Hey there! You are about to get started with Adobe Express Video, and I thought I’d pop in and just
share a few things to help you get started. First of all, keep in mind that Adobe Express Video
used to be called Adobe Spark, and if you see that along the way somewhere it might trip you up. So
just kind of keep that in mind. Secondly, the login process can be tricky. A lot of
colleges and universities have their own site license for Adobe,
and you may fall into that category and you may not even realize it. So when we get to
the how-to video, we want to encourage you to try logging in with your institutional credentials,
because if that works it'll actually give you access to an upgraded version of Adobe Express
video, and lots of other Adobe tools. But it is free, so you don't need that.
And if you don't have it, then you'll get started using an email address,
okay? The other thing I wanted to say was that a lot of faculty really like using Adobe Express
Video when they're getting started, because it doesn't actually force you to show your face,
and so keep that in mind. It may make you feel a little bit more motivated to give it a shot.
And the last thing I would say is to just give the interface some time. It really is easy to use,
but it can take a little while to just kind of figure out where you are in the interface, so
keep that in mind as we jump in, okay? But I’ve got you, I’m going to show you how to do this.
The first thing you want to do is go to https://www.adobe.com/express/create/video.
There's probably other pages you could go to, to get started with, but go to this
page. That's important because of the whole redesign that has just happened with Adobe,
okay? So go to that URL, and once you're there, click on “Start now.”
When you get to the login portal for Adobe Creative Cloud Express,
what we'd like you to do is start over on the right side, under “Teacher or student?” and click
on “Log in with school account.” Give it a try and log in with your institutional credentials.
If that works, that means that your college has a site license for Adobe, and you'll have
direct access to some upgraded features. If that doesn't work, no worries. Come back to this page,
and over on the left side select “Sign up with email” and complete sign up process.
Now once that step is completed, just so you know, you have now created your Adobe ID.
So in the future when you come to this portal to log in, you'll click on “Log in with Adobe ID.”
So go ahead and complete that sign up step now. Awesome! You're signed in. Now if you
went through the URL that I just told you to go through, you should be taken to this page.
If you're not seeing this page and if you're seeing something that looks more like this,
this is that other entrance into Adobe Express. And let me just show you how to get to video from
here. So if you're on this page, you want to click on the “plus” in the upper left corner,
and then select “Video” underneath “Create new.” And that'll get you out to that page.
So this is where we want to be. You can choose to use the prompts that Adobe has included here
to get you started, but I actually prefer to skip over that so that's what I’m going to do.
And then they'll take you to some templates that you can choose to use too. When I use templates,
I find that I feel a little bit restricted. You may feel differently, so you might want to give
one of them a try. I’m going to show you how to start from scratch, so let's click “Start from
scratch.” Now we're talking! Okay, this is the Adobe Express video interface. You made it to the
interface, so let me show you around. The first thing I want to show you is this horizontal bar
at the bottom. This is like a bird's eye view of all the clips in your video. So you create
an Adobe Express video, clip by clip. And at the end of every video, there's a credits page
where Adobe will add credits from any of the media that you pull in from the Adobe library, unless
it's something shared in the creative commons. So it'll automatically do that. You can also
click at the top and add your own credits if you want to add any of your own customized credits.
And then this last clip is what's called an outro, so you can add if you want to start
branding your videos in some way and include an image at the end, or if you want to type
a hashtag of some sort at the end. You know, if there's something like that that relates
to the work you're doing, that's an option. Or you can just click on those three dots if you
don't want to think about the outro and click “Hide outro” okay? So that's an option, also.
Over on the left here, where you see that white clip with the “plus” icon in it, that's how you
add a new clip, all right? So if I tap on one, that now is what we're looking at above in this
canvas space. So again, you want to navigate through the clips, and that activates them up at
the top in the canvas. So this is our first blank clip that we can add anything that we want to,
all right? So let's take a look at what's happening over here in the right column, too.
Now when you click on a clip like we just did, we clicked on number one down the timeline, right?
It activates it in the canvas, and then you'll see that we have options over here on the right.
In that right column we have a Layout tab, a Theme tab, a Resize and a Music tab.
The Layout tab allows us to choose the type of layout we want to use on our slide.
So for example, I’ll click on “Title and Text.” Let's take a look over at the right column.
At the top you'll see that there are four tabs, right? The first one is Layout. In that Layout
tab, it's where you select the type of layout you want for the clip that you're working on. Right
now, I am going to click on “Title and Text,” and watch what happens to the clip in the canvas area;
it changes. From here, just go ahead and click on the “plus” icon and start typing.
Click on the bottom one.
I can make that text bigger or smaller. And the plus icon in the upper left corner is an
option to pull in a video or a photo, if I want to do that. Not going to do that on this slide,
though. So now I’ll go down to our timeline at the bottom and select the “plus” icon on the far left,
and that's going to add a new clip right after the title slide. So again, I’ll go over to the
right and choose the layout I want. This time I’ll choose “Split Screen,” and on that left side I’ll,
I’m going to click on “Photo,” and this is what happens when you do that. Over on the right,
you'll see that the “Add photos” panel has opened up for you. You can search Adobe Stock. Be careful
not to select any of the premium images that come up in your search results, because those
will prompt you to upgrade your account. You can also choose to upload your own photo, which is
what I’m going to do here by clicking "Upload photo" and selecting an image from my computer.
Once that image loads, you can click on that “pencil” icon and zoom in or out
as desired, and over on the right side click on the “plus” icon to add some text.
If you choose to swap those two, you can click on the “Swap items” icon in the center,
and it'll just flip those two around for you. So again, now look at the bottom; we've got
two clips now in our video. It's coming together! Now if you're feeling fancy and you want to try
uploading a video that you've pre-recorded into your video in Adobe Express video,
here's how you do that. Start with a full size layout slide like I’ve got here,
and in the upper left corner select “Video.” And you need to find a video that is an .mp4
file so it has to end in .mp4. It has to be a short clip. Aim for about 10 to 12 seconds,
and it'll load in this trim interface. Down at the bottom you can select the portion of the video
that you want to be in your video clip, okay? So I’m going to just clip it to about 10 seconds,
which is right there. And I can see that in the lower right corner of the video, it tells me
the time. And then select "Save." The video will load in your timeline, right? You see it there.
And at the top, at the top you should see a “pencil” icon. There it is. If you click on that
pencil icon, you'll have some additional options. You can zoom in and out, you can go back to trim,
you can keep going with the clip. So if you had a long clip and you want it,
you trim some of it off, now you can pull in the rest of it here, if that makes sense.
I’m going to cancel out of that, but that's kind of a neat option. And this is what I want to show
you; clip volume. I always recommend going to the clip volume. If this is a video of you speaking,
toggle it to “loud” because you'll want your voice to be heard clearly over the background music that
we're going to add in just a second. For this particular video, I’m going to select “mute”
because I want to speak over this video clip, okay? So I am done with that video clip, and I
am ready to now start adding my voice, So now I’m going to show you how to do that. I’m going to go
back to the beginning of my video, and I’m simply going to click on and hold the “microphone” icon.
When I do that, you'll see that I’m prompted to give Adobe Express permission
to use my microphone, so I want to click on "Allow." And now click and hold again.
“Hi there, and welcome to the history of still photography!”
Now I let go, and I can play that back and listen to it by clicking on the play icon on the left.
“Hi there, and welcome to the history of still photography!”
So you'll see that Adobe has selected some music. I can change that, and I’ll show you
how to do that in a minute. But I’m just going to click on the next clip and record here, too:
“My name is Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and I’m super excited to be your instructor!” Go to the next one
and record on each clip. Okay, so I’ve recorded audio on each of my clips.
If you make a mistake or if you don't like the way you sound, folks, you just go back to a clip
and then you hit that button again, and it just re-records over it. So it's super easy. To play
your video back, click on… As you work, you'll want to check in on the progress of your video.
So to do that, click on the ”Preview” button at the top and it'll play your video back:
“Hi there, and welcome to the history of still photography! My name is Michelle
Pacansky-Brock, and I’m super excited to be your instructor!” When you're done with the preview,
click on the “x” icon in the upper right corner to go back to the video interface.
Now the last thing I want to show you in the interface here is the rest of those tabs over
on the right. If we click on "Theme," you can change the theme of your video to just give it
a different look and feel. So play around with this; it's kind of fun! You might find something
that you like a little bit different. And you can change the colors, too, inside of each theme.
I think I’m going to go with this one. In the “Resize” tab you can choose if you want
to change your video from wide screen to square. I recommend just leaving it and widescreen. And then
in the music tab is where you can actually change the music. So if you don't like the default that,
uh, has been set for your video, you can choose a different one. I do not recommend
selecting “Add my music,” folks, because music is copyrighted. And unless you specifically have
something that you created yourself or that is licensed for reuse, you will run into problems
with that uploaded music. You can also adjust the volume if you feel like the volume is too loud,
and I really recommend testing that and toggling it down if it seems too loud. I prefer the music
being really soft. And then if you choose, you can turn the music off. That's, that's an option, too.
Now when your video is done, when you're feeling really good about it, what you'll want to do is,
at the top select “Download.” And this is going to download your video to your computer in a
video file. And that's what you're going to take and upload to YouTube which is your next step!