Video Tips for Content Creators

What I have learned

August 16, 2026 | 7 minutes

Last year, I created a course on scripting in Blender. As someone already with a full-time job and a new baby, it was a huge undertaking. But I’m really proud of the final result.

As part of the process, I had the pleasure of working with Kent Trammell and getting feedback from him and others. Their feedback made a world of difference in the quality of my recordings, the edit, and the final product. Let alone how my tutorials look and sound now vs just a few years ago.

I shared a tips article about audio. Let me do the same for video now.

Camera Setup

What kinds of cameras, you ask? Webcams with 1080p resolution are perfectly fine. 4K cameras are crisper, but it also means bigger video files, more hard drive space, and more processing power required for video editing. But most cheap webcams or point-and-shoot cameras will be perfectly fine (remember when people had cameras that weren’t their phone? *sigh*)

Placement

Some creators hoist a camera on its own stand, or on top of their monitor. Anywhere with a good angle of you, that fills most of the frame, is fine. Keep your head in the upper half of the frame, without cropping the top of your head.

As you get more comfortable, you can record different camera angles or locations. It can make videos feel far more dynamic and engaging.

Lighting

If your video footage is grainy, you likely need to add more light to the room than a new camera. So make sure you have lots and lots of light.

• Natural soft lighting is king for faces. If you got big windows, use them! Translucent curtains can help soften it.
• Cheap bright lamps include therapy lamps or ring lights. Thanks to remote work, soft lights that fit on your desk or screen are much more common.
• Light yourself a little to the side, a little above your head if possible. Lights below the head tends to look more surreal or menacing. Lights too high may cast shadows over your eyes (so avoid turning on ceiling lights, if you can help it). I put a lamp by the window as a key light if it’s not a bright day. Then I add the ring light or soft light, off to the other side, to fill in shadows on my face.

Above all, make sure there’s light in your eyes. You’re not dead. Yet.

Buying lights used is a great way to go. They’re already cheap, easy to test, and people often have too many laying around. I recently bought one from a fellow artist on Instagram (shout-out to Daisy for letting me buy hers).

Recording

System requirements

If you’re recording directly from your computer, you’ll need a decent PC. Most midrange ones will work fine. Recording to a standalone camera is a common workaround.

A good CPU and plenty of hard drive space are the only real requirements. Ideally have a graphics card to relieve your CPU from doing all the work, but you don’t need a super-duper RTX it’s-over-9000 card either.

Note this is also dependent on the complexity of your videos. If they’re 4K and 60+fps, you better have good graphics hardware. For 1080p 30fps, your computer will feel less of a demand..

I have a 1440p ultrawide HDR monitor, but I only record a cropped 1080p portion of my screen in SDR. It’s easier to edit, and takes up a lot less storage space. Tutorials rarely need more resolution than 1080p.

Screencasting

The famous Screencast Keys Blender add-on can cast keypresses to the screen for users to follow along. However, my content frequently works outside 3D view. Even in Blender, I switch workspaces around constantly. In these cases, it’s easier to handle this outside Blender.

There are lots of third-party apps to do this, especially on Linux. On Windows, I use Carnac to screencast keys in a corner of the screen. It’s on the older side; I’m sure there’s other good ones too.

The nice thing about screencasting outside Blender is, with the right screen setup, you can even edit them in post. I put mine over a dark or black part of the screen, so I can crop it, set its blend mode to Add for easy transparency. This allows me to put it wherever I want, or even move it mid-video. I also add a gradient so as older keys “scroll” away, they also become less prominent. Easy indicator of which key presses are old vs new. Shout-out to Kent Trammell for these tips in particular.

OBS

I use OBS to record video. It’s free open source software.

Practically every creator uses it at this point. Livestreamers. YouTube creators. Everyone.

But be aware of what is seen onscreen. Your files, folders, web browser bookmarks. Be aware. Having more than one monitor or only recording part of one screen makes this easier to crop out or move outside the recording area.

You can always edit stuff out. Unless you are livestreaming. Then be very careful. There’s no shame in swapping to a view where that’s just your face, so you can safely adjust everything on your screen before showing it again.

For extra editing flexibility, make your OBS canvas twice as big (in width or height) and fit both your camera and screen footages side-by-side. Then, you’ll have both video sources, in sync, within the same file. You can even put your microphone and computer audio in that same file as separate audio tracks, allowing you to mute each as needed. I’ve started using this in my newer videos, and it is such a timesaver. OBS is genuinely amazing.

Oh, and use UI scaling to make app interfaces bigger than normal. It can be annoying for us creators, but it lets viewers see our screens clearly even if they’re watching from a phone in 720p. Blender has its own setting for this in the preferences.

Editing

Now that we have recorded good video, let’s capitalize on it in the video editor.

Your Face

If your face will be overlaid on Blender or some other app, position it overlay carefully. Make sure anyone following along can see all they need to. Crop your webcam’s video so it’s just your face.

Always be aware of visual boredom. If the camera angle doesn’t change for a while, try having the edit occasionally switch between different layouts: screen + your face, to just your face, or just the screen, or to other helpful animated graphics. If it’s just your head talking for a long time, do slight changes in the zoom. This helps with engagement. Watch commentary videos for reference, as they do this often.

General Editing Tips

Some of this can be done in the recording stage. But you often make the decision to keep it in here anyway.

• Regarding tutorials, the best advice I’ve heard is: if it takes more than a minute to fix, then redo it. Otherwise, keep it in. Don’t waste the viewer’s time too much on a bad solution, but fixing issues within the tutorial is a great way of showing how to problem solve.
• Shortform tutorials may only have time to focus on the how. But anything longer should also include the why. Education is not just about which buttons to press. It’s understanding the buttons too.
• Keep intros relatively short. Shortform content intros are often less than 15 or even 5 seconds. For my long-form tutorials, I avoid going over 30 seconds, a minute at most. “Hook” the viewer, summarize what you are doing, and dive in. Caveats and “important notes” can always be weaved into the middle.
  • Any intro animations should also be quick. Marques Brownlee’s and Corridor Crew’s is about five seconds each. Perfect amount of time that it could be reasonably skipped, but short enough that most will tolerate letting it finish.
• Viewers often leave videos the moment they can tell the main content is done. So keep outros quick and simple. Thank the viewer and invite them to do something:
  • Subscribe, like, and comment
  • Watch another video of yours (which can trigger the YouTube algorithm that they want to watch more of your content)
  • Follow you on another service, like Twitch, Patreon or Ko-Fi
• Try to keep some of the “you” in there, even your mess-ups. For a long time, I removed jokes I made, funny-awkward moments, and whatnot. And yet, I love watching creators with their weird jokes or moments kept in the video. It is really vulnerable to do. So do it. Keep you in there. Yes. Because it may not stop us from watching your video, and you will feel more like yourself as a creator.

Automate all this!

Don’t leave it up to chance.

• If you have the space, curate part of your room or housing just for recording. If possible, let it be left untouched. That reduces manual setup. It lets you just walk in, check the audio and video, and start recording quickly.
• Create a separate, private profile and shortcut for your web browser. Leave it empty,without all your bookmarks. So you can have a “content creator” or “livestream” only browser profile that doesn’t show your personal stuff.
• You can customize your own desktop shortcuts for Blender as well. I show how in a tutorial video. You can enable things like a “factory reset” mode to not load in personal user preferences, set offline/online mode, or run custom Python scripts, so it can set the display scale for you.

That’s it! Like my audio article, I will take any comments or tips and update or correct this as needed.