What do I use to make my videos ?
1,102A little behind the scenes on how I create my videos exclusively on Linux, using open source software, and Linux compatible hardware. Here is a quick tour of that process !
Writing
Since I'm not a native english speaker, I tend to write the whole script in advance. When I have an idea, I try to structure everything in Asana, a nice project management tool, which I use to track the progress of each video.
Recording the audio
Once I'm satisfied with what is on the page, I whip out my microphone, a Blue Yeti that works perfectly with Linux, and I open Sound Recorder, the most simple sound recording app I have found. It lets me record, rename, and delete recordings, that's all I need. I record each main point of the video in a separate file. If I stumble or mispronounce, I keep re-record the particular sentence, and fix it while editing the video. At this stage, I sometimes make adjustments to the written script, to make sure everything is comprehensible.
Recording the video
Once I have the audio, and my script is final, I use OBS to record the video sequences. I keep Asana and OBS on a second screen, and record each video sequence one by one, trying to follow the script as closely as possible. OBS is perfect for this kind of recording, I set it up at 1080p, 60fps, with NVENC to lower the CPU usage.
Setting up the projet
We then move on to Kdenlive: this is a powerful editor that has a lot of nice features, transitions, and effects. It tends to crash at times, so I always save my work after a few edits. I create a project and select the presets, 1080p60 most of the time, and save it in a specific folder for each project. Inside this folder, I create a "sources" folder, where I dump all the audio and video.
Lining up the audio
I don't do much audio editing: just some gain boost to make sure everything I say is audible, and cutting the parts where I stumbled or the bad takes. I order each audio clip in the timeline, and listen to the whole thing two or three times, and I re-record some stuff if I'm not satisfied with what I hear.
Adding the video
I then proceed to drag the video clips in the timeline, by chronological order: I trim and edit each clip to fit the required length and the things I'm saying, adding transitions to smooth out the edges. I try to use one major visible transition between each major bullet point of the video, and a smaller, less intrusive transition, such as a dissolve, for transitions between sequences of the same bullet point. During all this process, I also add effects, such as blur, or zoom effects, or even speeding up the video.
Music
Once everything is done, I try to find a track to compliment the video. I only use copyright-free music I found on the internet on in the YouTube creator studio. I enjoy calm tunes, with a little bit of a beat that adds rythm.
Rendering
Once I'm satisfied, I export the whole project at maximum quality, in MP4 format. Kdenlive can take quite a long time to render a video, depending on the number of transitions or effects I added, ranging from 15 minutes for a 5 minute long video, to 45 minutes for a 10 to 15 minutes video.
Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
Also Watch my Experience with Manjaro Budgie on a Full AMD Linux Build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZdj4Q08fBg
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-