In this day and age, it is SO EASY to take videos of everything we do and see. And yet, what do we do with all these videos? Post them to social media to live for 5 minutes? A few years ago, I realized I wanted to do more with my videos than just let them accumulate on my phone or fill up my social media feed — I wanted to be more purposeful about my video preservation! Here’s what I’ve learned and how I handle videos now!
Origins
I’m not sure how exactly I got into making family home videos. Like I mentioned in my post about digital scrapbooking, I have been preserving photo memories for more than two decades, but videos are a fairly new form of memory preservation for me! My parents had a camcorder when I was growing up, so I always enjoyed watching my family’s home videos.
I think I started getting into videos around Ada’s first birthday (same time I got into digital scrapbooking!) because my iPhone told me it had made me a video of her birthday party. I made several iPhone videos over the next couple years, but I also started using iMovie (free on Mac computers) to make longer-form videos with clips from more than just one event (like to make a year-long video). In this last year I’ve moved completely away from iPhone videos because I just don’t have as much control over them as I’d like.
iPhone Videos
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about when I say “iPhone videos,” I first need to tell you about that! Because video-making my way is a time-consuming process that you have to be very committed to, but if you want to preserve a few photo memories in an easier, quicker way, iPhone videos are a great way to go!
In your iPhone, simply open your photos app, and click “for you” on the tool menu at the bottom of the screen. Under “memories,” you may find that your iPhone has already made you some videos, especially if you group your photos into albums regularly. Your iPhone will select some of the photos and videos from your album, and add music and a title automatically! If you like what it creates for you, you can call it good, but you also have the option to go in and edit which photos/videos are included, which parts of a video are included, what song is used, and what the title says. This is what I used to do for the smaller videos I make of big events like birthdays and vacations (but like I said, I now make those in iMovie instead — it’s just easier to control exactly what is included!).
What Videos I Make
I make 3 types of videos: 1. Important events, 2. Year-long kid videos, and 3. Year-long family videos.
Important Events
Important events are things like big holidays/seasons (typically I do Easter, Summer, Fall/Halloween, and Christmas), birthdays, and family trips. I make one little video that compiles all the video clips I took during that time, and I limit these videos to 2-5 minutes each (depending on the event and how much footage I have!).
Year-long Kid Videos
Kids grow up FAST and video preservation is one way I try to “bottle my kids up” at each age. I compile all my favorite clips I’ve taken of each child individually, and put it into one long video of that year of life. These videos are typically around 15 minutes total, and they end with the child’s birthday celebration video.
As my kids get older, their videos may get shorter or longer, and that’s totally fine. I’ll include stuff like recitals or athletic games, which may make videos longer, and I’ll probably take fewer and fewer “cute” or “funny” videos of the kids as they get older, which will make them shorter.
Year-long Family Videos
Though I make smaller videos of each event, what I really love is compiling all of those smaller videos together into one big video to give a picture of what the whole year was like for everyone. These videos generally work out to be about 30 minutes long. Making the smaller videos throughout the year makes it pretty easy to put these year-long videos together.
For now, I have a few clips of Ada and Holly together that make it into both Ada and Holly’s videos. If I find that as I have more kids and more of the videos are of all of them together, I may end up putting those clips into the family video instead of into each child’s individual video. Basically, it will probably depend on if the video clip is focused more on one kid than the others, or if it seems like a video of the whole family.
My System for Making Videos
Monthly Commitment
Just like with my photos, I go through and process videos monthly to keep the task from getting too big. Occasionally I won’t fully finish the processing portion (more on that in a minute), but I always go through at least the first few steps!
Processing Videos
First, I go through videos on my phone. I click photos>albums>videos so that I can ONLY see the videos. I start looking through all the videos from the last month, and delete any that I don’t actually need. Sometimes I do the “easy edits,” like where I was attempting to capture one small thing, but there’s a lot of time captured before and/or after the actual event, so I’ll quickly trim it down using the phone’s editing capabilities. If I know I want to grab screenshots from any videos, I do that now and deal with those later.
Next, I airdrop all videos to a folder on my computer. After I have them saved on my computer and I’ve verified I don’t need to grab any more screenshots, I delete them from my phone immediately.
I honestly take video footage way more often than photos these days, but if I happen to have a photo that I want to include in a video I’m making, I click the three dots at the top-right of the photo and “save as video.” This only works if it’s a live photo (which is a setting I always have turned on), and it turns a photo into a ~2-second video.
I put videos in organized folders on my computer, just like I do with photos. The folder breakdown is Documents>Pictures>Year>Months>Videos. So for each year, I have a year folder (“2022”); within the year folder, I have a folder for each month (“2022.1 January”); and within each month folder is a folder for videos from the month (“videos”). I always make sure to get to at least this point in my video process!
Next I move each video to a more specific folder within the videos folder. I usually have a folder for each kid, plus additional folders if there was a big event (vacation, birthday, holiday, etc.). I move Ada videos into the Ada folder, and Holly videos into the Holly folder, and if there are any videos that have both girls, I copy the videos and put them in both folders.
With vacations or special events, I’ll make an iMovie as soon as I have time. With my videos of the girls, I add videos into iMovie every few months (every month when I’m really on top of things).
Adding Videos to iMovie
iMovie is a free video editing app on most Mac computers. There was a learning curve in the beginning, and I’ve learned a few extra things along the way, but for the most part it’s not too difficult to use.
When I’m ready to make a video, I simply open iMovie, click on “create new” and select “movie” (not trailer). Once my document is open, I select all the videos from the designated folder, and drag them over into iMovie. Like I mentioned above, I do this every few months for each kid.
Editing Video Footage
Once all my footage is in place, it’s time to trim video clips! I used to do some trimming beforehand in QuickTime Player, but it’s so much easier to adjust clips in iMovie, so I cut out the QuickTime step. I can quickly trim time off the beginning or end, and I can also easily split video clips (command-B) if there’s downtime in the middle of two action-packed parts of a clip. Most clips end up around 3 seconds each (sometimes a little shorter; occasionally longer).
In addition to trimming clips, I also pay attention to the volume of the clips. Sometimes I need to increase a clip’s volume because a kid was talking quietly; other times I need to decrease a clip’s volume because a kid was screaming; occasionally, I need to break a clip into many segments because my voice (the one holding the phone) is quite loud in comparison to the child’s voice, so I can turn down my segments and turn up the child’s segments! Other times, I cut out sound completely because it’s unnecessary or distracting. You can make all these volume adjustments using the speaker icon in the top right tool bar on your iMovie screen.
If you’re including any photos or vertical videos, you can use the cropping icon to zoom the video in closer or focus on the desired part of the photo.
Adding Music to Videos
Next, I add music! I use a website called artlist.io, which requires a subscription. I know there are other subscription-based options (one is SoundStripe), and possibly free options, but I have no experience with those. If you own a song in iTunes, you can use those as well, but using a copyrighted song can affect your ability to share the video, depending on where you plan to share it (usually works fine for social media, but there are often a few limitations or areas where the song won’t play).
In Artlist, I set the search settings according to the length of song I need. Sometimes I need something really specific, like 2:20, so I search for music that is between 2:10&2:40 in length. Other times I’m looking to fill 9 consecutive minutes, so I might search for 2- to 4-minute songs. In Artlist, you can also select moods or themes for what you’re looking for. Sometimes these are helpful, sometimes they’re not 🙃 I just click through after I’ve made my search and I can quickly discern whether or not a song has the right “feel” that I’m going for. I almost always select instrumental songs.
Once I’ve selected a song, I click “download,” and the song shows up in iTunes. From iTunes, I drag and drop the song underneath my video clips. Most of the time, I need to turn the volume of the song down (using that same speaker icon, but making sure the sound bar is selected rather than any video clips!) to 10-20%.
Sometimes I include clips in my videos that have my kids singing or dancing to a specific song that I want to be able to hear in the video. In these cases, I turn off the music’s sound during that part. Sometimes I place these clips between songs so that there is no background music during the part of my kid singing, and other times, I gradually decrease the volume of the song leading up to the part where I want no song, and then gradually increase the volume of the song right after that.
Other Details
Once all that is mostly done, it’s time to finesse! This means double-checking volume of video clips and music, adding captions and titles where I want them, and tweaking some clips to align with the music better!
Captions & titles — I generally put a title at the beginning of videos, using the “titles” menu on the top-left tool bar. Sometimes I add it before my video clips (that makes it appear over a black screen), and other times I put it over top of the first video clip. Titles default to 4 seconds, but you can adjust them to last longer or shorter. I use the “Echo” title most often.
I use captions if there is something that needs extra explaining, or if a child talks. I may be able to understand what my 3yo is saying right now, but when she’s 6 and I look back, I may not understand her anymore! And even if I do, other people might not, so the captions are just helpful. I use a more subtle “title” option for captions (“reveal lower third,” in size 58).
Music adjustments — This part is not usually necessary, but it can make a video a lot more fun! It’s something I’ve done more of as I’ve made more videos. Basically, if there’s a hard hit in the song and I have some big thing happening in a video clip that is really close by (say, jumping into a pool), I’ll try to line them up so they happen at the same time. The music will then add dimension to the video. This may mean moving clips around so they’re not exactly chronological (but close enough!), or lengthening or shortening clips to push or pull the clip into the right place. It’s also really fun if you use a song with lyrics and you can get the lyrics to line up with things that are happening in the video.
This video of my family’s trip to Alaska is one where I especially set the video to the music, and you can see how much of an impact it makes! I also lined up some of the lyrics with related video clips (“tossed it” — tossing the rock; “dove into the waterfall” — 2yo Alex running into the water; “bombs away” — tossing the starfish back to the water).
Offloading iMovie
iMovie takes up a LOT of memory on computers if you leave everything there. Therefore, I delete things from iMovie as soon as I feel safe to do so (I follow this tutorial for that, and save things to my external hard drive).
Usually I’ll create a smaller video over the course of a few days. Once it seems good to go in iMovie, I export the file into a watchable video, upload it to YouTube, and then watch it on my TV. Watching it on the TV helps me catch things I may have missed, like music too loud or a particular video clip too quiet. I take notes on those things, and then I go back to iMovie to make the adjustments. Sometimes I do this process a few times. Once I’m confident that my video is just how I want it, I save the iMovie files to my external hard drive, and the video file to both my computer and my external hard drive.
The only video I typically have in iMovie for an extended period of time is the year movie. As I make the smaller videos throughout the year, I’ll add them (the completed video file) to the year movie. Sometimes I’ll export the year movie to a video file before the year is over so that we can start watching it.
Then What?
Once I’m satisfied that a movie is completed, I save it to an external hard drive and upload it to YouTube.
Saving them to an external hard drive (or two!!) keeps them safe, and someday my plan is to pass on all of each child’s videos to them (and the family videos) on a jump drive or whatever the equivalent is 10-15 years from now.
Saving them to YouTube allows my family to easily watch them from our TV right now, which is great! I save the videos in YouTube as “unlisted” so that anyone with a link can view them, but they’re not searchable from YouTube. After my external hard drive broke about a year ago, I retrieved one or two videos I had made that had been lost by getting them from my YouTube channel. On my YouTube channel, I have 3 playlists at the moment: “Home Videos,” “Holmes Videos,” and “Petersen Videos.” Home Videos contains all of my kid and family videos. Holmes (husband’s fam) and Petersen (my fam) videos each contain smaller event videos that pertain to that family. So all of the videos of family trips we’ve taken with my parents and siblings are in the Petersen Videos playlist so that my parents and siblings can access all the videos with one link, and same for my husband’s side.
To upload to YouTube, simply create a channel. Then, when you log in, click your name in the top-right corner, and from the drop-down, click “view your channel.” Next, click the video camera icon with a plus sign (top-right) — when you hover over it, it says “create.” Click “upload video.” Select your video, and answer the prompts that follow. You’ll give your video a title (and description if you’d like), add a thumbnail (or let it use a clip from the middle of your video), and select whether or not it’s made for kids (I’ve found it doesn’t really matter which option you select 🤷🏼♀️). You can also add it to a playlist at this point. Click next twice (basically skip “video elements” and “checks”), and then select public, private, or unlisted for your video’s visibility (I choose unlisted). Click “save” and then either leave that window up until it finishes, or click “close.” You just have to leave the YouTube tab open while it finishes processing.
I’ve Learned a Few Things
Horizontal Videos
We live in a world meant for vertical videos — IF you’re posting to social media. However, if you want your home videos to look better, take horizontal videos! TVs are horizontal, and if all you take are vertical videos, you don’t see nearly as much of what’s going on, because instead you get two giant black boxes on either side of your video. You can see one of my early videos with this problem here.
The good news is, you CAN zoom in on vertical videos so that the black boxes aren’t so big. Just use the cropping tool in the top-right tool bar to zoom in on the parts you really want to see. Unfortunately I didn’t know this trick when I took mostly vertical videos. But, in the instances where I happen to have a vertical video now, this is how I make it better.
I suppose it’s just important to know WHAT you’re filming for. If the purpose is to post something to social media, go vertical! But if it’s to create a great family home video, choose horizontal. Unless I’m specifically recording video for a reel, I always do horizontal, and then I zoom it in if I want to share to Instagram stories.
Videos>Photos
Since I’ve been a photo-preserver for ages, I used to take a million photos. Now that I also make videos, I usually take videos instead of photos. I then go back through the video and screenshot to grab pictures if I want any. I’m not entirely sure how the photo quality compares, but so far it works well enough for me, and the technology people are always improving stuff like this!
Movement is Key
Instead of having everyone hold still for a photo, I ask people to add some movement — looking at each other, waving, laughing — all these things help a video flow better.
If you’re standing in front of a building or something, you can also pan your camera slowly up or down or sideways (depending on all you want to capture) to give the video movement. You can see many examples of camera movement in this video.
My Ideal Groupings
I’ve tried a few different things over the years as far as formatting the videos goes — meaning, how to group certain videos together. I used to make the smaller family videos (like vacation and Christmas videos) and then put those family videos inside each individual child’s videos. This quickly made their videos very long, and I had to add family stuff to both girls’ videos. As I mentioned earlier, I now make a yearly child video and a yearly family video. The yearly child video has pretty much exclusively that child doing their own funny things, while the family video includes everyone in most of the videos (the exception is if we do a couples trip — that goes into the family video, too, even though the kids aren’t in it). This means not as much duplication, and everyone still gets good access to the videos that have them in it.
Here’s an example of a child’s video.
Here’s an example of a family video.
Minimalism
I mentioned this when I talked about photobooks, but minimalism is hugely helpful when making a video. Some of my older videos are much longer because I wasn’t as good at whittling clips down to the very best parts. *Most* of my video clips are now 2-4 seconds long each. Of course there are some clips that are longer, but my general rule of thumb is right around 3 seconds per clip.
Helpful Tools
iMovie has many helpful tools, some that I discovered early on, and others that I found only in the last year or so! Here are some good ones to make use of (all found in the top-right tool bar):
Crop icon — zoom in on vertical clips to eliminate black space, or even zoom in on horizontal clips if you want the video closer up or if you want to focus in on a certain portion of the clip.
Speaker icon — Adjust volume of video clips and music clips. Turn louder things quiet, and quieter things loud, or completely eliminate the sound from a clip by checking the box.
Clock icon — Speed up, slow down, or reverse clips!
Speeding up a clip can be helpful if a clip is very long and you need the whole thing, but don’t need the actual speed of it. You can essentially turn a clip into a timelapse.
Reversing clips is helpful if you’re incorporating movement like I mentioned above. I tend to pan from top to bottom, and left to right. But if you have a bunch of clips like that one after another, the flow isn’t very good. So sometimes I’ll reverse every other clip so that the first one pans from left to right, and then next one pans from right to left (because it is reversed), etc. Just make sure that if you reverse a clip you don’t make people walk backwards or something!
You can even use this feature on your music clips! Sometimes a song is slightly too fast- or slow-paced for what I want it for, so I just adjust it.
That’s a Wrap!
Alright there’s probably more I could tell you, but here’s all the starting info! Feel free to ask me any questions you have!