• Adobe Premiere Pro

  YouTube videos look dull – any advice?

  Posted by Matthew Laurence on December 16, 2011 at 8:58 pm

  I have been working on a series of videos to YouTube, some in the field, some in a “studio” environment (more like a room with a backdrop), and for some reason they keep looking sort of dull, flat and even a little blurry, regardless of how the original seems to look. Here are a couple of examples:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soPyW2YwC1o
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcBZ3klZI9Q

  The footage has been shot reasonably well, plenty of light – so what can I do to bring out a little more vibrance in this footage? I could boost the saturation, but that’s kind of one-dimensional. Any other ideas? Ways I can shoot it up front that will improve this? Plus, those thumbnail frames look particularly bad… any advice there?

  Thanks!

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  Vince Becquiot replied 14 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Vince Becquiot

  December 17, 2011 at 5:30 pm

  Hi Matthew,

  On the softness issue, there are a couple of reasons I can think of. One would be that it was shot interlaced and you exported progressive, that would basically throw out half the resolution. The other is that it might have been shot in HD (you exported SD). For Youtube, I always try to export at the best quality possible (High bit rate H.264 at > 20 Mb/s.

  On the “flatness” of the footage, you shot flat, so you are very limited in post.

  My advice would be to actually light less next time. Let the shadows come in, maybe just light from one side at 45 deg and use a white board on the other side.

  The wall / black background are also very flat. On the wall, shoot further away and zoom in/open iris to throw the background out of focus.

  Light the background where the foreground / talent’s face is dark to bring dimension/separation.

  Here’s an example: https://efplighting.com/images/AAChiaroscuro-Classic.jpg

  Vince Becquiot

  Kaptis Studios
  San Francisco – Bay Area

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