Ever wonder how people create those videos that bring them an avalanche of visitors and subscribers? One reader did. Here’s his question.

What hardware do I need to make a video I can post on youtube for marketing purposes?  Can I use my video camera or my cell phone camera or what?  Once I have recorded it, how do I go about getting it on my computer?

That is really a big question and it covers many different aspects of creating videos. Creating videos can be a very involved process and the tools to make good video can cost a pretty penny. In that light, it’s probably lot better for a business owner to get someone to do them for you.

But I assume you have the time try this yourself or just want to learn. In that case, let’s get started. I’m not a professional videographer and I mostly do presentation style videos. Even then I don’t pretend to be on the same level as the studios. What I’m sharing here just from my own experiences.

You may have already noticed videos on YouTube range from professional to edgy, low quality less than amateur productions. It all depends on your purpose and the type of business you have.

Some businesses are more tolerant to edgy, home grown type videos. Example, clothing designers for teens. If that’s your business, off the cuff ‘reality style’ videos caught with a simple video camera works. I won’t recommend cell phone videos though. They usually aren’t that good a quality and you always want to start off with the highest quality possible so you can edit, remix it and still come up ahead quality wise.

A regular camcorder is best, assuming you want to do live footage. You can always create slide presentation type videos that don’t need a camera. Digital camera video could work, but many digital cameras have a limit to the length of  your footage so that could actually work against you, forcing you to ‘break the flow’ of recording. Quality wise, a camcorder would give you better output.

How you get the footage into your computer depends on your camcorder. If you have a digital camcorder, it’s usually as easy as hooking it up to your computer and capturing the recorded footage with the bundled software. You will probably want to edit it and mix in some music, voice overs and stills. Then just save it and post. VideoHelp is a really good site with a very active forum that answers tons of video questions. Check them out.

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