Optimizing Your Videos and Screencasts for YouTube

Over the past couple of days, I finished reading a series of booklets by Partha Bhattacharya, founder of Hubskills. This series included:

1. Step-by-Step Guide To Start E-Learning Website In WordPress With Free Tools
2. How To Boost YouTube Video Views Dramatically With Free Tools
3. Create Amazing Clip Art Animation Videos In PowerPoint
4. How to Create Crisp-n-Clear Training Videos In Simple Steps

Bhattacharya provides a lot of great tips through this series. Here are some takeaways I had regarding creating better training videos for YouTube:

1. Create all elements with a 16:9 setting. For example, when creating a screencast, set the window size to 960×540 pixels. Bhattacharya recommends a great little tool called Sizer to do this. You can pick up Sizer at http://www.brianapps.net/sizer/. This tip was certainly worth picking up his book.

2. The next significant piece of advice was to record PowerPoint presentations at 16:9. Here is a short video on doing that:

Setting all elements to 16:9 allows for packaging them together in a more professional manner. I will certainly follow his advice for my upcoming productions.