Putting a video on YouTube - another computer "Pat trick"

Putting a video on YouTube is easier than you think, can be done with minimal equipment, and YouTube is free!

  • Your digital camera probably can do videos
  • If your phone can do videos, you can send them directly from your phone to YouTube!!

You can read & learn this in ten minutes, and probably have your first video on YouTube by 30 minutes from now.

First we’ll show you how to get a video from your camera to YouTube.

  1. If you already have a video file on your PC, skip to section 2
    1. See if your digital camera does videos
      1. I will give details based on an Option s5i camera, but many others are the same
      2. On the back of the camera, there is a circular button with the button saying OK inside of it
      3. If you press the bottom of the circular button, it will show you a bunch of icons, most of which you don’t care about
        1. However, if you are in the standard “picture mode”, the camera will probably show a “portrait picture” of a girl as an icon in the middle of the second row.
          1. Note that in the lower left hand corner, it will say “Portrait”, meaning normal picture.
        2. Above that icon, there is an icon that looks like a side view of a movie camera with the two reels.
        3. Use the top part of the circular button to navigate up to that icon, and hit OK.
          1. Note that in the lower left hand corner, it should say “Movie”.
            1. If you look at this word for all of the icons, you should see that it has setting for “Night Scene”, “Landscape”, and others.
            2. All cameras probably have similar features, and work in a similar way.
      4. Now if you hit the button that you would hit to take a normal picture, you are actually filming a movie!
        1. To stop the movie, press that button again
      5. You have now created a movie!
    2. Now attach your camera to your PC using the USB cable.
    3. The camera will look like a disk. Find the file corresponding to the movie that you just made, and download it. It will probably be a QuickTime video file. After you download it, you may want to change it to a more reasonable name.
    4. There is more detail on all of this in the file pentax optio s5i camera file pages 43-47
  2. At this point, I assume that you have the video on your PC
  3. Go to www.YouTube.com and do the following:
    1. In the upper right hand corner, click on the blue link that says Sign Up
    2. You have a couple of choices
      1. If you have a Google account, you can sign up using the link in the bottom of the left hand box
      2. If you want to create a separate YouTube account, fill in the fields on the right, including the annoying and indecipherable verification
    3. Now log into your YouTube account
      1. Go to the My Account area
      2. In the upper right hand corner, you will see a link that says Upload
      3. Click on the link, and it will allow you to Browse your files
        1. Find the video that you just made
        2. Upload the video to YouTube
        3. The video should be available within minutes, and available for the world to see!
          1. Note: Calm down. The world doesn’t care, and won’t see it
        4. However, if you go back and “Edit the video” and specify something in the subject field or description field, those words will be indexed by Google so that people can search for your video based on that string
          1. In other words, if you
            1. Specify the subject field “Paris Hilton’s speech”
            2. Wait about 6-10 hours for YouTube to index those words
              1. Note: don’t just sit there and wait – go do something else.
            3. After 6-10 hours or so, you will be able to put the string “Paris Hilton’s speech” into the search string of YouTube, and your video will show up!
              1. there may be others, and if yours isn’t better than hers, your speaking career is in jeopardy
            4. Click on it and enjoy
              1. Also, the world is more likely to look at your video if you put Paris Hilton’s name in the subject field instead of your own
  4. There can be much more to YouTube, which we will do in future training segments, including
    1. Strategy in setting up your subject field
    2. Strategy in setting up your account
      1. Why you should include misspellings
    3. Setting up a channel
    4. Setting up your videos with credits, your web page address, et cetera, for free
      1. Use the primitive utility “Windows Movie Maker” which is included free with Windows XP, (although you may have to download it)
    5. Allowing people to find your videos quickly even if you have a common name or a common subject field, like “my night with Paris Hilton"
  5. Pretty cool, and you can read it in 10 minutes, right?

 

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