Discover this fast way to do easy video creation

Unlike many bloggers I’ve only dabbled in vlogging.  I’m certainly not great at proper vlogging to camera because I have a tendency to waffle off on different topics even if I have an outline to talk about. Then I take lots of videos, but never get round to editing them. So they just sit on my laptop or hard-drive (or in the case of some, still on my GoPro)

But for many bloggers, vlogging is worth a foray into. Another string to their bow especially when trying to get traction on Facebook, or when working with brands. It’s good to be able to have another offer in brand packages, especially if your audience are mostly on Youtube. But it’s hard to make video creation slick.

*Contains affiliate links

So I do have a Youtube channel – although I’ve had to remove the majority of videos that had N in.  I was allowed to keep 1, my highest views – teach children to ride a bike if you’re interested.  And occasionally I get round to editing and uploading videos.  The views are terrible, but it is nice to be able to look back at videos for the memories, and to be able to add them to a blog post to bring it to life.

But, probably late to the party, I’ve discovered the quick and dirty way to make videos ready for YouTube in about quarter of the time it would making them from scratch.

And it’s all down to using my phone.

My old way of making videos:

Use my phone, camera and [amazon_textlink asin=’B074X5WPC5′ text=’GoPro’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’bubbaandme-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’892d3eaf-a648-11e8-870e-f9bbd984019e’]

Recordings of days out and activities.

Sometimes chat to video

Take a few photos to use as cut aways and intersperse with the videos

Upload to laptop and into editing software

Edit together shots

Add transitions and layers

Add music

Add branded outro

Export (and maybe compress or convert to other file type).

Even if I’m fast, it takes a while and a lot of huffing and puffing.

I’ll still use this way for bigger videos, but for shorter videos and to get something quickly up on my social media or Youtube, I’m using my phone, the easy way.

Using phone stories for easy video creation

Since getting my Samsung Galaxy S9 I’m in love with it. The camera isn’t always the easiest to use – the pro settings aren’t as straightforward as my old S6; it moves to different scene settings too easily without you realising you’re no longer on auto. But the fact it creates stories from my camera roll is amazing.

Yes, I’m easily pleased.

It does the hard stuff for me.  If I’m taking photos – I use my main camera, but also take similar photos for Instagram or twitter at the same time – and videos on my phone. So I have everything on the phone for it to make my story for me.

My new video making process

Take photos and videos

Samsung stories automatically generates a daily video in my gallery

Add or remove other photos/videos as required.

Change the cover photo and rename the video

Amend the music or animation theme if needed.

Save to my phone

This can be added to Youtube straight away, although I tend to upload to my laptop to back them up and add my outro although I could do this on my phone too if I had the outro on it.

To make it easier:

I’ve uploaded my usual music to my phone

I edit any photos or videos if needed on my laptop before adding them to the stories on my phone (I hate editing on my phone because I prefer a big screen)

I can still make cuts and final tweaks if I need to add other bits on my laptop, but as I’m just after quick snapshot videos I’m happy to let the phone do it.

I’ve even used it for videos from ages ago – it just needs a quick transfer of old photos and videos to my phone.

The downsides:

You can’t amend the size so if you want a square story you’d (I presume) need to have your videos and photos shot like that, or resize it later which might be harder to do.

The editing options are limited – you’d need to edit photoes and videos before having them in the stories. But if you photograph and video on auto with a good phone camera, it’s generally going to come out ok.

You probably wouldn’t want to use this for a long video or direct to camera vlog.

But this is definitely my go to for quick snapshots of days out and other videos.  It’s fun to see your video sitting there without any effort. And certainly cuts down my video editing time.

An alternative ‘slideshow’ creator is Lumen5 which looks for photos in blog posts and creates shows from them.  I’ve not really used it much, but it might be a good alternative.

I’ll still keep using Wondershare video editor if I want to create longer more complex videos, but phone stories are working for me at the moment.

Are you using any different methods for creating videos at the moment?

Why not take a look at these similar posts.