How to Create an Online Course

What’s the best way to show you how to create an online course? As for my field of expertise, I’m taking you today to my actual filming location to show you how I create training videos for my subscribers and budding videographers.

For this video course, we’re filming in three different locations: the kitchen, the one with kitchen as the background, and the one with the corner as the background.

Now why do I film in different locations?

Speaking as part of the audience, I would naturally be looking for variety. Unless it’s an interview I’m watching, my eyes and mind simply won’t be able to keep watching a video where it’s showing a single location all throughout. My attention span for sure won’t be as long as what the videographer would hope it to be.

By having multiple backgrounds or multiple environments, you can add a lot of variety to one video. Each location that you film at is different, so it’s an opportunity to have fun! See what you can do with it!

And then there’s post-production which includes syncing the external audio with the video.

The software I use for this is Final Cut Pro which I find very efficient and effective. In the video you’ll see more clearly how I sync the two audio up. While syncing, you will encounter an echo. You’ll hear an audio from the recorder, and then another from the video file. You’ll sync them up by putting your cursor next to a prominent spike shown on Final Cut Pro. You’ll find it’s hard to sync them up without zooming in, so finetune the audio by zooming in on the tracks. If the two audio aren’t quite lined up, then drag over one onto the other. Hit Play again to check for echo. Once the echo has disappeared, then your audio is perfectly synced.

Now you can mute the audio that’s with the video and continue. You’ll see in the video how the external audio is much cleaner and of much better quality. There’s a lot of room echo in the upper track, and so that’s why I use an external audio – for higher sound quality which ultimately makes for a much better video quality.

When you create training videos, you’ll be swamped by files! I want to note how important organization is when dealing with this number of files for a SINGLE video. You’ll notice in the above video that I have numbered sheets of paper there.

Why do I bother with the numbers?

It’s so when I’m sorting the files, I’ll know what audio goes to what video file. This will make your editing process A WHOLE LOT EASIER.
What I do is at the beginning of each video, as soon as I hit Record, I say the number. For example: “1.1… Video 1.1.”. So then I know that I should drag that file over to Folder 1. So hopefully that makes sense. Every one of these audio files recorded on my external mic has the number at the very beginning.

In order to make this work, there’s got to be a lot of organization prior to filming. You can have pages of paper where all the shots are printed and with their respective color codes. For example, you’ll see Video 2 is all yellow and for each shot, you have a number. And all yellow means that you’re going to be filming it all on the iPhone in the living room.

So as not to confuse you during editing, cross off each each shot once completed. This will let you know which ones you’ve done and if you miss anything at all.

All of the equipment I use to create training videos like this are available in Amazon where I also go to purchase my equipment and gears. If you wish to know the specific brands of each, the links are all in the description on the YouTube video above.