So you have decided to go through with shooting a video directly for the internet...

Don't worry your not alone.

As many others in your position have found, publishing a video straight to the web can be fun and invigorating. Unfortunately some negative side effects can occur when your beloved video goes under the knife, is reduced in size and compressed. Side effects include, blurry vision, impaired audio quality and reduction in viewable size of your once healthy video. Unfortunately there is no cure for post internet compression depression, but here are five tips to make your video look as pro as can be on the internet...

1Keep it short

The internet is a place of instant gratification, we shop using it to avoid going into town, we check for news and updates so we don't have to wait for the paper and we become irritated when something takes longer to load than expected. An internet viewer is in a mentality where they want information fast, therefore especially with clips like show reels it is important to be efficient, basically keep your video as short as possible and include only relevant information. There is quite a different mindset between a person sitting upright in daylight multitasking on a computer than a person relaxing on a couch in a dark room with popcorn.

2Shoot steady

When a video is compressed the majority of compression codecs move only what is necessary from frame to frame. This is why the majority of nasty compression artifacts occur during rapid image movement often caused by a hand held camera. By locking your camera down on a tripod not only will your footage look more professional and neat, it will also help with compression buy reducing unnecessary movement that needs to be calculated.

3Shoot big

Shooting big involves taking that arty close up shot you planned and making it an extreme close up. If you want a viewer to notice detail then make it super obvious when shooting for the web, don't be afraid to get close up and big with things that demand detail, like facial expressions. Use the small LCD screen that most camera's have to your advantage, its about the same size as the average web upload. So if you cant clearly see something on it, don't expect the web audience to either.

4 Speak up

Audio also suffers from compression, though not as much as video it can be noticeable as sounds muddle and become less defined. It is there for very important to review your sound mix and make sure that your music and sound effects don't overpower dialog. More importantly though, re capture audio if there is any doubt in clarity. With factors like compression and crummy laptop speakers that internet viewers might be listening with, it is important audio does not become an afterthought. The general rule is that some kind of external microphone will trump inbuilt camera mics any day.

5Boost your image

Compression yields dramatic savings in data size often at the expense of chroma saturation and luminosity contrast. In English, colors become muted and blacks turn into gray. Youtube in particular is notorious for ripping color and contrast from your film, but you can compensate to some degree. Before you export your video to the net, boost the contrast and color saturation of your video a couple notches to counteract compression. All editors these days have contrast and saturation settings, look under menus like “filters” or “effects”

Hope these tips help. I look forward to seeing all your finished work up on ReelClever.com soon.