- I have been a YouTube creator since 2006,
and over the past 11 years or so,
I have tried a lot of different tools
and systems and processes that make my video production
as efficient as possible for you guys.
Today, I want to take you behind the scenes
and show you some of the tools
that I use that have really helped me streamline
my process, and hopefully will help you as well.
(offbeat music)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer,
and welcome to Video Creators.
This channel is all about helping you guys grow
a YouTube audience so you can spread
a message that reaches people and changes their lives.
And of course, you want to reach
and impact as many people as possible, right?
And there's a few tools that help me do that.
One of the main tools that I use
with my team is Trello.
I love Trello, it's forces you
to put everything into a process that you follow.
You create a card, which is, think
of it like a sticky note, maybe.
And then all the conversations
and the back-and-forths happen on
that card as it moves across a process,
and then you make another card for another video,
it moves across the same process over,
and over, and over again.
And you can see on a calendar exactly when
everything's due, what's coming up,
and what do you need to work on,
and what's high priority?
I just love how much Trello really helps
us keep track of everything we're working on for you guys.
I have a lot of Trello boards.
I have one Trello board just for ideas,
of video ideas where I just brain-dump stuff,
and then me and my producer and editor kind
of work on what's coming out, what should we do next?
And then once it's shot, then it moves over
onto the Videos board, which is then when
that actually starts getting edited
and going through the whole thumbnail process
and metadata and everything, all
the way up to being available for you.
I did another video a while back
that goes more in-depth into our video production process
using Trello, so if that's of interest
to you, check out the link in the description below.
Another tool that we depend on almost
as much as Trello is Frame.io.
Now Frame is an amazing platform for collaborating
with editors, and producers, and clients,
just anyone who needs to have some sort
of feedback on a video.
It's great because everyone can get in there,
and then you can leave comments
and you can get provide feedback,
and it turns all those comments into a to-do checklist
for someone else to check off and make those changes.
You could draw annotations right on the video
to say, hey, here's the spot I was talking
about right here, right?
And, you can go through it frame by frame.
It makes collaborative video editing so easy.
For us, the way the process looks like
is, I shoot these videos, I upload them
to Dropbox, which then goes into Trello,
and then that goes to my editor,
and then Julia is often, hi Julia.
- What's up?!
- Julia takes the photos, edits it,
and then puts her first draft into Frame.io
where myself and my producer Trina
both jump in and provide feedback.
Julia then takes that and goes
and does the edits until we get
to something that we consider, this, good to go.
This is a final.
One of the most common tools you guys actually
asked me about, though, is Tim,
what video editing software do you use?
And Julia uses primarily Adobe Premiere Pro,
also with Adobe After Effects.
Even before Julia joined our team here though,
those are the tools I was using to edit as well.
Julia just does a much better job than I did.
- [Julia] Best part of the video.
- You guys know thumbnails are very important
for getting views and getting exposure,
getting people to click on your videos.
And the tool that we use for creating thumbnails
is Photoshop, also from Adobe, part
of that whole Creative Suite.
There's a lot of different photo editors you can use
for your thumbnails of course,
but Photoshop's what I learned to use years ago,
and it's also what Julia uses now when she creates
thumbnails for these videos.
The whole Adobe Suite has just been
an amazing tool that I use, even
for other things outside the channel, like the podcast.
We use Audition, Adobe Audition for that
and a lot of Media Encoder, the whole Adobe Suite's just
awesome, and I wish I was sponsored by them
to say all this right now.
But I'm not, I'm just telling you guys,
this is what we use.
Another tool that I use to streamline my workflow here
at Video Creators is a tool called Feedly.
Now, if you're not familiar with Feedly,
it's basically just a really upgraded RSS reader.
It allows me to subscribe to over 1,000 different websites
and get all the new content from all
those websites in one place.
And every week, I'm going through there
and I'm reading and skimming titles
and articles of updates happening
in the industry, things that have changed,
different people's thoughts and opinions
about things that have changed.
Since everyone on my team works remotely,
it's important that we have some
solid communication tools in place.
Trello works great for most things,
but there are some times where we just need
some quick back and forth communication.
Now, we use Zoom.us, it's for
our video conferencing software.
And I love it.
I abandoned Google Hangout video stuff a long time ago.
This works way better.
It has many more features, it's much more flexible,
and dependable and reliable.
It works on slower bandwidths, and it recovers
from internet hiccups much better.
It's just awesome.
So, whenever I need to meet with my team,
we're usually hopping into a Zoom call
and connecting face, well, kind of face-to-face,
but video face-to-face that way.
And we do use Google Hangouts for quick
chat just inside Gmail there, just like I pop up
and say, hey, what about this?
Or, I have a question about that.
Or, hey, where is this, or that project, whatever.
We use Google Hangouts for a quick chat, but that's it.
In terms of full disclosure, I am not sponsored
by any of these companies or products,
although I wish I was, that would be awesome.
But I want to hear from you guys,
what tools do you guys use to streamline your
production for your audience.
Maybe you're surprised about some
of the tools I didn't mention here
that you thought maybe we do use extensively.
This is pretty much all of it though,
so I want to hear what other tools maybe
that you're using, and if you're looking
for some other ideas besides the ones
that I shared, read those comments down there,
you will learn a ton and get a lot
of ideas from those people.
I always do, the community here is awesome.
You guys are great.
So, this is your first time here though.
I would love to have you subscribe,
because here at Video Creators,
we're just all about helping you grow your YouTube audience.
Not only for the sake of views
and money, and subscribers, and fame,
and popularity, and sponsorships, and whatever else,
but ultimately, using all those things
as tools for the ultimate goal, which is reaching people
and impacting their lives.
And thank you for letting me be a small part
of that, subscribe, and I'll see you guys again on Monday
for a live stream.
See you then, bye.
(beep)
Monday, right?
School's out on Thursday, yup, got it.
Had to check Trello for that.
See, look, I was using Trello this whole time
on this board right there.
Just for all my notes for this video.