A Very British Image Collection

Last week the British Museum added about 1.9 million images (give or take a few thousand I guess) for public use under the Creative Commons Copyright.

What that means in real language is that you and I are free to download any of those images and use them however we want… woohoo!

The link below (and a couple of others) will take you to the Search page of that database.

Bear in mind that there are a lot of images there so get your ninja search skills ready.

When you add that to the Smithsonian collection and the New York Public Library collections that were released last year it all makes for a pretty hefty library of free images to use in any of your projects.

• British Museum Here
• Smithsonian Collection Here
• New York Public Library Here

Handheld vs Gimbal (Put the Gimbal Down)

Having followed John Luna’s journey for over a year now I was a little surprised to see the title of this video.

Some of the best “How to use a gimbal” tutorials I have added to this website have come from John.

And now he is telling us to put down that gimbal… this is treachery!

Actually that’s probably a little dramatic.

Just watch the video and I think you will find he has a point!

How to Talk to Camera

If you ever come to this website or are reading through the Friday Roundup and find an article (or worse yet) a video by me explaining how to talk to the camera… run away immediately.

I am NOT the person you should be learning that from.

Strange really because I can stand in front of (and have) a thousand or so people live and deliver a perfectly coherent lecture on a range of subjects yet you put a camera in front of me and I become a gibbering idiot.

If you want or need to get better in front of the camera watch the video below, she’s much better at it!

Starting Organized, Part 1 – HD Video Pro

One of the points I keep making over and over in my weekly posts when it comes up is the need to get organized when editing.

I may not actually be the greatest editor of all time (far from it!) but I do count among my friends many who are excellent pro editors.

They all have one thing in common when they start a new project of any kind.

They take the rough draft of that project whether it is a script, a story board or just some notes scribbled on a piece of paper and with that nearby, they begin the process of organizing their video, audio and image assets.

They all have different ways of doing it when it comes to folder structures within their editing software libraries but they all do it.

On really big projects some of them will spend an entire day or even more on this step because they know if they don’t do that first, things will go to hell in a basket really fast after that!

As I say, there are many way to create that organizational structure so whenever i see another article on yet another way to get organized I always add it to the blog.

• Getting Organized

Do Travel Videos Have to Tell a Story?

I watched the video below this week and whilst I think Aidin has a point here I also think he has tried to narrow the concept of “story” into a far too traditional sense.

I guess as a film maker he tends to think of “story” as a linear progression of events that contain certain key elements that fit our concept of story.

On the other hand I think you would be pretty hard pressed to find a decent, watchable video that actually has NO story at all.

Even if in the case of a travel video the entire story consists of “we went to this place, saw these things and did these things!”

I don’t know… check the video, what do you think?

Glitch Effects

Well it’s all a bit glitchy this week!

Both Daniel Batal and Maliek from CyberLink University have put up videos on achieving the glitch effect in their respective software of choice.

Daniel in Filmora and Maliek in CyberLink PowerDirector.

Both good software choices, both good guys to learn from… take your pick!

How To Make An Amazing TV Glitch Effect – CyberLink PowerDirector 18

How to Optimize your Videos on Youtube to Get More Views

Over the years the way you needed to optimize your video for Youtube has changed quite a bit.

Originally YouTube optimization closely followed the model of optimizing websites for Google search.

Part of that was because YouTube is owned by Google so I guess they figured Search Equals Search equals search!

As time has passed a gap began to appear between what was successful in Google search and what was successful in YouTube.

That’s because the boffins at YouTube and Google knew that people on those different platforms were there for different reasons.

These days optimizing your videos for maximum effect on YouTube is a whole knew world and is very, very human based.

For a complete and current rundown on the most effective ways to go about this task check the video below and then the one underneath it.

The second video covers the subject of thumbnails alone because it is such an important part of ensuring that your videos will get the maximum number of views.

The Best YouTube Thumbnails That Will Get You More Views

Zach King Magic Trick Tutorial – Filmora9

Back by popular demand this week Daniel demonstrates another Zach King “magic” effect in Filmora9.

As usual the key is the shooting, not so much the editing but when you look behind the curtain, some of these techniques are really simple!

Complete Resolve Tutorial for Beginners

Last week I added an introduction to DaVinci Resolve video that I really didn’t like all that much because it went into a lot of unnecessary complexities.

You know that sort of tutorial.

The guy tells you about a particular feature in the software then tells you that you won’t be needing it quite yet.

He then proceeds into that thing you apparently don’t need yet and explains it on and on, then finishes by telling you again… you probably don’t need it yet!

As luck would have it the guys from Primal Video came out with their own intro video this week and it is much easier to follow.

9 Creative CAMERA TRICKS (Insta 360)

As the title would suggest the following video is a not so shameless promotional piece for the Insta 360 action camera.

As long as you understand that then we are all good because along the way they demonstrate some great camera tricks for shooting unusual looking footage.

Obviously you don’t actually need an Insta 360 camera to do any of them although some of them are only suitable for something small like an action cam.

Simple Motion Graphics For Editors – DaVinci Resolve Tutorial

Another tutorial in DaVinci Resolve by Casey Faris this week covering the subject of Motion Graphics.

In the video Casey covers creating some simple graphics within the Resolve interface which actually look pretty good but then he switches it up goes full beast mode with some effective motion added using keyframes.

Original post The Friday Roundup – Free Images, Losing the Gimbal and More!