Creating A Web Marketing Video

The Video below, is a short tutorial on creating a Web Marketing Video using Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

Watched the second Video? Follow on with a short video conversion tutorial

and learn how the video was converted to flash and added to this site

The Video is created from a series of still images, in this example some golf course images from a Digital Camera. Using Sony Vegas is simplicity itself and creating the kind of video you would need for your web marketing efforts takes a minimal amount of time, even for a first time user.

Sony Vegas has an extensive library of video transitions to add movement to your still images. Transitions give some nice effects but always take care not to use too many different types, as a video with too many different transitions can look a bit amateurish. Adding voice overs can be done directly in Sony Vegas, or you can import an audio clip and drop it onto the time line, very much as shown in the Tutorial Video.

Important points to keep in mind when producing a marketing video:

1. Add a text overlay on the "bottom third" of your screen with the format www.YourDomain.com. This is an easy way to brand your video and make your domain or affiliate link more prominent in the video presentation.
2. Finish your video with a "Call to action" frame as shown in the video example above.
3. Once you've finished producing your video, save the whole thing as a "region". This makes sure you don't have any timing errors and ensures your videos finish were you want them to is you "Call to Action" frame. We can all be a bit sloppy at times and relying on precision for end frames can sometimes be a bit hit and miss, so using regions, makes sure your videos finish at the right point

Over and above that it's pretty much up to how creative you want to get. Sony Vegas is an extremely powerful piece of software, but at the same time, very simple to use and produces very effective results. Remember, you're not after a 4 hour Hollywood extravaganza. You need to get a message across about the key points of what you're offering or marketing.

Once you've produced your video, you can upload this to Video Sharing Sites, such as YouTube. Once uploaded, the Video Sharing Sites usually give you an option of copying some HTML code, which you can add to your web page to include your video in your site that way.

There is a drawback though, as the HTML code you copy, won't only include your video, but a selection of other related videos as well. Sometimes, not even so related, so your site could be about Child Care and you end up embedding a video about Children Rioting. Not the best way to go. All such videos would also have the site watermark, so can look a bit third-party.

A much better solution is to convert you video from it's original output format (avi, mpeg, wmv etc) into a flash video and add the HTML code directly to your website.

To do that you need Video Conversion Software. The process is quite easy, as can be seen in our Video Conversion tutorial.