YouTube How 2 Kevin Dando [e-mail]

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YouTube How 2Kevin Dandokdando_at_pbs.org
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What Well Cover Uploading Descriptions and
Tags Making Your Videos Findable Specs
(briefly) Misc. recommendations

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Uploading alternativesYouTube (directly) or
TubeMogul

• PBS uses a service called TubeMogul to upload
  clips to a variety of video aggregation sites
  (including YouTube). We highly recommend it.
• It also provides great metrics/measurement data.
• www.tubemogul.com

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Ive uploaded my clip now what?

• In preparation for this session, I asked PBS
  YouTube liaison for specific recommendations
  about the best ways to make videos more findable.
• Heres what he said.

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YouTube Recommendations from YouTube itself

• Title/description/tags should be strategic to
  rank high in search results or come up in Related
  Videos.  Furthermore, titles and thumbnails
  should be compelling call-to-actions.  Rather
  than take up room with long program titles,
  dates, etc. better to put that into the
  description and use the Title area for something
  intriguing.

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YouTube Recommendations from YouTube itself

• Views and ratings are also important.  The
  higher the views the better chance the video will
  make it into the Most Viewed pages which only
  increases discoverability.  Similarly, high
  ratings make a video appear in the Highest
  Ratings pages.  Both high views and ratings also
  signal to users that the video is interesting to
  others, there's buzz, and therefore should be
  checked out relative to less-viewed, lower-rated
  videos on the same subject.

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YouTube Recommendations from YouTube itself

• To highlight two other key ways to build
  audience1) Upload content regularly,
  frequently, and consistently2) Engage the
  YouTube community directly by calling out to
  them, asking them to participate (including
  asking them to subscribe!), and generally using
  the platform for 2-way conversation rather than
  1-way.

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Be Strategic with Descriptions and Tags

• Only the first 27 characters of the description
  are initially visible.
• Therefore, its HIGHLY recommended that you put
  your URL up front in the description, where it
  will be seen.
• The description is the ONLY place where links are
  clickable. URLs are not allowed in comments
  not even by the video provider.
• Tags what words will get people to your video?
  Be strategic (but dont include misleading tags.)
• A new functionality allows multi-word tags, if
  quotation marks are put around them. Example
  Antiques Roadshow instead of Antiques
  Roadshow.

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YouTube Insight

• A fantastic and free tool. You should make
  time to look at the results your YouTube clips
  are receiving and how users are arriving at your
  clips.
• See example

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Specs (from YouTube) now with HD

• Originals Please!The less a video is re-encoded
  prior to uploading, the better the resulting
  YouTube video quality. We encourage you to upload
  your videos as close to the original source
  format as possible, with a minimum of
  intermediate re-encoding steps. Each re-encoding
  can generally degrade the quality of your video
  and create some specific problems too, which
  we'll address below.Aspect RatioThe aspect
  ratio of the original source video should always
  be maintained when it's uploaded Uploaded videos
  should never include letterboxing or pillarboxing
  bars. The YouTube player automatically adds black
  bars so that videos are displayed correctly
  without cropping or stretching, whatever the size
  of the video or the player. ResolutionHigh-def
  inition videos are the preferred format for
  ingestion which result YouTube videos of the
  highest quality currently available.

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Specs

• VideoResolution
• Recommended 1280 x 720 (16x9 HD) and 640 x 480
  (43 SD)There is no required minimum resolution
  - in general the higher resolution the better and
  HD resolution is preferred. For older content,
  lower resolution is unavoidable.Bit rateBecause
  bit-rate is highly dependent on codec there is no
  recommended or minimum value. Videos should be
  optimized for resolution, aspect ratio and frame
  rate rather than bit rate.Frame rateThe frame
  rate of the original video should be maintained
  without re-sampling. In particular pulldown and
  other frame rate re-sampling techniques are
  strongly discouraged.Codec H.264, MPEG-2 or
  MPEG-4 preferred.AudioCodecMP3Sampling rate
  44.1kHzChannels2 (stereo)ContainerMPEGTS (MPEG2
  transport stream)

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• Miscellaneous Additional Recommendations
• Long form clips do work
• Remember to brand your clips. (This ones
  critical.)
• Leverage the power of UGC Video Your Vote, for
  example
• Seek partners we all have different things to
  bring to the table, its often easier to
  partner/collaborate

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• Miscellaneous Additional Recommendations
• Remember to program your page. Rotate new
  features in often.
• Turn on comment moderation / video reply
  moderation
• Remember to brand your clips. (This ones so
  critical, its included here twice.)
• Be strategic with thumbnails.
• Create playlists. (example DTV)

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• And, finally, remember
• 13 seconds is length of time YouTube viewers use
  to decide whether to continue watching. (Source
  Waggener Edstrom)
• Make those initial seconds count.

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For more information, or a copy of this
presentation, please contact Kevin Dando, PBS
kdando_at_pbs.org

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