If you are a working songwriter, video can be a great way to enhance your marketing and exposure.
This is part 1 of a tutorial on capturing, editing, and publishing video. I’ll be using Microsoft Movie Maker (a free video editor with Microsoft XP and Vista) and other tools to brand your performance videos for youtube and other video sharing services.
When we are done, we will have captured, editing, uploaded, and published a video on our blog site.FYI: If you do not have a blog site – get one. I use WordPress (tutorials coming) and rather than have a separate website and then blog, WordPress serves as a simple and search engine optimized content management system. Seriously, dump the static website, host with BlueHost or another hosting company that has the Simple Scripts auto-installer for wordpress. Use it as your website. More on this in a later tutorial.
Ultimately, we are looking to create a music style video with an intro plate and a text overlay with your song title and other pertinent information – similar to videos done by the major record labels. We don’t want an abrupt start or end – so we will fade into and out of our performance.
For a sample, check out my video of Morning Girl below.
Watch below or go directly to YouTube in a new window.
The first step in creating online videos of your performances, is to well… videotape them. I know, that sounds obvious but, if you are like me, you don’t have a crew, roadies, or technically adept groupies. My groupies are far less technical than I would have ever hoped – considering I write a career blog for IT professionals. 
Seriously, Doug Welch, who teaches a class on social media for writers makes the point that, if you wish to have a body of work available for social media, you need to start capturing your work. Video, audio, pictures – all of it adds up.
What about quality?
I had this discussion with Dave Bernstein prior to my last gig at Cave Creek Coffee Company. I was asking about the best way for me to capture my performance on video but use my higher-quality compressor microphones. He is a sound guy, so I was looking for advice on placement on the like. His advice, just capture the video. It isn’t like the quality is going to be that great unless you are capturing it through the sound board anyway.
He suggested that people are more interested in the fact that you have a “bootleg” style performance online. Also, I had been talking about broadcasting it live – again, his suggestion, capture it and offer it as a feed later – a taped, live feed. Okay, I get it. Just perform and capture it in some way, shape, or form.
I used a standard DV camera and simply set it up halfway back in the audience. I used a tripod to ensure it was a few feet over the head of any audience members. See the image below. I knew I would capture applause and any other ambient noise but that was fine. As it turns out, I did capture a drunk patron who nearly got in a fight with another audience member. The drunk patron was someone I know – a fan you would say. He was there to see me. As he was removed from the area, he kept shouting – referring to me, “He’s my friend!!! He’s played music at my house!!!” – you gotta love the support.
Pretty much the setup – except I have less hair…
Getting Your Video From Camera to Computer
The next step is to get your video from your camera to your computer. Hopefully, you used a DV video camera – one with a firewire hookup or at least USB hookup for your PC. Most cameras that have been sold in the past 5 years have a PC hookup. If not, and you only have RCA connectors, get a new camera. Any musician worth their weight should be able to bum a camera off someone – your probably bumming a place to live and rides everywhere – get a camera too.
Newer cameras make this even easier. They record directly to file on a hard-drive or flash memory on the camera itself. If so, you will only need to connect the camera to the PC and copy the file to your computer.
However, if you have a camera that records to tape – like I do – you will need to copy the video from the tape onto your PC. This is called “capturing” the video.
Your video camera may have come with some basic video capture and editing software. However, for our purposes, we will be using Microsoft Movie Maker. Why? Because it is easy to use and if you have XP or Vista, you own it. It’s Free!!! As a musician, free is good.
You know the real drag, with sports and entertainment, is that once you are at a place where you earn enough money to buy quality stuff, the manufacturers give it to you for the promotional value.
Until you are there, take advantage of low-cost and free.
Capturing The Video:
I’m not covering all of this in detail but I will make a few notes. First, there are numerous tutorials online for getting video onto your PC.
- Connect your video camera to your computer with a firewire or USB cable. You may have one that came with the camera or you may have to buy one at your local electronics store.
- Turn the camera on – in video player mode. Your PC should recognize it. If not, you may need to add a driver – in which case, you need to call upon a more technical friend. It’s relatively easy but beyond this tutorial.
- Start Microsoft Movie Maker. This should be found by clicking your XP Start button and selecting “All Programs”. However, it could be under, “Start->Accessories->Entertainment”
- From the “File” menu, select, Capture Video. This will bring up a window allowing you to select your video and audio source. You want your vide and audio to come from the camera. Once you’ve selected these options, select “Next”
- Enter a name for the captured video and select where you wish to save it. By default, Movie Maker will place the videos in your “My Videos” folder beneath “My Documents”. This seems to be an appropriate place for videos. Select “Next”
- Select the video quality. Again, by default, Movie Maker will select, “Best quality for playback on my computer”. That should be fine. If you are going to make a DVD of all your video, you can select a DVD quality in the “Other setting” drop down. But for this tutorial, the “best” quality should be fine. Select “Next”.
- This next window is where you actually capture your video. A few things to note here. First, if you are using a DV camera and a firewire, you can rewind and control your video camera from your PC. If not, you will need to rewind your video using the camera’s controls.
The option buttons available to you allow you to create clips, mute your speakers, and set a capture time limit. Let’s discuss the two that our really important to you.
Create clips – should be unchecked. We are going to work with clips later during editing. But we don’t want the capture process to create them for us. Clips are virtual breaks in our movie – placed where Movie Maker may have detected a sudden change in audio or video (lighting, scene changes, etc.). It will auto-create virtual segments for editing purposes. We are going to create our own virtual breaks.When I indicate virtual breaks, what I mean is that Movie Maker will capture our entire video as a single file. The clips are smaller segments you work with in Movie Maker – and they allow us to edit more easily. However, when you split a video into multiple segments or clips in Movie Maker, you are not altering the original file. This is referred to as “non-destructive” editing and is, by the way, a very good thing. Our original file is always available for us to come back to if we make a mistake creating our segments.
Capture time limit – in most cases, you want this unchecked. But, what if you have a 30 minute performance you wish to capture and an hour-long tape. You can set a time limit of 00:32 (00 hours and 32 minutes). Then, you won’t capture unwanted video. - Start your capture. Click the “Start Capture” button and press play on your video camera. If you have a DV camera connected via firewire, it will playing when you select “Start Capture”.
- Once you’ve captured the video you wish to edit, select “Stop Capture”. If you set a capture time limit or were capturing an entire tape, it will stop capturing for you when the time or tape is complete. Select “Finish”.Quick note/disclaimer: Depending on your PC’s processing speed, the more video you capture, the more chance that your PC will have a problem rendering the video. I’ve found that when I capture more than an hour of video, I sometimes get clipped video – places where the video and sound jumps. This is annoying. To solve this problem, I actually read about 3-5 songs in at any one time. I capture several videos of a single performance.
- Once processed, the captured video creates what is called a “Collection” in Movie Maker. A collection is a virtual folder for various media types – movie clips, images, and audio. In the case of a captured movie, the collection will have the same name as the captured file. In the collection, to start, will be a single file- your captured video.
Seriously, if you need more assistance than this – to capture your video, there are additional tutorials online. Or go to:
The Microsoft Movie Maker “How To Use” website.
or
If you have further questions, please leave your comments here.
Next: Creating your performance videos with some graphical flare!!!
Songwriter, author, and consultant. Writing about tools I use or I have watched others use successfully. 
