Equipment I Use for Creating My Online Training and Marketing Videos

Equipment I Use for Creating My Online Training and Marketing Videos

I had an excellent question come in today on what were the tools and products that I use for creating my training and marketing videos. I have made a lot of videos over the years and have tried to keep my equipment to a minimum and as affordable as possible. Ok here we go.

Computer: I use an iMac, 27" Apple computer. I love the big screen, but you can easily do this with any Apple laptop or smaller iMacs. The Mac computers just work great. If you were upgrading just get a computer with a lot of storage. Video takes up a lot of space. I think I have a terabyte of memory.
Apple.com

Camera: Most of my videos are shot with the iSight Camera that comes with my computer. It works just fine for creating most of my videos. I will occasionally use a Logitech C920 camera. They are excellent. They also have a mic in them but I tend to use the Blue Yeti instead.
Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 Camera. USB plug in, $49-$100

Use the camera in your pocket. Your iPhone or Android phone works just great. The camera and the mic are more than fine. I recommend getting a little tripod to hold the camera and keep it steady. Find a quiet spot, record your video and move it over to your computer for editing.
Tripod, I have one of these Paladinz Phone tripods. It is lightweight, holds your phone, expands to 42". Pick it up at Amazon for about $15.00


Microphone: My go to mic is a Blue Yeti. It is a pretty standard USB microphone. It plugs right into the computer. I also use the mic that comes with the iMac, it is also excellent. The Blue Yeti gives a little deeper, richer sound.
Blue Yeti USB Microphone, $119


Lighting. I use a simple clamp on painters light with an LED bulb from Home Depot or Amazon. Super cheap and easy. Clamp it to a shelf, bounce the light off the wall and you are ready to go. There are lots of great lighting kits that are also very cheap. There is the Cowboy Lighting and Video Studio for under $80. Just swap out the bulbs and replace with LED lights. Keeps the temperatures a lot cooler.
Cowboy Lighting Kits keep your lighting simple.

Screenflow for video editing

Editing Software: Hands down the best video recording and editing program is Screenflow on a Mac. It only comes on a Mac. What is great about it. Super easy to use for recording and exporting the final mp4 files. None of the complicated stuff of Adobe Premier. It is a linear editing application, affordable and has plenty of features. It also records two tracks of video, that is why you can see my face on the screen. Everything can move around, easy to change. Easy to add additional images and more video. On the PC people use Camtasia, it is fine and will a good job. But if you are making a bunch of training videos then Screenflow is the best. Worth buying an iMac just to use this program.
ScreenFlow is available from Telestream, Mac only, $129
Camtasia, available from TechSmith, $249, PC or Mac


Video Hosting: I use Vimeo.com to host video if it is not hosted in my course site. You can also use YouTube and it works great. Why Vimeo? Because I have control over it. A year ago I got suspended from YouTube for some mystery community violation. What I have figured out is that is was for putting web links in my training videos. I like to give people the resources for what I teach. But that seems to be against YouTube these days. In fact you won't see any web links at all in any video from YouTubers these days. Ok to put them in the description area, but not on the video. I still use YouTube, but not so much anymore. I host everything on Vimeo where I pay to have control. Vimeo is not a place to host videos if you want people to find you through video, that is YouTube. Vimeo is a hosting site for video, I will host here and then use the embed code to put them on my blogs. They are excellent at hosting.
Vimeo.com $240/year
YouTube.com free


Video Conference, Webinar, Training: I use Zoom.us for online video training with a group of people or for a 1 on 1 session. It is a fantastic program that just works. Has great screen share and chat if you are doing training or a group video hosting. If you buy the bigger package you can also stream through Facebook live. Another cool thing about Zoom is that it records both a video recording and an audio recording. A lot of people use it for recording podcasts with a video backup.

For Facebook Lives I use Belive.TV. It is a great little product for broadcasting through Facebook. Facebook Live is pretty good but with Belive.TV you can screen share for training. You can do interviews. It has lower thirds and the ability to add graphics to your screen. You can so solo interviews, interviews or talk shows-which is really screen share. You can download the video for hosting somewhere else.
Zoom.us,  $14.99/month
Belive.tv $20/month


Training and Course Hosting: I use Teachable.com. It works pretty well. I understand it now. You can host as many courses as you want there. I have the middle package. If I want to do something quick with just a couple of videos or pdfs, I will also use Gumroad.com. It is a great little site for selling products and videos on line.
Teachable.com $38/month
Gumroad.com free or $10/month

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