- I've done something that I need to admit
because part of me feels a little bit ashamed,
but I need to come clean.
I've started to turn my camera sideways
to record vertical video.
And here's why!
So really in this video what I want to do
is explain to you the settings that I use
to edit vertical video for IGTV on Instagram,
and also Facebook.
At the end of this video I'll explain some of my thoughts
on vertical video,
and why I'm playing around with it,
but for those of you who came here to just get the settings,
let's jump straight into that right now.
So I'm gonna be walking through this in Final Cut Pro 10,
but these same settings could be applied pretty much
in any editing software.
It's actually super simple.
So the first thing we're gonna do is
create a new project file.
Now, to create vertical video,
we're basically just turning a regular 16:9 widescreen video
on its side.
So instead of 1920 by 1080,
we just need to create a custom size of 1080 by 1920.
Now Instagram prefers 30 frames per second for video,
but I shoot all of my stuff at 24 frames a second,
and so far, I haven't had any issues
uploading 24 frames per second video to Instagram.
And that gives us a normal editing video
except it's really, really narrow.
You can import regular widescreen video,
but I prefer to work with video
that's actually been shot vertically.
For me, I just find that it's easier
to frame up vertical video
if you're actually filming vertical video.
When you take a regular widescreen video,
and try to fit into that vertical format,
cropping it gets really weird.
Sometimes people fit it and just try to fit
that horizontal rectangle into the vertical rectangle,
and then you end up with just a little strip of video
that looks really goofy and weird.
If you were to add just a regular video
to your vertical timeline,
instead of having it be really small in the middle,
you can transform it and size it up to fill the frame,
and just try to make the stuff that's most important
be in the center of the frame.
So I've been still trying to figure out how to use IGTV,
so lately what I've been doing,
which has been super fun,
is question of the day videos
where I just pick a question from a comment
on like a YouTube video that people ask,
and I just try to answer it.
Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's not helpful.
But it's been really fun.
So I film those videos vertically
by turning my camera on its side.
When I put them into Final Cut,
I'm sideways, not taking up the whole screen,
so all that you need to do is rotate the video 90 degrees,
and then what I've noticed, at least with my 6D Mark II,
is then the video doesn't take up the whole vertical space.
So I need to scale it up 185%,
and then I've got a very well-framed, vertical video
that I can use.
With IGTV, you've got quite a bit of flexibility
in terms of the length of your video.
You can upload anything from 15 seconds
all the way up to 10 minutes.
They said that if you have a larger account,
then you can go up to 60 minutes,
but I have no idea what qualifies a large account.
It's definitely not mine.
So 10 minutes is the limit for most of us.
When you're ready to export,
the key setting is to make sure you're exporting as an MP4.
That is Instagram's preferred format.
So once you've got your video exported,
I just Air Drop it to my phone,
and then from there you can open up Instagram,
here's my wonderful feed,
then you can just tap the IGTV icon
up in the upper right corner.
If you've never used IGTV before,
you just tap on your icon,
which in my case is my dumb picture,
and then you will see, just like on YouTube,
you will see all of the videos on your IGTV channel.
If you wanna add a new video,
you can just click the plus icon,
then you just select the video that you wanna upload,
click next, and there you can give it a title
and a description.
In the description of the videos is where
you can add hashtags so people can search for your subject,
which is really cool since IGTV's still starting out
and not everyone's using it or has even opened it up yet.
After that, you have the option to edit the cover
for your video.
You can either upload one,
basically if you made a thumbnail,
just like you would for YouTube,
or you can choose a cover from the video.
You also have the option to make visible on other accounts.
I have found that this method for editing vertical video
on IGTV also works really well on Facebook,
so I've just been sharing the videos directly
to Facebook as well,
and then you post it.
And then one extra thing I do which is pretty cool
that Instagram let's you do,
is I find a screenshot on my phone,
usually where I look least stupid as possible
so it sometimes takes several hours to find one.
Take a screenshot of it,
and then what you can do is you can actually go
to your story on Instagram,
add the screenshot you just took
or whatever image you wanna use,
and Instagram gives you the option to link then
directly to your IGTV video,
which is really cool.
You don't need a certain number of followers or anything.
Everybody has access to this,
and then people can just swipe up on your story.
It'll take 'em right to your IGTV video.
So it's a great way to promote your videos.
So that's pretty much it in terms
of creating vertical video for IGTV.
Again, I used Final Cut Pro,
but you could use pretty much all these settings
in basically any other editing software,
and down in the description I will put that link
that goes straight to Instagram's help center
where they explain in detail all of the settings
that they want for IGTV.
As for why I've been playing around with vertical video,
even though I spend a lot of time kinda hating
on vertical video is pretty simple.
One day, the lovely HeatherJustCreate
said Tom you need to be playing around with IGTV.
And I said okay, and then I tried to experiment with it,
and it's actually been really, really fun
because I don't know much about it.
I'm not a huge social media expert,
and so it's very, very experimental for me.
And I kinda battled with this,
finding ways to fit regular video into the vertical format,
and it just, nothing really looks good that way.
And so, what I decided was
if you're going to post on these platforms,
if you're gonna engage on these platforms,
you really kinda need to speak the language
of these platforms.
And I think we're all used to on social media,
very shaky phone footage, you know,
which is fine but if you wanna add a little extra polish
to your vertical video wherever you're posting it,
then taking the time to maybe use a camera
that's not your phone would be really helpful,
or at least mounting the camera somewhere.
Taking the time to make sure
you are actually filming vertically
since that's going to be the method
that people are going to be watching video
is really important.
And like I said, for me,
it's just really helpful in framing things
to shoot them vertically,
but more important,
it's actually been really helpful creatively
because I'm so used to filming, for my whole life,
everything horizontally, you know, like you do
but then filming vertically you're totally limited
in the way that you use the space within the frame,
and so it forces you even the way you move
so that you're not constantly getting cut off of the frame.
Changes the way that you frame up your shots,
the way that you present things,
the way that you handle graphics.
Oo it's kinda of an interesting creative exercise
to explore vertical video,
and if nothing else,
even if you don't really plan on doing much with it,
I would encourage you to at least experiment with it
just because it might give you a better understanding
of these platforms.
Love it or hate it,
in today's world, vertical video's not going away,
and so if you're someone who creates video
it's at least a good idea to understand
what you're choosing to do or choosing not to do.
So those are my thoughts on vertical video.
It's actually been pretty fun and interesting.
Thank you, Heather, for suggesting that I break out
of my comfort zone and explore something on Instagram
because it's fun to break out of your comfort zone
and explore new things.
Alright, thanks for taking the time
out of your day to watch this.
Hope it was helpful.
I will see you guys next time.
(upbeat music)