Do you love to be on video? I know I sure don't! It may have to do with being over 50, or maybe it's just that I'm self conscious. Although I'm getting better about it, video is still not my favorite medium, and I know others feel that way too.
So I wanted to bring on veteran video streamer and podcaster Kurt Sasso from Two Geeks Talking to teach us a few things about mastering video and YouTube content. In this episode, we'll unpack the essentials and unravel some of the mysteries of video creation.
Listen as we cover...
If you're like me and entertaining the thought of doing more videos, or are just curious about what more you can learn about it, I think this episode will help you out.
Apply to be featured on My Weekly Marketing!
Do you love to be on video? I know I sure don't! It may have to do with being over 50, or maybe it's just that I'm self conscious. Although I'm getting better about it, video is still not my favorite medium, and I know others feel that way too.
So I wanted to bring on veteran video streamer and podcaster Kurt Sasso from Two Geeks Talking to teach us a few things about mastering video and YouTube content. In this episode, we'll unpack the essentials and unravel some of the mysteries of video creation.
Listen as we cover...
If you're like me and entertaining the thought of doing more videos, or are just curious about what more you can learn about it, I think this episode will help you out.
Apply to be featured on My Weekly Marketing!
I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Are you on YouTube? Do you want to be? Let me be 100% real with you.
Janice Hostager:If you would have told me five years ago that I'd be doing a video and a podcast, I would have told you to get out of town. Seriously, video was the last thing I wanted to do, but there was no denying the engagement that video content was getting for my clients who were on YouTube. They struggled on Instagram and Facebook, but their video content did really, really well. So I've made it my goal to do more videos this year. Yeah, I started slowly and I'm gradually getting the hang of it, but I feel all the feels of watching and listening to myself after I've made a video. Those Hollywood types make it look so easy.
Janice Hostager:In today's episode, I talk about a statistic I read recently. I couldn't recall the numbers while we were taping the episode, but here it is 7% of a message is communicated through words, 38% is communicated through voice, but 55% is communicated through facial expressions, gestures, and posture. If that alone isn't the case for video content, I don't know what is. So on my podcast today, I have Kurt Sasso. Kurt's been doing videos for a long time for his show, two Geeks Talking, and he's racked up more than an impressive 1,000 interviews in the comic, TV and film, music, and video game industries. I knew he'd be a pro to talk to about all things video, so let's hear what Kurt had to say about video and YouTube. Well, hey, Kurt, welcome to the show.
Kurt Sasso:Well, thanks, Janice, I appreciate it.
Janice Hostager:So tell me a little bit about your background and how you got started on YouTube and what inspired you to focus on video as a platform.
Kurt Sasso:Well, my background is like any typical geek of my age. I got into computers early in life. I was voted to be a number one hacker back in high school when I graduated. That didn't happen, but I did have a 20-year career in IT, which eventually led me towards doing a podcast called TGT Web Comics at the time back in 2008. It has since evolved into my current show called Two Geeks Talking.
Kurt Sasso:But from 2008 to 2010, I was doing strictly two-hour live podcasts with guests in the comic industry, whether they were indie to professionals. By about that time, by about 2010, I ended up getting a little burnt out with over two to 400 interviews that I'd already recorded and released at two hours a shot. And so a friend of mine said hey, come to Chicago. There's a brand new comic convention coming out there called C2E2. And you know what? Bring your camcorder, bring your audio recorder, and just do some live on-site interviews. And so I did. I never went to a comic convention or traveled to Chicago, which is a great city. I love it, amazing food as well. But yeah, the ribs should die, for that's another episode.
Kurt Sasso:When I got to the convention, it was almost as if I had to relearn how to do interviews because now you're focused on working with video. I had created a YouTube channel by that time as well, which YouTube back then was still brand new to the scene when it came to quality and technology and everything like that. So it was a learning experience for me to how do I do a video interview, how do I get clean audio going back and forth and, by the way, back then the audio was not clean at all, the audio quality was horrible, but I'm digressing here but I had done about 200 interviews at a four- day event in Chicago and it took me about five months to edit all of that. And then I went to a convention at Fan Expo in Toronto doing video interviews as well, and that was another 250- plus interviews.
Kurt Sasso:So, wow, expanding on what I had already created through the podcast, I was expanding into video now, which is a brand new avenue, and it was fun. It was amazing. You were dealing with people face to face. It was not just like listening through your headphones. You were actually seeing their reactions to your questions. You were seeing people walking in front of your camera. You were seeing their amazing talent if they were comic creators or if they were actors or actresses and it just gave me a new sense of energy to say video is the way to go. I still want to do the podcast, but I know video is the key to expanding a career in doing entertainment interviews as through to Geekstalking.
Janice Hostager:I love that. I just read something and I'm going to have these numbers all wrong, but it was something like people listen to about 7% of what you say or you communicate. I know it a little bit. You communicate with about 7% through your words and I know I'm going to get these numbers wrong like 30% through your voice and then the rest of it comes through your facial expressions and your body language.
Janice Hostager:And when I read that I thought, wow, I should be doing more video for sure, because that really does make a difference, especially in the business world when you are trying to pull in people and communicate with people and get clients. So that is so powerful. But I see a lot of people just like, oh no, I'm not going to do video, and I have been one of those. It's taken me a long time Because I'm older. It's just taken me a long time to get comfortable in front of a camera and where my kids were, like you know, with their phones all the time click, click, click, click, click, you know, and no, no big deal to be on video for them. But so I think what do you think holds people back from starting on YouTube or doing video?
Kurt Sasso:Well, I think for me, well, it's the same for being doing a podcast as well. It's not just strictly for video, but I understand where you're coming from. I always say for myself I was an introverted extrovert when I started the show and I was the actual one. I was a co-host originally for the first 60 episodes and because I was so into my own head, into my own introvertedness if that's a word I really didn't know how to communicate or how to speak or how to voice questions or anything like that, because I was more of a listener than I was a talk. And it wasn't until my co-host had to go on with life that I had to take control of the show. Whether I let it die after 600 interviews in a two-year span, do I let that go, or do I continue on? Do I continue on that journey? And for me, it was just okay. It's up to me to step up. It's up to me to get my out of my introverted self, become an extroverted person to a certain extent, and ask the question, as I wanted to ask, of these people and get more comfortable in that mindset.
Kurt Sasso:Now, there's no real difference between asking a question through a podcast or there's no real question. When you're communicating with someone face to face, the only question is whether they can see you if you decide to look off or look at your phone as you're asking the question. It's just not the same connection. So what stops people really is a fear of moving forward with their knowledge. Do you want to know more about this person you're talking to? Do you want to expand your expertise and talk about the things that you're passionate about? Whether it's your niche or a topic you're interested in? I'm not sure.
Kurt Sasso:Being in marketing and in business, you have to have these conversations all the time. So there's no difference between us having a meeting face to face right now in a board room versus us having a conversation on Zoom that's being recorded or being posted to YouTube. It's about how comfortable you are with your own expertise, with your own knowledge, and what do you want to learn from the person in front of you. And so if you can do that, if you're comfortable in just speaking one-on-one with the person, don't worry about where the camera is, don't worry about anything like that or how you look or how you sound, as long as your message gets conveyed, or as long as their message gets conveyed, depending on the style of conversation you're having and show, then that's just one step forward and getting more comfortable with what you're doing and eventually, you won't worry about a webcam that has a bright blue light on you, staring at you continuously, and you're just going to focus on the person in front of you.
Janice Hostager:Right, focusing on the message more than or the interview more than yourself, basically.
Kurt Sasso:Right and sorry, I apologize. The only thing that I say is, when I started this show, it was all about the people. I didn't care about myself as a host, as best as it sounds, but my message was this is the platform for you to talk about yourself. I'll ask the questions, I'll guide you towards what you want to talk about, but it's really about you and about your process and your life and your creativity and your message, and so I'm just the guy that helps guide that path.
Janice Hostager:I love that. I love that you said comfortable too. Something you mentioned is comfort in all of that I think that's part of it is that when we're in business or doing anything in life honestly, we have to get comfortable with going outside our comfort zone and even though it never feels good, it's really necessary to keep growing. And I feel like we have to keep growing throughout our entire life. We're just. You know it's a sad ending, you know, I don't know. But I think that's really true.
Kurt Sasso:No, I agree, I agree with the 100%. There's that phrase we never stop learning. Yeah, the minute we stop learning, we're dead. That's really what it boils down to. I think that's paraphrased somehow or whatever.
Kurt Sasso:But we have to be able to get outside of our comfort zone, Like being an introvert for a good number of years. I can have a conversation. Now it's not as bad as it once was, but sometimes I'll stumble, Sometimes I'll kind of get back inside my head, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, and as long as I can get the message out and just take that first step towards it. Even if you're just talking, even if it's just yourself on the podcast or on your show, and you're just talking about what you're passionate about, record it, get it ready, edit it afterward, but get something out so that you're comfortable in speaking.
Kurt Sasso:Are you going to be the best speaker? No, but you'll get better with practice. You'll get better with time and you'll find your own voice. And that's the most difficult part. Can you find your own voice? And it took me a good four or five years to finally get comfortable with the questions I was asking and get comfortable with myself and with my voice as well too. I think that's the other key factor. Are you comfortable with hearing yourself once you're editing?
Janice Hostager:Right, yeah, your physical voice for sure, just listening to it, I know, the first time I well, many times I've heard myself and I'm like I don't like that, you know. But it's okay. You know that's the only voice I have, and other than you know, learning some diction exercises or something like that. There's not a whole lot you can do about your voice per se. And so what do you know? I love to talk about YouTube in particular. What do you feel, what advantage do you feel that YouTube has over some of the videos, and other video platforms that are out there, like TikTok and Instagram?
Kurt Sasso:YouTube has search ability, and that's a key factor is because of the content that is currently out there and the attention span of the people that are consuming it. We have 8 billion people in the world. You have a three to 10- second window to attract that person to continue to watch your content past 30 seconds. That's just the way the world is.
Kurt Sasso:It is horrible for long- format content. But where YouTube gets that flexibility is that a lot of YouTube and a lot of Google. YouTube is the new Google when it comes to search engines. So if you're trying to find how to do something, or if you're trying to find what does this term means, or if you're trying to find interviews with a famous person or an indie creator or someone that's drawing your interest, currently YouTube is the way to go, because I would easily bet 90% of the time you're going to find it on YouTube and if not, then it's going to be on a short clip on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or wherever. So YouTube is that search engine that you always want to be more active in because it's all about evergreen content. It's all about the content that has life passed when you posted it.
Kurt Sasso:A lot of my older YouTube content I'm getting like. When Paul Rubin's Peewee Herman passed away, I had a huge influx on a past interview I did with one of his co-stars from the Peewee Herman from Peewee's Playhouse, and that was done 13 years ago. That was not a new interview whatsoever, but people were inspired to look at his past co-hosts and past co-stars and it just had some wonderful comments and messages about how that person inspired them to do whatever, and so it's about does your content have legs in the future and I think, when it comes to businesses or marketing or interview shows, like my show with two geeks talking, I think it just comes down to will that person be relevant in the future?
Kurt Sasso:Is there a message that they're saying besides what they're promoting? Will it have legs for the future as well? Are they going to say something about their acting or their writing or their progress in life and how they dealt with failure and success and everything like that? And so will that generate interest in the future? We don't know. And if it does, then great. You've just inspired another person not only to watch but maybe even inspire them on their path as well too.
Janice Hostager:That's interesting because early on, I used to have a design agency and I had a lot of marketing clients too, so I used to do a lot of how-to videos and put them up on YouTube. But I actually recently went through and deleted almost all of them because they had changed. The platform has changed or whatever, so has become outdated. But that's something I didn't really think about when posting on YouTube Initially. It was more just a vehicle to get the video loaded on my website, so it wasn't something that I really thought much about. But it's owned by Google, so they say that it's the third largest search engine or the most popular search engine, but it actually is part of Google. So now I actually recommend clients be on YouTube, even if they have, you know, countdown, Vimeo, or one of the other video platforms, simply because it's Google and Google makes the world go round on the Internet. So, yeah, so, but I love that that you really think about long-term strategy with YouTube.
Kurt Sasso:That's something that I haven't thought much about.
Kurt Sasso:Sorry, I apologize. I think you have to because I've been doing this for 15 years for audio and video and a lot of my older content, especially with today's climate when it comes to social, political, whatever. Not that I'm anything like that whatsoever, but maybe some of my guests 10 years ago have changed their stance on whatever and now they're a pariah in society or whatever the case might be. Not saying that's the case with the content I have, I'm just saying the views could be considered like that, but the message and their thoughts, with whatever they said back then, could easily be transferred over to today's world and today's viewpoints, because 15 years is a long time. Heck online. Five years is a long time. Two years is a long time.
Kurt Sasso:The attention span of the mouse is it's all cyclical. You're going to find your content one way or another, and whether or not it's outdated content doesn't necessarily mean that it's not so useful, because you could still have people with, say, older software versions that need to look something up, and oh, Google's not helping. I'm going to look up a YouTube video on how to do this, and it saved me a lot of time in the past as well, too, when it came to what I needed to do to resolve an issue, and that's just how to videos and that's. You know, how do I use this? Or how do I do this layer? Or does it help my product or does it help my productivity in my editing, is there something I haven't tried in a while, that, oh, this looks new, this looks interesting and oh wait, I did this five years ago and I just can't remember.
Janice Hostager:Right, right. Well, I do love YouTube for a thousand reasons, but one of them is those how-to videos, because I mean I live in new software all the time, for myself and for clients, so I'm always looking for a YouTube video on something and I get kind of annoyed on a sleep I have to read it on a web page rather than look at a demo video and I keep thinking, yeah, if there's a gap out there, then I need to jump in and fill it in because if there's something that is not on YouTube yet, I could certainly do it.
Janice Hostager:But yeah, so, but what? So I am here. I can actually give you a real- life example here. I have a podcast that obviously that you're on it right now, but I just loaded, and uploaded that to YouTube. They just create an integration where you can automatically upload them to YouTube, and right now it's about all I have on my YouTube channel. So what do you think are some good strategies for growing that channel successfully?
Kurt Sasso:As long as you're so There is a couple of things I can think of, maybe three or four. I'll let you keep count. First off is consistency. Are you consistently posting your show or your podcasts on a weekly basis or biweekly or whatever it is? If you're consistent in that respect, the views will come.
Kurt Sasso:Creating a good thumbnail is another key factor that people, a lot of people, especially for podcasts and shows, don't really understand. The basic concept of a thumbnail, especially in the sea of thumbnails that you're going to get, especially on YouTube, is you need a solid or gradient background. You need a good title for the episode itself, whether it's the title of the episode or a catchphrase in the episode. If you're the, if you're the host, you can either put yourself in there in the image itself or your thumbnail. But if you have a guest headshot, you can throw that in as well. If they're a famous person, keep that as the main focus and then have their name in the actual thumbnail image. So you have like three to four items in your image to make it consistent and then you can change that up if you get bored with the format or if you get bored with the different sides, or however you want to position your assets in that particular thumbnail.
Kurt Sasso:The third and the third, which is really key, is your title. I've seen this a lot on groups that are doing podcasts and doing shows where they're asking well, should I put episode number XX, whatever, and then the title, and to me that's wasted space.
Kurt Sasso:You don't need to list your episodes in your title, because unless you have over a thousand and they're not broken up into seasons, then there's no point to it. What you want in your title is really is the guest, or maybe a catchphrase or something that will draw interest in exact keywords for the other thing.
Kurt Sasso:So if you're a marketing guru or a marketing expert and your name is so-and-so, then so-and-so, marketing expert on this topic. Something quick, short, and to the point. Your description is another key factor that you definitely need to have, and you need to keep that to 200 words or less, or 200 characters or less. It should say so it's about two sentences, three sentences max.
Janice Hostager:So that's the part of the description that shows. Before you click on it to expand the bottom, so at most two sentences.
Kurt Sasso:So, whatever your key phrasing that is going to draw interest, to get them to either click C more or to actually click and listen to your show. In that description, though, you also have the capability of adding in all of your socials where they can support you, where they can find you, your called actions, or even better terminology I've heard recently, is called the benefit. What is the benefit of them clicking on these links? Not necessarily to get their sponsorship money or anything like that, but you're drawing interest in the rest of your items that you actually have capabilities for. So, if you have your YouTube channel you want to get them to subscribe to, you put in a nice quick two-word, three-word call the benefit for them to click on that link to get them to subscribe.
Kurt Sasso:You have your podcast you want them to get. You want to get them to listen to that as well. You probably have a Patreon or you have some type of extra funding coming in regarding certain, maybe episodes that aren't released until to the public for three months later or three weeks later. Whatever you get what?
Janice Hostager:I'm saying so you hold back episodes for a while and create paid episode, basically.
Kurt Sasso:I'm still working that up. Yes, it is something I want to do. It is something, especially with my older content, that I will definitely put behind a Patreon paywall because I think the content that I have is still valuable and viable to do people listening to it, even though it is 15 years old. You never know what you can learn from the past that'll help you in the present. And then hashtags. Hashtags are still a viable option for YouTube as well as for your podcasts, wherever you're posting and hosting it because it's still a searchable function. List 3-5 hashtags that are part of your actual description that people are searching for. You can go to. There's a website. Currently, it's not answering this.
Janice Hostager:It's like Ask to the public.
Kurt Sasso:Yeah, thank you. That's it. Answer to the public is a great example of are your hashtags going to be searchable and viable.
Kurt Sasso:That's a great way to test the waters before you just post it live. But nothing is set in stone. You can always change your hashtag, you can always change your descriptions, you can always change your titles to draw more interest into it. And the one last thing that I've noticed more recently that's really jumped a huge increase, not only in subscribers but also in watch time and listen time is there's a check mark at the very bottom when you're posting your content, After you go through all the keywords and after you list everything like that, it's a check mark that's usually checked by default that says publish this to subscribers first If you uncheck that and this sounds kind of intuitive, but if you uncheck that, you get more traction from people that are not subscribed to your channel than if they were, and I saw a huge increase of at least 50 to 75 percent more viewers and listeners than I had in five years.
Janice Hostager:By unchecking it.
Kurt Sasso:By unchecking and it just blew my mind. I couldn't believe it. It was incredible.
Janice Hostager:Huh, so the YouTube algorithm update can really impact visibility for sure. You just found that out. So do you go back and adjust your content later on, kind of accordingly or how do you like it? Go in and do you adjust the description or the hashtags or keywords, Is something in there?
Kurt Sasso:Yeah, I'll definitely go back, and there have been times where I've tried something for a couple of months and I've set my descriptions to a certain length, or maybe I did too much of a description, but I thought that was the way to go.
Kurt Sasso:I was really testing and trying a lot of A B testing for descriptions versus views and versus attraction, and I found that what I described previously with the limitations of the sentences, the keywords, the customizable hashtags, the better titles, better thumbnails although that takes a little more time to kind of fine tune, because you're always trying something different and new with thumbnails is I'll go back into old content and, yeah, I'll change the description, I'll edit it. I changed my call to benefits. I've actually summarized it a lot tighter than I had, say, six months ago. So I'll go back when I have time and I'll copy and paste the new call to benefits and go from there.
Kurt Sasso:And so it's like you're always evolving your style, you're always evolving your content and you're always evolving what you can do because the algorithm there is no rhyme or reason for it. I mean, there are successes and we've all seen Mr Beast and we've all seen me, all of these other people, but they have a different format than, say, if it's a one-on-one style interview. That's a completely different avenue than the long-form content that we have. So we're always evolving and trying different things, and shorts are another thing that I've definitely started doing a lot more this year, more so than in previous years, because it just draws on as you get a hot take that isn't really a hot take on a short content and you'll get thousands of people. I've had two videos just explode for 2,500 plus viewers, with so much engagement from not only comments but also from thumbs up, from shares, sales even.
Kurt Sasso:It's been incredible and all because of, say, do gamers still live in their parents' basement? That was the one thing that started on January 1st, 2024. Yes, it exploded People are like I mean the comments alone were just hilarious. But it was because I had interviewed a guest and that was his take on. I said well, what's the most misunderstood aspect about the eSports genre that people who don't follow it misunderstand? That's how I form my question and he's like oh my god. And he just went on to a five-minute rant about it, but I had to shorten it down to under a minute, but it was just because of the visuals I put on.
Kurt Sasso:I used some surf part video clips. I used some free, actual videos that are free for download, things like that. I will never use AI images or video content. I will never do that whatsoever, and so it's just because of the content that I have and because of the guests that I have. They're all artists and they're all creative people. So why should I give benefits towards AI art and AI videos that are horrible first off, that have the same generic content, and that are stealing from actual artists that have spent blood, sweat, and tears in thousands of hours and their lives? Why do I want to put something like that into my content? I don't, so I don't.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Kurt Sasso:Apologies, I kind of lost track.
Janice Hostager:No, no, you're good, you're really good. First of all, I want to say that I love that phrase called a benefit. I've not heard that before, but that is so spot on and that is something that I'm constantly working with clients on and constantly trying to teach people benefit, benefit, benefit. You need to stop thinking about your solution and start thinking about their problem. So that's first off, but I was actually going to ask you about the rise of YouTube shorts and how you decide on the content format for each of those, whether or not. Do you take a long- form video and chop it up into shorts, basically, or do you kind of do separate content?
Kurt Sasso:I don't have time for separate content. I'm one person doing everything.
Janice Hostager:You're a well aware of this.
Kurt Sasso:We can only do so much with the limited time we have on this earth.
Janice Hostager:Amen yeah.
Kurt Sasso:So I use the Gary A Van A Trek method, and Gary V method of editing when it comes to taking long-form content, breaking it down into bite-sized pieces, and putting it out to the social media platforms. I have, yeah, as one person it is difficult to do that, but if you form your questions, this is all dependent on your style of questions that you're asking, if you're on a one-on-one interview versus, say, you're doing skits or comedy or whatever. But the concept is, if you can form a question and you can short form your question enough so that it gets the person that you're talking to expand on that topic, then that's your content for your shorts. So a recent person that I had created a comic called Warbans, who was introducing the Yiddish language, which is a dying language, into the comic, and because we have our phones and our translators in our pockets, learning a language is something that we don't really have to do anymore, although there is Duolingo and others. But when I came to trying to not necessarily revive a dying language but to incorporate his Jewish heritage into the comic itself, while still letting it be a broad sense of anyone can read this, because there are translator notes as well, it's like here's the context. Here's the language. I'm going to showcase this because it fits this 1920s- style comic. Here you go Here are the words that you probably have never learned before. But maybe you watched Spiddler on the Roof and you've heard that, but you didn't understand why Things like that.
Kurt Sasso:So in listening and talking to the guests that I've had, based on the questions I get to ask, their content sometimes triggers something in my ear where I'll say that would be a good short. So maybe I'll write it down, maybe I'll mark it in our questions, but I'll take all of the questions and their answers, I'll set it aside and I will export just that and out of that five minutes or whatever. Sometimes I'll include my questions, sometimes I'll include their answer into a loop and I'll try to get a 30- second to a minute clip that way. And so breaking down the long- form content is very time- consuming, but it's necessary, especially in this day and age.
Kurt Sasso:I've been doing a lot more shorts recently because it's just something different. It keeps my editing style a little fresh. It keeps me a little more entertained when I'm trying to figure out okay, what images do I need to slide into here, because I just don't want talking ads all the time. Do I rearrange our videos around? Do I use a free video download that I have? That kind of fits the mold of maybe talking about exercise or talking about the underground railroad or whatever the case is. It's always situational, but you still have that short video content for, say, use in other shorts as well. So you're kind of gathering your own media assets as you're going and who knows?
Kurt Sasso:when it's available for the future. It's amazing what you can do with short stays.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, with video in general, honestly, and I tend to pull out quotes from my podcast and post them on Instagram and LinkedIn. A little different audience and what you're talking about, but nonetheless it still needs to be interesting and fun and at least be able to be digestible in a quick way, because you want to get them to listen to the entire podcast or the whole video or whatever. So I think I love the idea of shorts. I haven't really done anything with it yet, but I do have some clients that have tried it and they've had some good results with it. But speaking of tools and resources, what are there some tools that you recommend for the creation, the editing, and the overall like management of the channel?
Kurt Sasso:Well, the editing. I've evolved the editing. I use two pieces of software. For the editing. I use DaVinci Resolve, which is free. It is pretty much an all-in-one industry standard for editing video content.
Kurt Sasso:Premiere is great, don't get me wrong. I used Premiere for the first 10 years of the show until they decided to stop the CS6 version and they basically canceled it, forcing me to try to do a subscription. But aside from the point, so DaVinci Resolve is my go-to right now. It has all the editing software I need. It has a color correction, it has audio correction all on separate programs. So from start to finish, I can edit, I can import, I can change the colors, I can do my audio levels, I can set my vocals for the wavelengths and then I can export. I can export to YouTube, I can export to podcasts, I can export to wherever there is a suite of deliverables I can do.
Kurt Sasso:For the short- form content. I could do everything in DaVinci Resolve as well, but I've been using CapCut more recently and CapCut's a great piece of software for editing short- form content. Not only does it have a great suite of subtitle generation, but it also has language generation for captions, so you don't have to type everything out and it's about 95% accurate, to be honest. So if you have different languages, it has a whole suite of languages in there as well. So if you're speaking in, say, Chinese or Arabic or whatever, it will generate subtitles for that into English if necessary, or the language that you're actually dealing with. So that's a great aspect as well.
Kurt Sasso:And then there are automatic subtitle templates. So you see these short videos where it's generating, say, a word with a color background, or you see it's going word by word as a different color. It's all part of CapCut, so you don't have to manually code anything. You just select the one you like. It sets it up for your auto-generated text, for your subtitles, and then you can format it however you like. You can bring in your media assets that you had previously saved or downloaded over the length of your career into its own folder, and then you can start going through that and dragging and dropping it into your shorts, and you can set the format of the actual video to be vertical or to be one by one if you're using Instagram or whatever the case may be. It's amazing to see these types of programs that just give you so much flexibility and creation. But, like I said you could do this in DaVinci Resolve as well too. You just need to figure out how the software will work for you.
Kurt Sasso:So I try to use as many free things as I possibly can because it's just more of a time-saving factor and it's just. It's easy to find tutorials available online and it's funny, I wouldn't have used CapCut if I didn't see it on a short through a YouTube Doomscroll one time at 3 am. So I wouldn't have known about it unless I didn't see it, so it was incredible that way.
Kurt Sasso:Audio-wise sorry, just audio-wise. I sometimes use Audacity to kind of clean up my levels, but I've been really focusing more on DaVinci to kind of clean up what I need to. I've also used Isotope RX8 as well for cleaning up, say, levels, or maybe there's a noise or background noise that it can clean up with an automatic process. So a few different software like that. And then, recording-wise, I use Xplit Broadcaster. It's a one-time cost and I've been using it to record everything.
Kurt Sasso:I'll use Zoom as my actual one-on-one video conferencing, but I'm thinking of switching from Zoom to StreamYard, StreamYard is a great piece of software that not only can you use it for free but you can also export to YouTube, to Twitch, to a variety of other APIs that it's linked to popular APIs, that you can go to Facebook, but you can also do live streaming as well, and that will get you around the one-hour limit that they have for, say, the free version of it. So you can do a live stream for as long as you want and then download that content off of YouTube and then just edit it as you need to. So there's a little workaround for you.
Janice Hostager:Yeah, I've been using Zoom for well, our interview, like we are today, and I like it because it will record on two tracks, so if my dog barks, for example, while you're speaking, we can easily edit that out and still without interrupting you and what you've got going on. But I'll have to check out some of the other platforms. I think they sound really interesting. I have used CapCut Well, actually, I have an assistant who does my social media and she uses it but for video editing, because I do videos for classes and online videos I have been using Premiere Pro, but they have an abbreviated version for use on a phone, basically. And but Premiere Pro is it's a lot like anything Adobe. There are multiple layers of expertise you can get in it and it's a lot for someone, a novice like me, who just hops in for you know to edit a video and then hops out. Otherwise, I end up using iMovie which, as I understand, is not the greatest for video editing but sometimes it works, you know.
Kurt Sasso:Well, I think now would be a great time to start with DaVinci Resolve. To be perfectly honest, I think because it has a low. It does have a low learning curve because if you're used to Premiere, you're used to DaVinci Resolve. Okay, there's really no difference in the button combinations There are maybe a couple of minor things, like the for Blade, which I think is an iMovie thing or part of Final Cut Pro or Final Cut in general. I think B was the cut tool.
Kurt Sasso:It has something similar. One thing I forgot to mention is I use more recently, as of last year. It's called a Tour Box Pro and it is a great tool. There's better lighting. It's a great tool that allows me to edit with one hand, and this has been so amazing. It was like 100 bucks Canadian or 150 Canadian, which is like two bucks US, and it's I'm exaggerating, but everything is in the palm of my hand here and there are templates, there are key shortcuts that are linked to this by default. So for Premiere, for DaVinci, for any video editing software, and for image software as well. It's such a diverse tool that, honestly, has made my editing that used to take like six or so hours. It's now dropped down to at least two at minimum.
Kurt Sasso:So, or I'd add, Max, I should say it's been such a lifesaver for shortcut keys, and like I use, I just use the little D-pad here. This here is all I use for my editing of my clipping of everything like that for things and I can scroll through. On this one, I can zoom in and out. Here I can fast forward through, here I can undo, I can set my inpoints and outpoints, like I just. I just it's just been such a lifesaver and you can save by pressing any of these buttons. But it's been so amazing just to have that type of tool, and I wouldn't have tried this without seeing it on a short or seeing a review of it on YouTube. So there you go.
Janice Hostager:I'm supposed to recall. Well, we'll have to put the link to that in the show notes. Kurt, this has been great. I have learned so much just in our short time together. How can people find out more about you, or where, where is your show, or how can we watch your show?
Kurt Sasso:Well, I'll do my outro, as I normally do for this. That ends this particular episode of my weekly marketing. Of course, I am a guest on the show today with the amazing Janice. She's an incredible host. You should all look at her show and get on her show and myself. You can find two Geeks Talking on our website, which is going through a revamp. It's two geeks talking. com. That's TWO or TGT media because it's going through an update code, or a YouTube channel which is YouTube. com forward slash TGT media. The podcast is back after 12 or so years. You can find that at two geeks talkingpod. com, or just search two Geeks talking wherever you get your podcasts and, as I say every week, everyone has storage. Well, it's up to me to help bring that out. Thanks for listening, and watching this show.
Janice Hostager:That is awesome. Thank you, Kurt. And there you have it. Kurt makes it sound so easy and I don't doubt check out what he recommends for tools and employing some of his YouTube tips. So what about you? Are you going to try out the video this year? For more information about Kurt or any of the products and links he mentioned in today's episode, check out my show notes page at myweeklymarketing. com, forward slash 43. That's episode 43. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and tell your small business friends. I appreciate you so much. See you next time. Bye for now.