Before you publish your marketing videos on any platform, you need to make sure that they are fully prepared. The final preparation of the videos can make a big difference and could affect how they turn out after they’re published.
Overall there are four ways in particular that marketing videos should be prepared.
1. Use the Right Video Format
The videos that you publish need to be in the right format. If they aren’t, viewers may have difficulty watching them.
One of the easiest ways to make sure your marketing videos are using the right format is to base that decision on how they are to be published:
- For online video platforms and social media, you should check the recommended upload settings for that specific platform and follow them. For example, YouTube’s recommended upload settings specify a preference for MP4 with H.264 format.
- For self-hosted HTML5 videos, you should balance compatibility against bandwidth-consumption. Typically, an MP4 with H.264 fallback is necessary for compatibility, but you may require versions in other formats (such as WebM) to optimize bandwidth.
If you are publishing marketing videos through other means, compatibility will normally be your priority as you will want to ensure that your videos can be viewed. As thing stand MP4 with H.264 is a safe option in that regard.
The one exception is if you’re publishing the marketing video on a DVD, in which case you’ll want to use MPEG-2.
2. Decide on the Aspect Ratio
Most marketing videos tend to be recorded in the 16:9 aspect ratio that is used for widescreen HD. However, in some cases, you may want to prepare them in a different aspect ratio before publishing them.
The most common case where you may choose to do this is when you upload videos to social media. The square (1:1) aspect ratio has become increasingly popular on social media as it is a compromise that can be viewed well on both desktop and mobile devices.
Experiments have shown that square videos perform better overall on social media.
If you do want to change the aspect ratio, the best method is to crop the video. At times that may not suffice, in which case you should crop it as close to the desired aspect ratio as possible and then resize it the rest of the way.
While technically you could just resize the video to the new aspect ratio, that would make it look stretched and distorted. By cropping it as part of your preparation – you can avoid that.
3. Prepare Versions in Different Resolutions
Another key way in which you may need to prepare your marketing videos is to create versions in different resolutions.
Some platforms will do this automatically. For example, if you upload a 1080p video to YouTube it will create versions in 720p, 480p, and so on.
However, some platforms will not, and if you are publishing self-hosted HTML5 videos you’ll definitely have to handle it yourself.
The reason why this is important is to optimize bandwidth-consumption. By creating versions of your marketing video in lower resolutions it will have a smaller file size and viewers who have less bandwidth will have an easier time watching it.
4. Check the Video – Thoroughly
Before you upload and publish any video, you should check it thoroughly. In other words, you need to sit down and watch the marketing video from start to finish, while paying close attention to it.
Some of the things that you will want to look out for are:
- Flash frames when a video is accidentally cut at the wrong point.
- Incomplete transitions that are too short or too long and look jarring.
- Audio synchronization issues where the video and audio don’t line up.
- Compression artifacts that are normally due to the bitrate being too low.
Catching these issues while you’re preparing your video is important – as you’ll still have time to fix them. Once the video has been published, there isn’t much you can do about it unless you want to pull it down and re-publish it – which is not ideal.
Final Words
To prepare your marketing video in the ways described above you’ll need a video converter. While there are many options out there, I recommend this one due to how convenient it is.
However, if you do find issues while you prepare the video, you may need to actually edit it more extensively in order to fix them.
As you can see, this preparation will help in numerous ways, and it will definitely have an impact on your marketing videos. Ideally, it should be part and parcel of your workflow prior to publishing any video – so that you can run through and make sure it is fully prepared before you pull the trigger.
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