How to do the Headlines of the Week Video for Instagram
When we first decided what to do for the semester for Instagram, Matt Seaver and myself decided we want to do a week in review style post for the social media site. After some trial and error, we have come to what works best. A roughly minute long video that gets put out roughly an hour or so after the show on Friday.
Over the course of the semester we were able to learn a few things, firstly, we decided Friday (or Thursday in the case of vacation weeks were there is no Friday show) was the best day because of the algorithm Instagram uses. Posts may be suppressed if several are posted within hours of eachother. Secondly, we have learned that roughly a minute is best for the five stories. Instagram caps the videos at a minute, so if you can do 5 stories in :50-:55 seconds, you know the video won’t get cut off.
Bellow are pictures with a step by step process on how to make sure your video stays up to the standard that has been set. This works great if you work with a buddy, it helps cut down on the time.
Putting the Piece Together
Step 1) Pick your 5 stories and write them as if you were going to use them in newsbreak :10-:12 seconds per story. (Remember every second counts.) In iNews, there is a folder called people, the best place to do your work is in your folder. There you will be able to write your story without disturbing any of the archives, or the current show.
Step 2) Track
Step 3) Match your track to the VO used from that week. When picking stories be sure to use ones that have VO.
Sidenote: You can pick sots, you just have to be careful of how long they are. Again you want your video to be roughly :50-:55 seconds.
Step 4) Once everything is put together on AVID, export it as a quicktime, and bring it into adobe premire.
This concludes the putting together of the piece.
Helpful Hints: The video should only run between :50-:55 seconds. Having that extra 5 seconds will help you if need be.
Write the stories in the Newsbreak style.
You should generally be picking headlines from the show, however, if the show didn’t have an interesting headline, or there is a story you want to use, pick that story.
And remember, MAKE SURE IT IS ACTUALLY A VO. I have been burned by this a couple of times because I wasn't paying close enough attention. If you make a mistake like this before it goes on Instagram, it just adds time to you being in News 7 on a Friday past 6 pm. Generally speaking, when you do this enough times, it should be on Instagram by 7:30 at the latest.
Adobe Section
This section covers how to get captions on a video that can be then exported for instagram. I personally think adobe works better, but you have to do this part on a MAC and I will explain why later.**
Today I am using an old Iteam that I did, but the steps are still the same. Import your piece into Adobe Premire and then bring it into your timeline. If you look very closely there is a trash can icon. Click the button to the left of that.
That brings you to this menu. From there you will want to click captions.
To make sure the captions are actually on the video when you are editing, make sure you select open captions.
Begin typing out what you have said. In your preview window, the captions will show up as you type them out. Be watchful of the space on the screen. You can always add new captions lines, so don’t worry about trying to get everything into one box.
Once the caption is written, you will now need to play with the settings to make it look nice. Make sure everything in the line is highlighted, otherwise the changes won’t apply to everything. First you are going to center everything then bold it. Next to the music symbol is a blue box, you will click that, under the word size there is a box that will say 100, change this to 0. This will make sure that the caption won’t have a black bar behind it. So when it shows up on the video, it looks crisp.
Next, you will drag your caption onto the first available video timeline. I usually put it on video channel 2.
To make sure your caption fits to what the person is saying, you will need to first extend the purple to where the typed out caption stops. For example, this sentence says, “This bill came forward because it’s viewed as one of the strategies to close wage gaps between men and women.” The purple is the length of that sentence.
You will then need to extend the black, this is the actual caption itself. When doing the headlines of the week, there will be multiple sentences. If you need to add more sentences, look back to the picture on step 5, there you will see a plus sign in the lower right hand corner. By clicking that plus sign, you will add another caption line. Continue to type. When it is time to bring into the timeline male sure your drag tool faces the other way, the arrow should face right. Drag until needed, and repeat steps 6–8 as needed.
If done correctly, all your captions will be one video. Which means all the settings should be the same, for the entire length of the captions. This next step just helps to make sure the captions can be read, especially in the winter, when there is snow on the ground. Go to the effects tab under your project window, and type drop shadow. Add one drop shadow to the caption timeline.
This entire process will need to be done again when doing the dates for the Instagram video. Your dates should be a new caption video. And when they are all typed in, they should be in the upper left hand corner. To do this you lock the video channels you don’t want to move, which frees up the days of the week line to be moved around. The days should include day of the week and date. (Monday 5/1, Tuesday 5/2, Wednesday 5/3, Thursday 5/4, Friday 5/5)
You are going to need to render in to out, this helps keep the captions crisp when you are no longer working in Adobe.
When you begin to export, your first step is to make sure the video settings are correct. Make sure you export as a Quicktime, and use H.264 in the video codec.
To make sure the captions show up on the video, make sure you burn them into the video. This will make sure they are on no matter where you put them It gives them no choice but to be on the video.
Once exported to the desktop, you will need to get it on your phone so that it can be put on Instagram. To do this you will need an iPhone, or some other Apple Product that can connect to wifi, an ipad or ipod. Sorry Android users. Make sure you have air drop enabled on your phone, and make sure your phone is open. If it all is then, when you click air drop it will ask to be downloaded to your phone. If this is all done correctly, the video should show up in your photos app on your phone.
From there you can upload it to Instagram. Make sure you can see the whole video, there should be a resize button on Instagram. When you get ready to share it make sure there is two things #headlinesoftheweek and #news7. Also make sure you tag the Northeast Kingdom, it will pop up as Sutton, but this helps to get our reach up.
Below is a video of all the steps mentioned above. There is no sound to it but it shows the steps and how to do everything. I hope this helps you for the future.
