Image: Business professionals with experience of presenting to real people face an unnerving challenge when moving to web video: speaking directly into the camera’s unblinking eye.

Welcome to Sell to Camera, my blog for strategy consultancy ISV Focus to help business professionals with presentation experience make the move to web video, addressing the concerns many feel when first asked to speak directly into a video camera’s unblinking eye. I’ve now retired this blog, but if you’ve any questions then please add your comment to the relevant article, or get in touch with me direct.

If your audience can’t clearly hear what you have to say then your video is a waste of everyone’s time. Use a lapel microphone instead of your camera’s built-in microphone and get a massive boost in audio quality for a minimal investment.

Image: Andrew Biss uses an inexpensive Audio-Technica ATR 3350 lapel microphone to get good quality sound. Bad sound stands out far more than less than perfect image quality, so it pays to get the best sound possible. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Good audio is vital

Effective business web videos demand good quality audio. The built-in microphone on your camera is OK when up-close, but for these videos you are simply too far away.

A wired external lapel (lavalier) microphone is an effective first step to great audio. Wireless systems are more flexible but cost a lot more and often have licensing restrictions.

Monitor your sound

Attach a set of headphones to your camera’s audio output socket to check your audio quality before recording. Pay careful attention to any background noise or hum.

Offices are (electrically) noisy, so check what your microphone hears. It is a lot easier to fix audio problems before recording than afterwards with an audio editing tool.

Play back each take 3 times and concentrate on: image only, sound only, both together. This is a simple way to check that you have a good quality take.

Create a recording checklist

This is a good time to create your own recording checklist; top of that list: verify you have turned your microphone on!

It is frustrating to record a good take only to discover the microphone was off. Check your microphone is really on every single time before you press Record.

Turn on your camera’s audio level display and check the level bars move when you say the phrase familiar to roadies everywhere: “Testing, testing, one two three, testing …”

Next time

In the next video I will get back to the camera setup and show you a simple trick to make best use of a large monitor placed directly behind your camera.

Before you say a single word the background in your video is already speaking for you. A dark background that looked like a stage curtain didn’t set the business tone I wanted. Choosing a lighter, structured, background now sends the right message from the very first frame. It also turned out they are easier to work with.

Image: Andrew Biss compares the difference in tone between a business-like light background created using panel blinds, and the more theatrical effect given by heavy dark blue curtains. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

You see a lot better than your camera

Changing from a dark to light background projects a more business-oriented impression, but there is also a technical reason due to the limited dynamic range of video cameras.

Camcorders are sensitive, but their sensitivity pales compared to your eyes. What looks good to you will look different to your camera.

Cameras have a limited dynamic range and don’t cope well with scenes that mix very bright and very dark areas. This is the origin of a best practice: use a light background for light-skinned people, and a dark background for darker-skinned people.

I am light-skinned so a very dark background is difficult to light and expose properly. A lighter background gives a better image and does not need so much extra lighting.

Up-close lighting for tight spaces

For this video I used 2 lights (I will show you my lighting setup in an upcoming video). For the moment I will share that both lights are just out of frame and very close to me.

With the lights so close I only needed 155W of extra lighting. If the lights had been twice as far away I would have needed 620W to get the same light level.

Keeping the lights very close saves on power (good for the environment), but the most important benefit is it is easier to find somewhere to record in a tight office environment.

Next time

In the next video I will take a short detour and briefly talk about getting great audio. Spend a little on an external microphone and you will dramatically increase the perceived quality of your business web videos.

You know to look around your audience when presenting; web video demands you do the exact opposite. Put a large monitor at eye-level right behind your camera to get accustomed to looking directly at your camera. You also get to speak to a real person (yourself!) and not just the camera’s unblinking eye.

Image: Andrew Biss suggests putting a large monitor up high behind your camera. This way you can present to a real person (yourself) and learn to relax when facing the camera’s unforgiving unblinking eye. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Must your videos be 100% perfect?

When reviewing this video (using the external monitor right after the take, of course) I noticed I say at 0:13 the external monitor is 55 inches; I should have said 55 cm.

What should you do when you make such minor mistakes?

One option is to record another take with the correct details. Another option is to re-record just the correction and edit that into the original take.

Real life isn’t 100% perfect, so must our business web videos be? I think staying natural, real and human is more important that correcting every um and ah. We are not making broadcast quality TV (we don’t have the time or budget!).

Just make a mental note to avoid that type of mistake in the future. Now put any minor mistakes in your current video behind you and move on.

I decided to not correct my inch/cm mistake. On the other hand, if I had said the IKEA stool cost EUR 150 instead of EUR 15 then I would have corrected it.

Talking of IKEA: at 0:43 I start with the English pronunciation of IKEA, hesitate and then swap to the German pronunciation. Again, a minor point and not worth a retake to correct.

Keep your transitions and effects simple

We shot the photos in advance using a cheap compact digital camera. It took a little time as we had to move the camera and monitor for each shot and make sure something was visible on the monitor and the camera’s LCD.

The photos were dropped directly into Sony Vegas for cropping and overlaying on the main video content. The transitions are very simple, just with some zooming towards the end when I suggest turning the camera’s LCD horizontal.

With all the special effects and transitions available in Sony Vegas it is very easy to get carried away. I recommend you keep things simple; transitions and effects should support your content and never be the star of the show.

A good test is to ask yourself if you are likely to see a specific transition or effect used in the main news bulletin on your leading TV channel? If not then stop and ask yourself if this transition or effect is really necessary, or whether a simpler alternative is better?

Next time

In the next video I show you how you can use your large eye-level monitor for much more than just checking your setup and playing back what you have just recorded.

While Hollywood can afford a high ratio of footage shot to used, you cannot. Don’t waste time editing your web videos; know what you’ll get before pressing record. Save time and reduce frustrating wasted takes with a Full HD monitor that shows clearly (in real time) every pixel your camera sees.

Image: Andrew Biss uses a Full HD monitor to more easily check what the camera sees. Verifying what you’ll get before hitting the record button saves a lot of time compared to trying to fix mistakes in the edit process. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Monitor your recordings

Place a large Full HD 1920×1080 monitor near your camera to make it easy to check what your camera can really see when you are setting up to record a new video. It is also easier to review what you actually recorded at the end of each take.

Monitoring is especially valuable if you disassemble your set between recordings so office life can continue. Even though you mark exactly where everything was last time, things always seem to be a little different next time.

Without monitoring you risk unintended objects in view, or a background that is not quite wide enough. While you can fix these when editing, this wastes time and is frustrating. Better to check all is OK before pressing record.

With my external monitor I am sure what I see will exactly match the recording. I need no longer be concerned when I bring the content into Sony Vegas that a light is visible or my background is not quite wide enough.

HDMI mode and overscan

My ViewSonic VX2260WM panel has 2 HDMI settings: PC (monitor mode) and AV (TV mode), which differ in the overscan area. This goes back to TV which sends extra non-visible picture lines with teletext and other supporting information.

Connecting my Windows notebook in TV mode cuts off a lot of pixels. In PC mode the full 1920×1080 pixels are visible and fill the screen. Monitor mode tells the display there is no hidden information and to display all pixels.

My Canon LEGRIA HF S10 camcorder automatically forces TV mode when connected to the ViewSonic monitor. This cuts off the image’s edges, which is not at all helpful as a key job of the monitor is to check exactly what the camera sees!

I solved this by simply changing the HDMI connection type on the ViewSonic monitor from TV mode to monitor mode. All 1920×1080 pixels recorded by the camera are now visible (and pin sharp). It is a pleasure to work with this recording setup.

Next time

In the next video in this series I show you how I place my external monitor with respect to my camera when recording these web videos. With this monitor and camera setup I am sure what my camera really sees before I press the record button.

Unless you have the luxury of a separate recording space, you will have to record in your existing office environment. Present standing up and you can shoot over the top of desks and other office furniture. Putting your tripod on a desk saves space and keeps your camera stable and safe from knocks.

Image: Andrew Biss suggests putting your camera on a tripod that stands on a desk. This way you can shoot your video over the top of your office furniture, avoiding the need to clear a large open space. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Lighting

The previous video about not using a teleprompter was setup using flat lighting. For this video I went back to a more traditional 3-point lighting setup. This gives more visual depth to the video.

It is also easier to work with this setup as you are not looking into bright lights arranged near the camera as it required with flat lighting. I think that I will be sticking with 3-point lighting in the future. In an upcoming video I will show you the lights I am using and how I have placed them.

Next time

In the next video I will show you how I use a large external monitor to keep track of what the camera sees when recording. I find this gives me a much more productive working environment than if was to rely on the small 7cm LCD screen attached to the camera.

Reading from a script is the very last thing you would consider doing when giving a presentation. Why is it then, that as soon as people start making web videos they think they are playing a newsreader on TV and want to read a script from a teleprompter? Just say no to teleprompters for your business videos!

Image: Andrew Biss explains that while using a teleprompter when speaking to camera might seem very tempting at first, in practice it is a bad idea and your videos will suffer for it. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

Lighting

This video uses a flat lighting setup with 2 equal intensity lights in front of me and to either side of the camera. This gives a flatter overview look to the video than the more traditional 3-point lighting setup.

You will see flat lighting used on news shows and a lot of video productions. It is easy to set up and allows people to move about without casting odd shadows. While the setup is easy, I am not really that happy with the overall result.

For the next video I think I will go back to the more traditional 3-point lighting setup as this gives a more defined structure and gives a better separation from the background. However, there is never a right answer on lighting, so it is very much a try it and see situation.

Lighting and audio are the two most important points to get right in creating business web videos. I will be therefore go into these subjects in detail in future videos to help you decide the best way to get started without wasting a lot of time and effort.

Next time

In the next few videos I will take a peek behind the scenes and share with you the monitor setup I have assembled around my Canon LEGRIA HF S10 camcorder, starting with how to place your tripod to keep your camera safe from knocks in a busy office environment.

I have found this a productive way to check what the camera is seeing, as well as being able to view production information and key bullets when recoding a video.

When you are watching web videos watch the eyes and see how often people blink. You will soon spot when people are reading from a teleprompter. It sticks out like a sore thumb!

Here’s the first real video for Sell to Camera. This is a simple example of a typical “Hello” video where I introduce my blog, identify my target audience and what you can expect to get out of it. In other words, to answer your question: “what’s in it for me?”

Image: Andrew Biss introduces Sell to Camera and explains what the blog is about and who it is aimed at. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

It took 15 minutes to record the source material for this video, spread across 6 takes. The best introduction, body and ending were then selected and edited together with simple fade through black transitions. A title bar (lower third) just after the introduction and the logo and URL at the end rounded the video off.

Further examples

I will use this welcome video as an ongoing example, showing how it can be published in various parts of the website. I will also publish some variations to show how some simple changes during the editing process can make the video even better.

Next time

In the next video I take a look at why you should not use a teleprompter when recording your business web videos.

This first video on Sell to Camera is a short test I recorded to show you the difference in quality between a good webcam and a HD camcorder. This gives a first taste of the quality we can achieve with our business videos.

Image: Short test video showing the difference in quality between a typical webcam and a HD digital camcorder. The video was shot with natural lighting in an office environment. [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

The plan

For this test I put my office clock on a chair and zoomed in to better capture the moving second hand. This shows the sort of zoom levels needed for close-ups in an office setting; the sort that we need for a ”hello” type web video.

Lighting

My office is north-facing and has no direct sunlight. It was late in the afternoon and lighting levels were low. Apart from the ceiling light there was no other lighting.

Webcam

I set my Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 webcam to record at 1600×1200 resolution. The image is large but the quality is poor at this zoom and light level. The frame rate is 12.5 frame per second (fps); too slow for smooth movement in live video.

HD Camcorder

The second image is from my Canon LEGRIA HF S10 high definition camcorder. I literally put the camera on a tripod, turned it on and pressed record. The default image size is 1440×1080 (the largest is 1920×1080: full HD). The frame rate is 25fps as this is a European PAL camera (and not the US NTSC version which records at 30fps).

Editing

The webcam output was in WMV format and the camcorder output in AVCHD format.  I brought both media files into Sony Vegas Movie Studio v9 Platinum Edition to edit into the video. I trimmed the tracks, added the titles and a transition between the two recordings. For this test I did no colour correction or any other content edits or adjustments.

Rendering

From Sony Vegas I rendered the edited movie into AVI format at 640×480 and 25fps. AVI is uncompressed, so the quality is high but comes at the price of size. This video runs for 18 seconds; even so, Sony Vegas took 75 seconds to create the AVI file; which, at 543MB in size, works out to 30MB per second. It is a good thing that large disks are now so cheap!

Encoding

The next step was to encode the AVI file into a Flash Video (FLV) file for playing on the web. For this I used Sorenson Squeeze 5 for Flash Pro for with the high-quality MainConcept H.264 codec. On my Intel Core Duo desktop (2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM) the encoding batch job took around 58 seconds create a 3.6MB MP4 file ready for uploading.

Hosting

To improve streaming performance and to keep bandwidth costs down the MP4 file is not hosted on my web hosting account. Instead, I host the MP4 file on the Amazon S3 cloud storage platform. A DNS entry for the media sub domain means that any files referenced at http://media.selltocamera.com are actually coming from my S3 account.

Playing

As mentioned in my earlier post on how video embedding works, a flash player is required to actually display the flash video file. For this example I am using the JW FLV Media Player. This is a widely used player with extensive plugin support, including metrics on how long each video is watched.

If you are reading this in your RSS feed reader and cannot see the video at the start then please read the post on the website. Thanks.

Resolutions

The video is initially displayed on the blog at 512×384 pixels (4:3 format). You can see the high quality 640×480 version by clicking on the “show full screen” button.

Coming up

So, there we are: the very first video published on Sell to Camera I think you will agree that a webcam does not have anything like good enough quality for creating professional web videos for your business.

In the up-coming posts I will cover all these steps in more detail, talking about concrete steps to create you own web videos. It is not as complicated as it might look at first glance, and is easily within the technical ability and budget of most businesses.

Image: Clip art is bad enough when used in a traditional presentation or printed document. They have absolutely no place at all in your business videos, so don’t even think about letting them get a foot in the door.

This is the first in a regular series on business video clichés, starting with something we have all been guilty of: needless clip art.

Creating slides by hand we had enough trouble writing legibly with marker pens; few had the skills for illustration. With the arrival of PCs in the early 1980s we could add simple line art and everything changed.

The choice of clip art was limited to start; I recall buying clip art collections in the mid 1980s. These had a few thousand images spread across lots of 5 1/4 inch floppies.

Even as recently as 1996 Microsoft Word only had 82 clip art images. Microsoft Office now has 140,000+, with lots of  paid and free images only clicks away.

Through the 1990s graphics use exploded. Most of this was gratuitous; the images added no value to the audience and were only there as they were easy to add.

Fortunately sentiment is changing as blogs like Presentation Zen fight to drag presentation design away from unreadable text and corny images.

While classic business presentations improve, web video risks going backwards. The main culprits are screencasts, although I have also seen clip art in live action video.

Just say no to clip art. You know it makes sense.

Image: Andrew Biss stands in front of some book shelves. With such a busy background you risk your audience focusing on trying to recognize your books, instead of paying attention to what you’re saying.

TV and the web are very different mediums. While TV viewers lean-back and passively entertained or informed, the web is interactive; we lean-forward, actively looking for new information, searching for the next button to click.

One way TV productions set the tone for a scene or interview is by consciously adding objects into the background. While the work of set dressers is important on TV, you face different challenges.

Your video is not about bookcases

Web video eye tracking studies show viewers look at background objects. So, while TV experts are often interviewed in front of bookcases, you cannot afford to waste scare attention on your books (or the pictures on your walls).

Image: Andrew Biss stands in front of a neutral background to put the focus on the subject and not on what might happen to be visible in the background.

Check around you to find a suitable wall or cupboard doors for your neutral background.

Dark backgrounds look more professional if you have good lighting. Choose a lighter background if your lighting is not so good.

Make sure you stay far enough away from your background to avoid casting distracting shadows.

Moving yourself and/or your camera by just a little is often enough to cut out distracting background objects. Always check your background before pressing record; it is a lot less effort than fixing it later.

When the background is the story

Behind-the-scenes videos are an exception to the neutral background rule. In these videos the background becomes the story. Office tours are popular. You can also take a tour of your library (or show off your curvy bookcase).

If the background isn’t the story then avoid interesting backgrounds when you have to get your message across and motivate your visitors to take action.

Image: As soon as your video starts to play people leave to do something else, so keep your videos short if you want anyone to be around to hear your call to action.

Unlike text, we can’t (yet?) scan video; we must decide whether to invest our time and attention to watch a video.

Length is key to this decision. However, we are not creating appointment TV, so if visitors don’t watch right now, the chances are they never will.

We need visitors to click the play button now and watch to the end, but how much of a typical online video are people actually ready to sit and watch?

Attention is fleeting

An analysis from TubeMogul (see diagram above) on 22+ million streams of 188k videos from 6 top video sites tells us.

Take these results to heart! The longer your video, the fewer will watch to the end. You might think your video is special; statistics are against you if you go long.

These statistics from TubeMogul make it clear why a punch line at the end is a very bad idea! Tell your whole story in 10-20 seconds; use the rest for more depth.

How long is too long?

I need a good reason to immediately watch a video longer than 2 minutes (or so). Applying the GTD 2 Minute Rule, I either ignore a longer video (life’s too short), or bookmark it to watch later (later, of course, often never comes).

The 2 Minute Rule from David Allen’s Getting Things Done action management method says if you can do a  task in less than 2 minutes, it’s best to get it done right away.

120 seconds might not sound much, but consider TV news reports are rarely more than 90 seconds. Add your titles and call to action; you soon use up your 120 second budget.

If in doubt, chop it up

Chop your video into segments if your content is (really) too long to edit into 120 seconds. Also, chop your video rather than trying to cover more than 3 points in a video.

Your visitors will appreciate you chunking your content. You also benefit from finer-grained metrics about how many people watch the different videos.

Shorter videos result in smaller files, saving you time uploading. They are also easier to download for offline viewing (which I suggest you offer your visitors).

I have made this video longer than usual…

As Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) would surely have agreed, shorter videos take more time to create than longer ones. The reason is simple: editing for length takes time.

Edit your videos down to 2 minutes (or so), however, and your visitors might reward you by actually watching what you have invested so much time to create.

Cameras see the real you, not your familiar mirror image. Turn your webcam’s mirror mode off to get used to seeing yourself like this.

Image: Andrew Biss holds up books to show what we see in a mirror. The book held in the right hand is on the right, but the text is all messed up. This is how we’re used to seeing ourselves.

In yesterday’s post I suggested you work with your webcam on. But what, exactly, do you see? Well, we have a lifetime’s experience of seeing ourselves in a mirror, which is very different from how others see us.

Normally we don’t care; it is only when we see ourselves on screen that we wonder why we look so strange?

Image: Andrew Biss holds up books to show what we see in a mirror. The book held in the right hand is on the right, but the text is all messed up. This is how we’re used to seeing ourselves.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Everyday mirrors show flopped images, reversed on the vertical axis (A flipped image is reversed on the horizontal axis.) You can see flopping in the above image, captured from my webcam with mirroring mode on.

I am holding 2 books: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds in my right hand and slide:ology by Nancy Duarte in my left. Glance at the image quickly: “R” is on the right and “L” the left, as expected.

Without the book titles it would be a lot more difficult to tell. This is why flopped images still creep into feature films.

That looks a little strange

Image: Andrew Biss holds up books marked to show which hand they are being held in. With mirror mode turned off the text is readable, but right is now left and vice-versa. This is how other people see us in real life.

Turn mirror mode off and we see how others see us. The titles are OK, but “R” is on the left and “L” the right…

Photos were the main way we saw ourselves as others do. While many are uneasy with photos, video is worse; right and left are in the wrong place.

Our whole lives we have seen our flopped image; non-mirrored naturally looks strange. It conflicts with our internal understanding of how we look.

Look in the mirror and make that change

The solution is easy; get used to seeing yourself on screen as the camera sees you and not as you look in your bathroom mirror.

Work with your webcam turned on and mirror mode off. You will soon relax and get used to seeing yourself as others do. A small thing, perhaps, but one of the secrets to being comfortable on video.

Image: Most people are uncomfortable seeing themselves on screen. A good way to train yourself is to work with your webcam on and your image always visible on the desktop.

I won screen-time by having my face on the screen while working. I became more relaxed on camera and used to seeing myself on screen.

To try this trick you will need to find the option that forces your webcam’s video window to stay on top. If your webcam window keeps disappearing behind the active application window (or you work full screen a lot, as I do), then the de-sensitizing effect is lost.

While my Logitech Quickcam pro 9000 works well, I find the stay on top option unreliable. To fix this I use DeskPins, a freeware tool from Elias Fotinis that pins the webcam window (or any other window) so it always stays on top. Recommend.

Try working with your webcam turned on so you get used to seeing yourself on screen. To present effectively on video we must become less self-conscious when speaking to camera. The more used we are to seeing ourselves on screen, the easier it becomes.

Image: Embedding video content into your website is not as complicated as it might at first appear. Even so, it helps to understand the basics of what is going on and how all the moving pieces come together on the page.

While you will have seen video on hosting services such as YouTube, Vimeo, Brightcove and others, Sell to Camera focuses on videos embedded in your website or blog. So, this post gives you a high level overview of how video embedding works.

It is therefore important for you to have a clear understanding of the concepts behind video embedding. You will need to understand how the different parts of the software stack work together to display your video.

I will not go into low level technical details here, just cover the core issues you need to know. So, let’s get started and what better than with a video from Pink Floyd.

Let’s start with Pink Floyd

I have embedded a YouTube video of Pink Floyd playing Comfortably Numb, one of their most well-known tracks. This video is from October 1994, recorded at Earls Court in London during the Division Bell tour.

Image: Pink Floyd play Comfortably Numb at Earls Court in London, recorded in October 1994 during their Division Bell tour. If you want to jump direct to what some consider the world’s best guitar solo then go to 4:55 and enjoy! [If your RSS reader doesn’t show the YouTube video embedded above then please visit the original post in your browser.]

The video appears as you have seen on countless web pages. But what is really going on here? How is the video being displayed? Where is that big play button coming from? Who decides which static image to show before the video starts?

As the following diagram shows, a number of components come together on the page to present the embedded Pink Floyd video you see above.

Image: A number of software components and separate content files come together to provide the illusion of the video being directly embedded within the web page.

Let’s have a look at the main two components that you need to know about: the Adobe Flash player and the custom video player.

The Adobe Flash player

The HTML page you are looking at (unless, of course, you are reading this in your RSS feed reader) is being displayed by your browser. Within the page body is an HTML code to tell the browser to embed the Adobe Flash Player.

You installed the Flash Player as a plugin in your browser; what started life as a specialist tool for displaying multimedia animations has now grown into a fully fledged programming environment with a virtual machine and object-oriented language called ActionScript.

Flash Player is the runtime environment for ActionScript programs. On its own the runtime does not do anything; it must load and run some content. In our case it is the custom video player that provides the user interface you see and interact with.

The custom video player

The custom video player is a small ActionScript program that creates the user interface you interact with to start and stop your video. In our example the Flash Player loaded the custom video player from YouTube’s servers when your browser loaded this HTML page.

The custom video player checks some parameters and displays the user interface you see. It displays and controls the play button, slider, volume control and the other user interface elements.

Once loaded, the custom video player checks its parameters to get the URL of the video it should display, then asks the Flash Player runtime to download and prepare to play that video.

This is the normal case. It is also possible to tell the custom video player to automatically start playing the video.

When you click play

When you click the play button the custom video player passes a message to the Flash Player telling it to start playing the video.

It is important to understand that the custom video player is only a small program responsible for the user interface. It is the Flash Player that does the real work of decoding and displaying the video.

This clear separation between the custom video player and the Flash Player is important; the reason is customization.

Customizing your video player

While YouTube and other video hosting services give you a certain level of control over their custom video players, you will want more control when you start to host your own videos for your website or blog.

What you really need is your own custom video player that meets your specific needs.

Why do I need my own custom video player?

At this point you might be wondering exactly why you might need a custom video player for your own website?

Well, to give you an idea, here are just a few of the many things you can do once you have your own custom video player:

• Brand your videos by overlaying your logo on top of the videos. This is easier that including your logo as a watermark in every separate video. You will see such branding marks on a lot of web video.
• Take the user to a landing page when the video ends. This is useful if you want your viewer to take a specific action having watched your video. Rather than asking them to click on a link, you can do it for them. This will increase your response rate.
• Dynamically overlay links on the video while it is playing. You can use this to give the user information on special offers, current events etc. By you don’t need to include such link text in the video; you can change them quickly and easily. (You might want to do this when running split tests on your website.)
• Disable specific video controls. You will see some internet marketing videos which hide the position slider so you cannot fast forward. (I find this very annoying and do not recommend you do this in your videos.)
• Show pre-roll and post-roll video before and after your main video, for advertisements, titles or credits etc. You can share and reuse these segments; you don’t need to include the same content into every video. You can change these standard segments without touching your real video content, which saves a lot of time.
• Control your poster frame. When you upload a video to YouTube it is not always clear which frame YouTube will choose for the thumbnail or poster frame (the frame shown when the video has not yet started to play). With your own custom video player you get complete control of the poster frame, which is vital for grabbing visitor’s attention. If you pay attention to this you will see that most videos have boring and/or inappropriate poster frames.

Getting your own custom video player

This does not mean you need to learn how to code in ActionScript! There are many free and commercial custom video players available. JC Player is a leading free player, while Web Anatomy is a well-known commercial product.

These products all allow you to specify the look and feel you want for your custom video player. Select from a few options and they immediately generate an ActionScript program just for you.

The next step is to host your custom video player on your website and make sure your HTML page tells the Flash Player to load your specific custom video player to play your video. That’s all there is to it; you are now ready to embed your video.

At first glance this whole video embedding processes might sound complicated. Rest assured, however, in practice it is not that complex and I will be going into this process in detail in future posts on Sell to Camera.

Pay attention to the players

Take a few moments when watching video to look at the controls and other features provided by the custom video player. You will soon see different families of video players. You will also start to see the sort of custom video player you might want to use for your videos

The main takeaway is that it is the custom video player that is responsible for the user interface you see when interacting with the video. It will be such a video player you will need to play for your own videos. I will be going into this in future posts here on Sell to Camera.

Image: Video is a new medium for most companies and anything new starts of scary. Business video need not be complicated, however, and the best way to learn is by getting out there and starting.

Many (most?) companies are making too little use of video in their sales and marketing activities. I think the reason (to a large extent) is that video is a new medium for mainstream business, and anything new is always scary.

Putting screencasts up on a website is often a first step. In the software business, of course, this is more widespread and common practice for a while. Where I see a real reluctance and companies holding back is showing real people on screen.

Instead of hiding behind a corporate veil, companies need to recognise that we are entering a different mode of business, one that is far more social. Your potential customers want to know who you are.

My colleagues are reluctant; what arguments can I use?

On the one hand this reluctance is odd. Many companies are in the service business and what they are really selling is the skills of their people. It seems somewhat odd that they are holding back on putting their goods in their shop window. If you were buying services, wouldn’t you want to know who was going to deliver it?

On the other hand, I fully accept that reluctance to show ourselves is a very normal and understandable reaction. I think this is partly because we are not used to seeing ourselves on screen as other people see us (we only see ourselves in a mirror, and that is very different, as I will cover in an up-coming post). Because we are personally uncomfortable seeing ourselves on screen, we hold back from taking this step.

It is this reluctance for the people behind companies to show their face on the screen that was a key driver for me to found Sell to Camera. I want to encourage people to get out from behind their “About Us” page. That this is OK, and there is nothing difficult or strange about this. It is just the next step along the long road of making use of new media.

Do we need to TV-like video advertisements?

The sorts of videos that I am thinking about are more like what you see in a documentary or news report (talking direct to camera). I am not so much thinking about advertising in the sense of the Renault Laguna advert with Eric Cantona Claude linked to on YouTube in his original comment.

That sort of video advertising is too complex, expensive and difficult to do well for most companies to consider. Just look at the number of advertisements on TV or video that are complete rubbish!

How professional do we need to make our videos?

To be effective in a business context the videos must look professional. This does not mean, however, that we are talking about Hollywood production values. Professional speaking to camera videos are very achievable for normal business users like us. That is what I hope to show on this blog.

Can we create videos ourselves?

Yes, you can produce these videos yourself, and I will be doing this with my own videos here on Sell to Camera. I do not have any previous experience with creating video, so if I can do it so can anyone else!

The tools to create professional quality web video are out there, and so is a wealth of valuable experience. We just need to filter it and focus on what is really important to get started.

How quickly will we need to replace stale videos?

You can show different videos to first time visitors and people coming back to the site, so that would not be an issue. The Hello videos are more general, however, so I do not think you need to replace these on a regular basis.

Do we need to create a portfolio of videos?

Once the Hello video is in place you can then start to add more content. I would recommend investing the time to create a number of short videos and not a few long ones.

A good place to start is short (2 minute at most) videos where your colleagues introduce themselves. These tell your visitors much more than a standard headshot photo and a short bio.

After that, I would go out into the field and do short (2 minute at most again) interviews with customers and partners. These are much more effective than written case studies for new visitors. You can support the video with a written case study for people interested in learning more, but I think most will look at the video first.

How do we get visitors to watch our videos?

I think that the most effective aspects to getting visitors to click on your hello video are:

1. Where it is on the screen
2. The opening graphic which is shown before the video starts
3. Making it clear that this is a short video (2 minutes at most)

Someone coming to the website wants to know who you are. If you make it clear that this information is readily available then they will click on it.

A further point worth mentioning here is that you need to put the Hello video on every page on the site, not just the home page. The top-down hierarchy we used to have in the past is no longer the only path into your site.

The reason is that Google has exploded the traditional website structure and you cannot know where the user will enter your site. They are most likely coming from Google search, so you need to design your site on the basis that every page is a home page for that specific visitor.

We are multi-lingual, do we need multiple videos?

Use the same language for the Hello video and the text on your web page. If you have multiple language versions of your site then you should consider having multiple versions of the video. You can either do this by swapping out the soundtrack in the video editing software, or you could overlay subtitles.

I think this is a nice problem to have, however, and would start with your main language and not worry too much about the others for the time being.

Disclosure: In the interests of full disclosure I want to mention that I have known Claude for 20+ years. While we have worked together in the past, Claude has no involvement in Sell to Camera. I did not ask for Claude’s comment; his software company in Switzerland really is considering adding video to their website to support their marketing activities.

Image: Companies often have a hang-up over revealing the real people who work there. Business is all about relationships, however, so try to overcome the resistance and simply say hello.

“This does not apply to us”, I hear you say. “We are B2B and our buyers make purely objective purchase decisions. They do not care who we are.” I have seen this way of thinking a lot in the enterprise software business. Just look at supplier websites and it is clear that they think their people do not matter to prospects.

As Seth Godin says, B2B buyers are just consumers spending other people’s money. People are people and B2B buyers also are also making emotional and subjective decisions. ROI studies, technical evaluations and the rest are often just cover stories.

Who are these people?

No matter if you’re selling enterprise software, spare parts for vacuum cleaners or equipment for musicians, your visitors want to know who you are.

Hide behind a corporate veil and your visitors will go elsewhere. Open businesses will keep the clicks, and the opportunity to convert their visitors into customers. A typical corporate About Us page with bios and stock photos of your management team will lose you that opportunity.

Screencasts are not the right way to say hello and introduce yourself; you need a direct-to-camera video. It is often reported that 93% of communication is non-verbal; people really do need to see you. White papers, corporate flyers or other collateral are even worse. Even if you put a lot of effort to create a funny white paper, your visitors will not read it.

While we talking about things not to do, forget about using your elevator pitch as a script. When you are at a party and meeting someone for the first time, you would not recite your elevator pitch. Don’t do it here either.

Who are you?

If you are the owner of your business then introduce yourself. It is your business and reputation, so just get out there and say hello.

If you are in a larger organization then select someone as the face of your product or service. Your CEO is too far away from the action for this. Instead, find the person most associated with the product or service and let them introduce themselves.

If you were wondering, forget about using a PR person for this. You need someone with an authentic connection to your product or service. Try to cheat and your visitors will spot it immediately.

Say hello and be noticed

Just putting a short video introduction on your website will put you ahead of your competitors. To see what I mean, have a look and see how many of your competitor’s websites are introducing themselves with a short video in this way? Not many, huh?

Get out there, introduce yourself and your visitors will notice and appreciate it. Feeling positive about you based on 1 to 2 minutes of video, makes your visitors more likely to make the mental commitment to invest the few minutes needed to take the next step.

Your introduction video is the vital first step each visitor must take for you to have any chance of converting them into a customer, viewer, subscriber or member. Remember, it is simply polite to say hello and introduce yourself. Forget this simple courtesy and your visitors will be gone in the time it takes to click on the back button.

Hi, I’m Andrew Biss

I aim to practice what I preach, so I will be adding my own introduction video shortly. Creating that video will be the subject of upcoming Sell to Camera posts, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, do you already have a welcome video on your site? If so, please share the URL in the comments. If not, is this something that you are planning to do? Whether yes or no, we look forward to hearing from you here on Sell to Camera.

Image: Apple’s much commented “Get a Mac” ad campaign ran from 2006 to 2010 and featured John Hodgman as PC and Justin Long as Mac. The campaign seemed to imply you needed a Mac for creative work like creating videos.

There are some excellent tools for Windows that are easily capable of creating the professional quality videos we need for our business.

Sell to Camera is here to give practical tips to business professionals learning to present on video. The majority of business organizations around the world are using Windows (sorry Apple fans!). So…

I hereby declare that Sell to Camera will focus on the Microsoft Windows platform. My platform position is open and clear from the very start.

As I write this post I have Windows XP SP3 on my main desktop machine, with Windows Vista on my notebook. While it might be nice to switch from Windows to Mac at some point, that is a project for the future and outside the scope of the Sell to Camera blog.

While Sell to Camera will focus on tools running on Windows, I will link to some Mac-related blogs and websites on occasion. What I am not going to do, however, is repeat everything for both Windows and Mac.

OK?

Image: The visual aids and technology for giving presentations have changed a lot over the years. The basic presentation skills remain the same, however, and these transfer well to video.

I gave my first presentation aged 13; the subject was my favourite record, and the audience was my school class.

Today, 35+ years later, I can still recall my choice was Elton John’s Indian Sunset from his Madman Across the Water album released in 1971. A track that turned up again in 2005 as a sample in the Eminem-produced Tupac Shakur song “Ghetto Gospel”.

Since that first event at school, I have given hundreds of business presentations in many situations, from small one-on-one sales meetings, to large trade conferences and company-wide meetings.

One particular event that remains seared in my mind is a vendor presentation I gave at an IBM partner conference held in Las Vegas. About 500 people were expected to attend; the audience that actually turned up was a grant total of 1 (and he was only there because we used to work together and he came along to say hello — Hi Helmut if you are reading this!)

From transparencies to PowerPoint

The way we give presentations has changed a lot over the years, starting with OHP transparencies drawn by hand (remember the special pens we used to have for this?) and then taped into protective flip frames. We even had special cases to transport these slides. It was a nightmare travelling internationally with these types of presentations.

My first PC-based presentations were created under MS-DOS using Lotus Freelance Graphics. We printed the presentations (in black and white) on OHP transparencies. For special occasions we connected a few monitors together using (expensive) VGA splitter cables.

The next generation of technology was Harvard Presentation Graphics, again running under MS-DOS. There was a lot of buzz in the presentation world in 1986 with the release of Harvard Graphics. It seems odd to say it now, but this was the first presentation program that supported editing text, graphs and charts from within the same program.

Moving to Windows around 1990, I finally came into contact with Microsoft PowerPoint. Again, originally printing in black and white (for really special occasions in colour) to transparencies. Since the late 1980s it has been pretty much PowerPoint all the way (at least for Windows users like me).

More recently, SaaS web-based presentation tools such as SlideRocket are positioned as the next great leap forward. The metrics feature alone of SlideRocket is something we could only dream of in the past. We would create slide decks with hundreds of slides for our sales teams to use; however, we never really had any idea who was using what slides. Or, of course, whether anyone was even looking at the presentations at all.

From transparencies to projectors

In the early 1990s LCD panels entered the market that could be laid on an OHP projector. Initially these only showed gray scales, but colour models followed fairly quickly. I remember that these panels were very fragile and always needed careful handling.

The cost of these early LCD panels was horrendous, but the increase in flexibility was tremendous compared to transparencies. We bought lots of these panels and used them widely for sales presentation, customer training and internal meetings.

From there, of course, we have moved through the various generations of beamers and projectors. From the massive BARCO projectors mounted to the ceiling in conference rooms, to the (barely) transportable projectors of the mid 1990s to the fantastic mini and amazing micro projectors available today.

Presentation design becoming mainstream

Unfortunately, the standard practice in many businesses (and I plead guilty to having done this myself) has been to create “Slideuments“. These are presentations with lots of bullets and text which the presenter then reads to the audience. Come on, admit it, you know what I am talking about …

Luckily, in the past few years there have been some real advances within the business community about designing good presentations. At this point I would like to highlight the great work done on improving presentation design by Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen and Cliff Atkinson from Beyond Bullet Points.

If you are not familiar with their work then I recommend you take a look. Your presentations will certainly get better, and your audience will thank you for it.

The disappearing audience

What these technologies have in common is that they are there to support the presenter in front of a live audience. Today’s business world, however, is very different; instead of presenting in a formal setting to a live audience, we increasingly have to present remotely.

The first step in this direction was online screen sharing products, which then led to online webinar solutions. In almost all cases, however, the presentation environment is limited to prepared slides being shown while listing to the presenter. PowerPoint by radio, you might say.

Funny videos and Lolcats

More recently we have seen the move to web video, with YouTube and other free hosting services making it ever easier to distribute videos. Millions of people are now doing so, with 20+ hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube alone.

I have often heard business people who do not use YouTube (or similar video sharing sites) claim that all these sites contain are “funny videos” or Lolcats (although they would not know what Lolcats are, of course). This assumption naturally influences their thinking about how video can, and is, be used in a business setting.

The truth about YouTube is very different; there are videos for almost anything you can think of. Getting back to where we started, why not lean back for 7:02 and watch Elton John performing Indian Sunset live in 1971.

What does this all mean for business?

In my next post on Sell to Camera I will look at the important first step with video you should take to improve the first impression your website makes on first-time visitors. In the meantime, please join the conversation in the comments and share some of your own presentation experience. I am sure you have some remarkable (good or bad) presentations stories you have just been waiting to share…

Image: Presenting in front of a group of people is very different to speaking into the unblinking eye of a camera. Like most things, however, it’s a skill than can be learned and improves with practice.

The Sell to Camera blog is about helping business professionals with presentation experience make the move to web video, addressing the concerns many feel when first asked to speak directly into a video camera’s unblinking eye.