I hit 10K subscribers on YouTube!
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Watch my other parodies!»How to optimize YouTube videos for mobile viewing
written by JoshRimer.com on January 27th, 2012
YouTube recently announced that its platform is serving over 200 million views from smart phones and internet-capable mobile devices daily. As I wrote about last year, there’s only one direction for mobile video viewing to go from here…. and that’s up! Having said that, content creators should consider optimizing their YouTube videos for the small, smart phone screen since the viewing experience is a bit different than on a regular computer.
Optimizing videos for smart phone viewing isn’t rocket science, but there are some key things you should keep in mind to make the experience as good as possible for the mobile viewer:
1. Make sure your text is large enough to be read. Remember that your mobile audiences are usually viewing your videos in a 2.7 to 3-inch screen so don’t make it too hard for them to reading the text in your videos.
2. Use good audio recording equipment for your video. Not all smart phones have quality speakers so make sure you’re giving your audience the best audio experience they can get by recording in high-quality audio, which usually means having an external shotgun or lavalier mic.
3. Put links to older videos or related content in the description box to help ease the browsing experience of your viewers. Most won’t be able to view annotations at this point on their phones, but they often will be able to click on links in the description.
4. Zoom in on the products you’re using in your video, especially when you’re doing a tutorial. A smaller screen requires more zooming in to see the details.
It can be a good idea to double-check your videos for possible glare issues or pixeled images by viewing your videos on a smart phone yourself. And as always, to get most out of your videos you should include a call to action at the end by encouraging your audience to like, comment, and/or share the video with their friends – all of which can easily be done on their phones.
Facebook Comments:
i have nokia phone, and when i’m watching youtube in my phone it really bad..
This is a very important lesson for all video uploaders. With so many people using smart phones and tablets to surf the web and watch videos, it’s important to make sure your video is mobile friendly. I think the best advice is what you said at the end, double check your video on your own mobile device, just to make sure it looks how you want it to.
I can’t agree more on the importance of zooming in. Even on a regular computer monitor, it’s hard to see the details of some YouTube tutorials. On a smartphone, small objects may well become nearly invisible, unless some special considerations are given, as you rightly suggested. Thanks for the great tips!
I’ve only just started using tutorials on Youtube and such whilst building my pet project site – bikiniwaxvideo.org – which is something I’ve been working on for a while. I agree with the comment above where a ZOOM option should be absolutely essential on all youtube videos for cell phones. I struggle when ‘on the go’ to watch these videos and such changes would be more than welcome.
Great blog by the way, Josh! I’m learning a lot just from browsing your pages also!
Anita. x
yes i agree with you because i have iphone and when i watch video i close those vedio which are have bad quality or some other porblem.So all video uploader should upload a very fine high quality video so that a user like me able to watch that video very clearly