving Your Own Video: What to Keep and in What Format
Storage is cheap and re-encoding is permanent. What to keep as a master, what to throw away, and the folder decisions that stop an archive becoming a pile.
3 min read
Practical
What Your Video File Reveals About You
A video carries more than picture and sound. Location, device, serial numbers and exact times travel with it, and most sharing routes do not remove them.
3 min read
Practical
Screen Recording Settings That Actually Matter
Screen content breaks most of the assumptions video compression is built on. Four settings decide whether your recording is crisp or an unreadable mess, and resolution is not the important one.
3 min read
Practical
Upscaling and Downscaling: What Resizing Really Costs
Making a video smaller is nearly free and often improves it. Making it larger adds no detail and usually makes it worse. Here is what actually happens either way, and when each is worth doing.
3 min read
Practical
Subtitles and Captions: SRT, VTT, Soft and Burned In
Which subtitle format to use, what the difference between soft and burned in really costs you, and why your captions sometimes vanish when a file is converted.
3 min read
Practical
How to Read What a Video File Actually Contains
The extension tells you almost nothing. Here are the seven things worth knowing about a file, how to find each one, and what each answer means in practice.
4 min read
Formats
Why Video and Audio Sometimes Arrive as Two Separate Files
Higher quality video is often stored with the picture and the sound kept apart. Here is why that is done deliberately, what joining them involves, and why a silent video usually means only half of it arrived.
4 min read
Practical
How to Keep Your Own Videos Organised
A file naming and folder approach that survives years of footage, and a backup rule that has outlasted every storage medium it was written for.
2 min read
Rights and access
Using the Official Download and Export Features Platforms Provide
A survey of the legitimate ways to save video, from creator-enabled downloads to licensed stock and public domain archives.
2 min read
Rights and access
How to Download Your Own Videos From Social Platforms
Every major platform has an official way to get your own uploads back. Here is how that generally works, and why it is the right route.
2 min read
Practical
Choosing Video Settings for Social Platforms
How to pick a resolution, frame rate and aspect ratio for online video, and why you should always check the platform's own current specification rather than a list on someone's blog.
2 min read
Compression
How to Reduce Video Size for Sharing
Getting a video under an email, chat or upload limit without a series of failed guesses, and what to do when it simply will not fit.
2 min read
Compression
How to Compress a Video Without Losing Too Much Quality
Where the quality actually goes when a video is compressed, which settings buy the most, and the order to change them in.
3 min read
Formats
Converting Between MP4, MOV and WebM: A Practical Guide
What a container actually is, why the file extension does not tell you the codec, and how to convert between formats without quietly ruining the quality.
4 min read
Fundamentals
Video Resolution Guide: Choosing a Size That Makes Sense
What resolution actually measures, why 4K costs four times as much as 1080p rather than twice, and how to pick a size for what you are making.
3 min read