5 easy steps to creating your @Appstore preview video

We all want our apps to get downloaded millions of times, and we want to stand out in the App Store. The App Store is a super competitive ecosystem and you’ll need every edge possible to get your app noticed. This is why I highly recommend a video for your app, I know this sounds intimidating but it’s really not. I am going to share with you a really basic template to create app store videos for all the right resolutions. Once you get the hang of things I am sure you’ll be making some really cool looking videos in no time at all.

Step 1: Storyboard it

Honestly all I do is play with my app a little at first, remember you only get 30 seconds so it needs to get right to the point, don’t show things that don’t matter (loading, input field..etc) skip to the meat and potatoes of your awesome app. (Keep in mind, Apple adds 5 seconds to your video for a poster frame)

Step 2: Film your app

Ok, here is where the fun starts.

>Plug your iPhone into the lightening cable and connect it to your iMac.

>Go into Launchpad>Quicktime Player>File>New Movie recording.

Once this opens up make sure you copy my settings as shown by clicking on the chevron next to the red dot.

Awesome! you’re all set up, now you can press record, and start filming your app, don’t worry about loading bars, form fields..etc this can be edited out later. Use your app from a fresh experience (new user) and film the whole flow of the main thing your app does, or if its a game, play a bunch of different levels so you can edit them together. (Protip: go into your phone settings and turn off notifications, nothing worse then text messages and tweets popping up while your filming)

Once you feel you have some good material on your app saved, now you can do some editing to make it come together.

Step 3: Editing your video

Open iMovie>File>New App Preview.

Now follow this quick video I made to see how I do things..(I am drag & dropping video files form my desk top)

Step 4 Exporting your video

This is where Apple and iMovie drop the ball, in the iTunes Dev library it clearly states this :

But in iMovie you only get this option for resolution:

We need 2 sizes, 1080x1920(iPhone 5,6+) and 1334x750 (iPhone6) so you need to do this: Export this original video as is (1080 x 1920) using App Preview. The save button is in the top right, it will open a box with save options that looks like the image on the left.

Next you’re going to save another copy using the File save option, not the App Preview option. and you want to save this resolution as 4K. (you’ll see why in a second)

So now you have 2 videos, one 4K giant ass video resolution of 3840x2160 and another video(1920x1080)that is already set to upload to your iTunes connect account where your app lives.

Step 5: Hacks that will save your ass

Download a free tool called Handbreak this is an open-sourced video transcoder, I won’t get into the details and confuse you about video transcoding so here is exactly what to do. (This is why we needed the 4K video, Handbreak can not scale up video formats when transcoding, so you need a bigger video to downsize it perfectly.)

Once installed, open it up, and hit “Source” to add your 4K video, once the video is added do this: Click on “Picture Settings” (TV icon) on the top right, and then you’ll see this little settings box.

Change the width and height to get you 1334x750 then…. change the anamorphic settings to none, or it will steal a pixel and make it 1333x750 resolution.

Then close the settings box.

Now hit the green “Start” icon that has a play icon for some reason, now it’s saved to the right resolution.. DONE. you can now drag and drop them into your app store pages with no issues. ( 3,5 inch is not video supported in the store)

Hope to see your videos, here is my new one I just made for Banana App

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