Are you fond of taking videos and have a WordPress blog? It will be cool if you start sharing your videos with people. Video content attracts visitors, makes your blog more interesting and helps grow your business online. Of course, if the video is well-made. To make a great video, you need to know only a couple of things.

1. Relax and have fun

Relax and stop pulling out your smartphone every two minutes. Wherever you are, at a wedding, traveling or high in the mountains, it’s better to have 5-6 cool photos and videos than 200 incomprehensible files that you never use. Spend more time on the event itself, enjoy the ride and do not twitch. Imagine that you are a photographer, and approach to video shooting thoughtfully.

2. Think better

Now that you have calmed down, it’s time to do one significant thing – think of what you are shooting. When you know exactly what you are shooting, it becomes much easier. For example, you have come to a new city and want to convey its mood, architecture, people and some beautiful and special places in your film. You can make a small 5-minute film with beautiful music in the background. Your task is to become not only an operator but also a director and screenwriter. Come up with a basic idea, style of presentation and some chips. Understanding what you want to shoot, you will make more informed frames.

3. Do not move!

It is better to take 5-6 short static clips from different angles than one long one with constant camera movement. During editing, you will have more choice to create the right story, which will make the film more interesting. Keep the “camera” in one direction and leave motionless for 10-20 seconds. But if you need to show the camera movement, move the camera very smoothly, and it is better to hold the smartphone on a selfie stick or a compact and flexible tripod.

4. Equipment

The fact is that the hands transmit the shaking to the smartphone. As a result, this “shake” appears on the video. Built-in stabilizers can cope with it, but jelly-like pictures often accompany the result. Therefore, it is better if the smartphone is not in the hands, but is fixed, for example, on a selfie stick or a portable tripod. This is the only device that you really need. The tripod mode is also useful for time-lapses.

5. Time-lapse and slow-mo

Most smartphones can perform these two techniques. Time-lapse is perfect for shooting sunsets or sunrises. For time-lapse it is best to use a tripod, but we already mentioned this above. With a slow little bit harder. Slow frames will help make the picture more expressive, convey certain emotions to the viewer and highlight the mood. Slow-mo allows you to focus on the movement or object. Use these two techniques to make your movie more interesting. If your smartphone does not support slow-mo, then maybe it can shoot video at 60 frames per second. Such video can be slowed down twice during editing.

6. Don’t forget the light

Light is very important. If you want to get spectacular shots with beautiful light, then try to shoot in the morning and the evening, in the so-called regime time. But remember that there must be some logic in your movie. Therefore, think over the morning, evening and afternoon shots in advance. If you shoot the day when the sun is at its zenith, you need to be careful. There will be sharp shadows on the faces, all skin defects will be visible, and you will have either overexposure in the sky or very dark objects in the shadow.

7. Close-up plans

Use close-ups. They will very well dilute the common plans, which you are most likely to have a lot. Also, close-ups perfectly convey volume. You shoot people, if they allow it, flowers, trees, parts of buildings, monuments. An excellent way for emphasizing the depth and volume is to shoot small part of the frame at a very close distance, and at the same time, leave the main subject, person or space much further. Thus, you can easily achieve the effect of depth.

8. The golden ratio

Keep the main subjects in the golden ratio. The main point is that the object is not in the center, but at the intersection of imaginary lines – at the so-called points of force. Many smartphones can turn on the grid, which consists of two vertical and two horizontal lines. Objects located at points of force are more visible, they attract the eye and exude energy. If there is only one object in your composition, it is best to place it on the left side. This is due to the habit of a person to inspect objects, as well as read from left to right. But if there are several objects in the frame at once, then the main one, the one that needs to be shown and emphasized, should be placed in the lower right part.

How to insert video in WordPress

Now when you know the basic rules of shooting a cool video, let’s see how you can upload it to your WordPress blog.

Any YouTube video can be inserted on the site, but it is desirable for a video to be “uploaded” to your channel. When you write the description to it, place a link to your blog or website.

So let’s go!

Choose a video that you want to show on your page and click the Share button under it. Then click the Embed option. The generated HTML-code will appear in the window. But do not rush to copy it.

Click on the button More. Here you can select the video size. It is necessary to be sure that the movie width won’t go beyond the content block. If there is no suitable size, choose Other size and set the width you need. And in height, it will decrease in proportion automatically. So you can insert a video even in the sidebar. Let’s say a block of popular videos.

You can also turn off the display of other videos after your video ends. Now you can copy the code with all the editing.

In the dashboard, open the article or page where you are going to embed the video. Be sure to go to the Text tab, and paste the code in the place where you want the video to be. To display the video in the center of the page, enclose the code in the center tag.

To insert a clip into the sidebar, first create a Text widget, and copy the code into it.

One more option to add a video to WordPress blog is to use various plugins. Here are two examples.

VideoPress from Automattic is a free plugin for premium video hosting from wordpress.com. It allows you to embed videos that are hosted on WordPress.com on your website also on WordPress.com or a separate hosting. Videos uploaded through VideoPress are stored on your WP account, and you can insert them into the posts using shortcodes.

The price of the plug-in (at the time of writing this review) is $ 59.97 per year, which is quite useful if you want to make a website with video content. The question is, why would you use VideoPress instead of YouTube? Here is a list of features that VideoPress offers:

Characteristics:

  • No ads in your video. Your video starts and ends without showing any similar videos, does not lead your users to any other sites.
  • You can upload HD videos up to 1 GB in size and with no length limit.
  • Supports HTML5.
  • It is possible to make available the download of your video in different formats and sizes.
  • Your videos are stored on WordPress.com; it makes backups of your site smaller and easier.

Video Player WordPress Plugin

This plugin allows you to embed a video player anywhere on your site with a playlist and various options. The plugin supports YouTube, FLV, RTMP video formats, also supports MP3 audio files.

You may have many different types of players on the page. The plugin has many options for customization; there is built-in support for Google Analytics. Video Player WordPress has a simple dashboard interface with a large set of options, most of them are very easy to understand. It generates a professional looking player with a beautiful playlist on the sidebar (or below), with easy navigation.

Characteristics:

  • Custom themes, you can add your banner in the player for branding.
  • Support live streaming.
  • Can play YouTube, FLV and FMS, RED5.
  • Join your videos into playlists.
  • Replace YouTube controls with your buttons.
  • You can also add a watermark over the video. This watermark will not replace the YouTube watermark in YouTube videos but will make your videos look more branded.
  • Visitors of your site can choose whether to show or to hide playlists and categories.
  • You can choose the width, color, order of your playlists.
  • Simple shortcodes for quick integration of the player in posts, pages, and topics.
  • Using shortcodes, you can specify which category to include and which video to play when downloading.

And finally the last but not the least option is to use free software from Freemake. With the help of it, you can prepare your movie for your blog and get a ready-to-paste code with a player for your webpage. The software will convert your video into three main HTML5 formats: WebM, OGG, and MP4. Thus any visitor of your site will be able to watch the video. It doesn’t matter what web-browser or device they will use. To use Freemake software, install it from the official website. Then add your videos into the program. If you need to cut, rotate or join your video clips before uploading, Freemake Video Converter is suitable software for this task. Now choose “to HTML5” option. Set a destination folder and click “Convert.” At the end of the process, you will get a code that you will need to copy and paste on your webpage, and your video in three formats. Upload videos to your hosting and you are done.