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"2024 Approved Perfect Lighting Setup for Engaging YouTube Videos"
Perfect Lighting Setup for Engaging YouTube Videos
How To Light Your YouTube Video
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.
If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.
Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.
| Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting |
|---|
Part 1: Using Light You Already Have
Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.
1. Window Lighting
The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.
Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.
Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.
2. Home Lighting
Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.
Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).
Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.
Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.
Part 2: Home Studio Lighting
If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.
1. Light Control
The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.
2. 3-Point Lighting
The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).
Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.
To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.
Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.
3. 4-Point Lighting
As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.
What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.
For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .
Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora
Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.
If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.
Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.
| Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting |
|---|
Part 1: Using Light You Already Have
Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.
1. Window Lighting
The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.
Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.
Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.
2. Home Lighting
Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.
Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).
Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.
Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.
Part 2: Home Studio Lighting
If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.
1. Light Control
The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.
2. 3-Point Lighting
The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).
Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.
To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.
Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.
3. 4-Point Lighting
As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.
What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.
For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .
Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora
Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.
If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.
Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.
| Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting |
|---|
Part 1: Using Light You Already Have
Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.
1. Window Lighting
The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.
Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.
Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.
2. Home Lighting
Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.
Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).
Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.
Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.
Part 2: Home Studio Lighting
If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.
1. Light Control
The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.
2. 3-Point Lighting
The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).
Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.
To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.
Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.
3. 4-Point Lighting
As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.
What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.
For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .
Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora
Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
When it comes to sensitivity to light, no consumer-level camera sensor comes close in performance to the human eye. Many newbies to videography, though, don’t think about this when they use their camera indoors and discover that their recorded footage appears too dark.
If you want to use your camera indoors as many YouTubers do, you’ll need to have extra light. But the solution is not as simple as surrounding yourself with lamps that are all randomly placed.
Below, I’ll go into detail on how you can set up your lighting equipment to make your YouTube videos look good.
| Table of Contents Using Light You Already Have Window LightingHome Lighting Home Studio Lighting Light Control3-Point Lighting4-Point Lighting |
|---|
Part 1: Using Light You Already Have
Most beginner YouTubers light their videos with what they already have. That’s what I did to start as well. In the past, my video recording space consisted of natural sunlight coming from my window and ceiling light for times when the sunlight wasn’t strong enough.
1. Window Lighting
The best thing about window lighting is that it’s free. The worst thing about it is that it’s uncontrollable. The amount of light you get in your video can vary with all the changes in the weather.
Window lighting for me was especially difficult to work with because I live in a very rainy and cloudy city, Vancouver, Canada, where we pretty much just get three months of good sun.
Above are two freeze frames from one of Daniel’s past window-lit vlogs. Although these two frames are both from the same vlog, you can see that the image on the right looks brighter due to clearer skies at that moment. These varying amounts of light is what you will have to deal with if you choose to light your YouTube video with window lighting.
2. Home Lighting
Home lighting is another source of light that many new YouTubers use. In the past, when my window light wasn’t strong enough to light my video recording space, I would turn on the ceiling light.
Notice how the color of Daniel’s skin looks much more orange here (above) than the color of the skin in the two side-by-side window lighting examples? The side of the face also appears to look bluer. This all happened because he mixed up different color temperatures shining out of the two lights (cooler window light and warmer ceiling light).
Most home lighting is warmer in its color temperature. If you want to use your home lights without everything being orange-tinted, you’ll need to switch out your light bulbs for daytime LED light bulbs.
Ceiling lights are also typically situated in the center of a room in order to light an entire room evenly. This is not likely to be the best location for your filming video. Since the ceiling light was directly above the face in the above example, you can see harder shadows beneath his cheeks.
Part 2: Home Studio Lighting
If you rather not deal with all the window and home lighting challenges, you can set up studio lighting in your home.
1. Light Control
The first thing you’ll want to do to set up studio lighting in your home is to pick a room to film in and eliminate as much external lighting as you can. Use blinds, curtains, towels, or any thick fabric to block sunlight from shining into your room.
2. 3-Point Lighting
The most common setup for studio lighting is 3-point lighting. For this kind of lighting you’ll need three lights: a key light, a fill light, and a back light (also called a hair light).
Out of the three lights, the key light should be the brightest. When it is positioned to the left of you (as shown in the diagram above) your right side will have shadows.
To minimize the shadows on your right side, use a weaker light as a fill light. You don’t want your fill light to completely eliminate all your shadows or else your shot will look flat.
Lastly, a backlight positioned behind you can give an appealing highlight to the ends of your head and even help to separate your hair from blending into your background if both happen to be dark.
3. 4-Point Lighting
As a YouTuber, you may not only want yourself to be seen optimally with proper lighting, but you may also want your background to be seen optimally, especially if you’ve taken the time to decorate it for your audience.
What you’ll need to ensure that your background is sufficiently lit is 4-point lighting setup. The 4-point lighting setup is the same as a 3-point lighting setup, but with an additional light shining at your background.
For more information on lighting equipment, check out my Top 17 Video Lighting Equipment For YouTubers .
Touch Up YouTube Videos with Filmora
Filmora is one of the best video editing software for YouTube beginners to start the YouTube channel. So, if you find the lighting isn’t perfect after recording, you can use the Auto Color Enhancement feature in Filmora to adjust the color with one-click. Or, you can change the white balance, Light, color, and HSL manually. Filmora also features some presets and LUTs templates , which allows you to apply pre-programmed effects to video for color correction faster.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Improve Video Comprehensibility with Effective Use of Chapters in YouTube
How to Add Chapters to YouTube Videos
Richard Bennett
Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions
If you have seen chapter markers on YouTube of our official channel, you might be wondering how someone can create chapters on YouTube? What is the way to mark different parts of the videos, and how can you add markers to all the existing videos on YouTube? Don’t worry; this article will discuss everything about YouTube chapters that you need to know. Keep reading to find all the details and learn the step-by-step instructions to add chapters to your YouTube videos for better engagement.
- Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
- Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
- Part 3: Why Add Chapters to Videos?
- Part 4: When Add Chapters on YouTube?
- Part 5: Will Chapter Decrease Watching Time?
- Part 6: Video Chapter Adding Tips
- Part 7: Why YouTube Chapter is Not Working?
Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
YouTube video chapters are an excellent way to optimize your YouTube content. When you have chapters for your YouTube video, each chapter will have an individual preview. Chapters will break your YouTube video into multiple parts allowing your audience to have better context and information.
As per YouTube, chapters let the audience navigate better through videos. Chapters will let your audience watch different video parts, which will eventually lead to better engagement. If you want to organize your YouTube content, chapters are one of the best ways to go about it. By using labeled timestamps, your video will be divided into multiple sections. Your audience will be able to see the preview of the content and easily skip to the part they want to see within the video’s progress bar.
Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
If you are a YouTube creator and want to know how you can add chapters to your YouTube content, here’s what you need to do. Follow these instructions carefully:
Step 1: First things first, please sign in to your YouTube account.
Step 2: Select the video that you want to edit and add chapters.
Step 3: Click on the edit video option. This option will be there under the video.
Step 4: On the add details page, you will see the description box. Here, you need to add the list of titles and timestamps.
Please keep in mind that you must add the first timestamp with “00:00”. You will have to add a minimum of three timestamps with a minimum of 10 seconds for each chapter. Here is how it looks like in the description after published.
Part 3: Why YouTubers Should Add Chapters to videos?
There are two primary advantages of adding chapters to your YouTube videos. Apart from making your YouTube video look organized and neat, chapters will let you provide a better user experience to everyone watching your video because they will find all the information about your video faster and easier within a video. And the second benefit is that your YouTube video will show up in search results. This is a way to optimize your content for more users to find your content.
YouTube chapters are beneficial for both creators and viewers. On the progress bar, these clickable chapters can be added. This will allow a viewer to skip and scrub through a video quickly and skip to parts they actually want to watch.
This feature is quite helpful for videos that are pretty long. Chapters will let you segment the videos into important chapters so that the viewer can rewatch already watched chapters or skip to other chapters in the video. YouTube chapters have been recently added to this platform for better navigation and engagement.
Better User Experience for Users
Just like Google wants browsers to find what they are looking for when they add a keyword, YouTube also wants to help viewers find what they are looking for. Chapters can be immensely beneficial for extended content. For example, if you are uploading a video of your convert video, let the users jump straight to their favorite songs.
Even in tutorial video content, viewers will now have a chance to get straight to the main part of the video. With chapters being added, viewers will have an opportunity to decide whether they want to watch the whole video or not. They won’t have to keep skipping one part to another blindly. Chapters will allow them to find what they are looking for in an instant.
For Creators: Increased Visibility
If you know about the Google algorithm, you must be aware that it regularly changes its algorithm to let people find the information they are looking for easily. Adding chapters to your video will encourage Google to display them more often when someone searches for them, and this will include adding your videos to its featured snippets.
While adding chapters, you need to make sure that it is labeled with correct keywords, and it is clear and descriptive. YouTube videos are often showed as Google snippet when someone tries to find something on the search engine. Adding a chapter will let Google understand the content better, thereby letting your videos gain more search traffic.
Part 4: When should I add or not chapters on YouTube?
If you are wondering whether all videos on YouTube should have chapters, the answer to this is no. A two minutes long video won’t require chapters because it won’t make sense. Think about whether you would want your audience to have reduced watch time. Another thing to pay attention to is audience retention.
We mentioned earlier that adding chapters to long videos will be a good idea, but before you jump in and start adding chapters, you need to understand whether it will help you and should be done in your particular case?
If you are uploading a video on education, science and technology, how-to, news and politics, Q and A, and other similar videos, adding chapters will definitely help. In these kinds of videos, you will let your audience rewatch a section they liked the most over and over again.
However, if you are uploading music, entertainment, comedy, and film and animation videos, we will recommend not to add chapters because this will reduce the watch time.
Part 5: Do YouTube Video Chapters Decrease Channel Watch Time?
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding adding chapters to YouTube videos is whether it will reduce the watch time of a video. Video chapters are a pretty good feature and can enable your videos to engage with the viewers.
Since chapters allow your audience to skip through video content, they are not really watching the whole video, which can’t be suitable for audience retention! Here’s what we have to say to this: don’t put your 100% focus on watch time right now. Your focus should be creating informative and engaging content, which will keep your audience hooked to their screens. Even if you add chapters, if your audience doesn’t find it engaging, they will choose not to go on with the content.
Video chapters are a tiny part of the overall content. Chapters provide value to your audience, and you should try them. If you are uploading a concise video, animation video, funny video, and more, don’t add chapters.
Even some of the most watched videos on YouTube have chapters. Learn from them. These video makers could have thought about numbers rather than giving value to their audience, but they did just the opposite, and here they are with over a million views!
Part 6: Tips for adding chapters to YouTube video
Each video on YouTube is different, and that’s why there is no one-size-fits-all answer. There are some cases where you should not think about adding chapters at all. Whereas in other cases, you will have to experiment a bit before adding chapters.
Here are some tips that will help you.
Do Some Testing
Before adding chapters to a new video that you are thinking to upload, try adding chapters to an old video. See what happens to that video. Have the views increased? How about average view duration? Track these metrics first, and then try adding chapters to your upcoming videos to benefit from videos. Along with these metrics, you will also have to evaluate if adding chapters decreases or increases the watch time and number of views.
Label Your Chapters Using Keywords
Another thing to do that will help you have better traction is using a good keyword strategy. Look at what people are using while searching for content, which is similar to yours? Using names based on keywords that have better search volume will help your videos to rank higher.
Part 7: Why Video Chapter is Not working? [Problem solved]
There are a few mandatory things that you need to do before adding chapters to your YouTube video. Here are some of the common reasons why the video chapter is not working. See if any one of them is true in your case, and rectify it right away.
- Your video doesn’t have the 00:00 timestamp.
- Your video has less than three chapters.
- You have added a chapter that is less than 10 seconds long.
- You have not added the timestamps in chronological order.
- Rather than using “:” you have entered “.” for timecodes.
- If your channel has active copyright strikes, video chapters won’t work.
- Your channel doesn’t have more than 1k subscribers.
- Your video chapters are not suitable for some viewers.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions
If you have seen chapter markers on YouTube of our official channel, you might be wondering how someone can create chapters on YouTube? What is the way to mark different parts of the videos, and how can you add markers to all the existing videos on YouTube? Don’t worry; this article will discuss everything about YouTube chapters that you need to know. Keep reading to find all the details and learn the step-by-step instructions to add chapters to your YouTube videos for better engagement.
- Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
- Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
- Part 3: Why Add Chapters to Videos?
- Part 4: When Add Chapters on YouTube?
- Part 5: Will Chapter Decrease Watching Time?
- Part 6: Video Chapter Adding Tips
- Part 7: Why YouTube Chapter is Not Working?
Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
YouTube video chapters are an excellent way to optimize your YouTube content. When you have chapters for your YouTube video, each chapter will have an individual preview. Chapters will break your YouTube video into multiple parts allowing your audience to have better context and information.
As per YouTube, chapters let the audience navigate better through videos. Chapters will let your audience watch different video parts, which will eventually lead to better engagement. If you want to organize your YouTube content, chapters are one of the best ways to go about it. By using labeled timestamps, your video will be divided into multiple sections. Your audience will be able to see the preview of the content and easily skip to the part they want to see within the video’s progress bar.
Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
If you are a YouTube creator and want to know how you can add chapters to your YouTube content, here’s what you need to do. Follow these instructions carefully:
Step 1: First things first, please sign in to your YouTube account.
Step 2: Select the video that you want to edit and add chapters.
Step 3: Click on the edit video option. This option will be there under the video.
Step 4: On the add details page, you will see the description box. Here, you need to add the list of titles and timestamps.
Please keep in mind that you must add the first timestamp with “00:00”. You will have to add a minimum of three timestamps with a minimum of 10 seconds for each chapter. Here is how it looks like in the description after published.
Part 3: Why YouTubers Should Add Chapters to videos?
There are two primary advantages of adding chapters to your YouTube videos. Apart from making your YouTube video look organized and neat, chapters will let you provide a better user experience to everyone watching your video because they will find all the information about your video faster and easier within a video. And the second benefit is that your YouTube video will show up in search results. This is a way to optimize your content for more users to find your content.
YouTube chapters are beneficial for both creators and viewers. On the progress bar, these clickable chapters can be added. This will allow a viewer to skip and scrub through a video quickly and skip to parts they actually want to watch.
This feature is quite helpful for videos that are pretty long. Chapters will let you segment the videos into important chapters so that the viewer can rewatch already watched chapters or skip to other chapters in the video. YouTube chapters have been recently added to this platform for better navigation and engagement.
Better User Experience for Users
Just like Google wants browsers to find what they are looking for when they add a keyword, YouTube also wants to help viewers find what they are looking for. Chapters can be immensely beneficial for extended content. For example, if you are uploading a video of your convert video, let the users jump straight to their favorite songs.
Even in tutorial video content, viewers will now have a chance to get straight to the main part of the video. With chapters being added, viewers will have an opportunity to decide whether they want to watch the whole video or not. They won’t have to keep skipping one part to another blindly. Chapters will allow them to find what they are looking for in an instant.
For Creators: Increased Visibility
If you know about the Google algorithm, you must be aware that it regularly changes its algorithm to let people find the information they are looking for easily. Adding chapters to your video will encourage Google to display them more often when someone searches for them, and this will include adding your videos to its featured snippets.
While adding chapters, you need to make sure that it is labeled with correct keywords, and it is clear and descriptive. YouTube videos are often showed as Google snippet when someone tries to find something on the search engine. Adding a chapter will let Google understand the content better, thereby letting your videos gain more search traffic.
Part 4: When should I add or not chapters on YouTube?
If you are wondering whether all videos on YouTube should have chapters, the answer to this is no. A two minutes long video won’t require chapters because it won’t make sense. Think about whether you would want your audience to have reduced watch time. Another thing to pay attention to is audience retention.
We mentioned earlier that adding chapters to long videos will be a good idea, but before you jump in and start adding chapters, you need to understand whether it will help you and should be done in your particular case?
If you are uploading a video on education, science and technology, how-to, news and politics, Q and A, and other similar videos, adding chapters will definitely help. In these kinds of videos, you will let your audience rewatch a section they liked the most over and over again.
However, if you are uploading music, entertainment, comedy, and film and animation videos, we will recommend not to add chapters because this will reduce the watch time.
Part 5: Do YouTube Video Chapters Decrease Channel Watch Time?
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding adding chapters to YouTube videos is whether it will reduce the watch time of a video. Video chapters are a pretty good feature and can enable your videos to engage with the viewers.
Since chapters allow your audience to skip through video content, they are not really watching the whole video, which can’t be suitable for audience retention! Here’s what we have to say to this: don’t put your 100% focus on watch time right now. Your focus should be creating informative and engaging content, which will keep your audience hooked to their screens. Even if you add chapters, if your audience doesn’t find it engaging, they will choose not to go on with the content.
Video chapters are a tiny part of the overall content. Chapters provide value to your audience, and you should try them. If you are uploading a concise video, animation video, funny video, and more, don’t add chapters.
Even some of the most watched videos on YouTube have chapters. Learn from them. These video makers could have thought about numbers rather than giving value to their audience, but they did just the opposite, and here they are with over a million views!
Part 6: Tips for adding chapters to YouTube video
Each video on YouTube is different, and that’s why there is no one-size-fits-all answer. There are some cases where you should not think about adding chapters at all. Whereas in other cases, you will have to experiment a bit before adding chapters.
Here are some tips that will help you.
Do Some Testing
Before adding chapters to a new video that you are thinking to upload, try adding chapters to an old video. See what happens to that video. Have the views increased? How about average view duration? Track these metrics first, and then try adding chapters to your upcoming videos to benefit from videos. Along with these metrics, you will also have to evaluate if adding chapters decreases or increases the watch time and number of views.
Label Your Chapters Using Keywords
Another thing to do that will help you have better traction is using a good keyword strategy. Look at what people are using while searching for content, which is similar to yours? Using names based on keywords that have better search volume will help your videos to rank higher.
Part 7: Why Video Chapter is Not working? [Problem solved]
There are a few mandatory things that you need to do before adding chapters to your YouTube video. Here are some of the common reasons why the video chapter is not working. See if any one of them is true in your case, and rectify it right away.
- Your video doesn’t have the 00:00 timestamp.
- Your video has less than three chapters.
- You have added a chapter that is less than 10 seconds long.
- You have not added the timestamps in chronological order.
- Rather than using “:” you have entered “.” for timecodes.
- If your channel has active copyright strikes, video chapters won’t work.
- Your channel doesn’t have more than 1k subscribers.
- Your video chapters are not suitable for some viewers.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions
If you have seen chapter markers on YouTube of our official channel, you might be wondering how someone can create chapters on YouTube? What is the way to mark different parts of the videos, and how can you add markers to all the existing videos on YouTube? Don’t worry; this article will discuss everything about YouTube chapters that you need to know. Keep reading to find all the details and learn the step-by-step instructions to add chapters to your YouTube videos for better engagement.
- Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
- Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
- Part 3: Why Add Chapters to Videos?
- Part 4: When Add Chapters on YouTube?
- Part 5: Will Chapter Decrease Watching Time?
- Part 6: Video Chapter Adding Tips
- Part 7: Why YouTube Chapter is Not Working?
Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
YouTube video chapters are an excellent way to optimize your YouTube content. When you have chapters for your YouTube video, each chapter will have an individual preview. Chapters will break your YouTube video into multiple parts allowing your audience to have better context and information.
As per YouTube, chapters let the audience navigate better through videos. Chapters will let your audience watch different video parts, which will eventually lead to better engagement. If you want to organize your YouTube content, chapters are one of the best ways to go about it. By using labeled timestamps, your video will be divided into multiple sections. Your audience will be able to see the preview of the content and easily skip to the part they want to see within the video’s progress bar.
Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
If you are a YouTube creator and want to know how you can add chapters to your YouTube content, here’s what you need to do. Follow these instructions carefully:
Step 1: First things first, please sign in to your YouTube account.
Step 2: Select the video that you want to edit and add chapters.
Step 3: Click on the edit video option. This option will be there under the video.
Step 4: On the add details page, you will see the description box. Here, you need to add the list of titles and timestamps.
Please keep in mind that you must add the first timestamp with “00:00”. You will have to add a minimum of three timestamps with a minimum of 10 seconds for each chapter. Here is how it looks like in the description after published.
Part 3: Why YouTubers Should Add Chapters to videos?
There are two primary advantages of adding chapters to your YouTube videos. Apart from making your YouTube video look organized and neat, chapters will let you provide a better user experience to everyone watching your video because they will find all the information about your video faster and easier within a video. And the second benefit is that your YouTube video will show up in search results. This is a way to optimize your content for more users to find your content.
YouTube chapters are beneficial for both creators and viewers. On the progress bar, these clickable chapters can be added. This will allow a viewer to skip and scrub through a video quickly and skip to parts they actually want to watch.
This feature is quite helpful for videos that are pretty long. Chapters will let you segment the videos into important chapters so that the viewer can rewatch already watched chapters or skip to other chapters in the video. YouTube chapters have been recently added to this platform for better navigation and engagement.
Better User Experience for Users
Just like Google wants browsers to find what they are looking for when they add a keyword, YouTube also wants to help viewers find what they are looking for. Chapters can be immensely beneficial for extended content. For example, if you are uploading a video of your convert video, let the users jump straight to their favorite songs.
Even in tutorial video content, viewers will now have a chance to get straight to the main part of the video. With chapters being added, viewers will have an opportunity to decide whether they want to watch the whole video or not. They won’t have to keep skipping one part to another blindly. Chapters will allow them to find what they are looking for in an instant.
For Creators: Increased Visibility
If you know about the Google algorithm, you must be aware that it regularly changes its algorithm to let people find the information they are looking for easily. Adding chapters to your video will encourage Google to display them more often when someone searches for them, and this will include adding your videos to its featured snippets.
While adding chapters, you need to make sure that it is labeled with correct keywords, and it is clear and descriptive. YouTube videos are often showed as Google snippet when someone tries to find something on the search engine. Adding a chapter will let Google understand the content better, thereby letting your videos gain more search traffic.
Part 4: When should I add or not chapters on YouTube?
If you are wondering whether all videos on YouTube should have chapters, the answer to this is no. A two minutes long video won’t require chapters because it won’t make sense. Think about whether you would want your audience to have reduced watch time. Another thing to pay attention to is audience retention.
We mentioned earlier that adding chapters to long videos will be a good idea, but before you jump in and start adding chapters, you need to understand whether it will help you and should be done in your particular case?
If you are uploading a video on education, science and technology, how-to, news and politics, Q and A, and other similar videos, adding chapters will definitely help. In these kinds of videos, you will let your audience rewatch a section they liked the most over and over again.
However, if you are uploading music, entertainment, comedy, and film and animation videos, we will recommend not to add chapters because this will reduce the watch time.
Part 5: Do YouTube Video Chapters Decrease Channel Watch Time?
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding adding chapters to YouTube videos is whether it will reduce the watch time of a video. Video chapters are a pretty good feature and can enable your videos to engage with the viewers.
Since chapters allow your audience to skip through video content, they are not really watching the whole video, which can’t be suitable for audience retention! Here’s what we have to say to this: don’t put your 100% focus on watch time right now. Your focus should be creating informative and engaging content, which will keep your audience hooked to their screens. Even if you add chapters, if your audience doesn’t find it engaging, they will choose not to go on with the content.
Video chapters are a tiny part of the overall content. Chapters provide value to your audience, and you should try them. If you are uploading a concise video, animation video, funny video, and more, don’t add chapters.
Even some of the most watched videos on YouTube have chapters. Learn from them. These video makers could have thought about numbers rather than giving value to their audience, but they did just the opposite, and here they are with over a million views!
Part 6: Tips for adding chapters to YouTube video
Each video on YouTube is different, and that’s why there is no one-size-fits-all answer. There are some cases where you should not think about adding chapters at all. Whereas in other cases, you will have to experiment a bit before adding chapters.
Here are some tips that will help you.
Do Some Testing
Before adding chapters to a new video that you are thinking to upload, try adding chapters to an old video. See what happens to that video. Have the views increased? How about average view duration? Track these metrics first, and then try adding chapters to your upcoming videos to benefit from videos. Along with these metrics, you will also have to evaluate if adding chapters decreases or increases the watch time and number of views.
Label Your Chapters Using Keywords
Another thing to do that will help you have better traction is using a good keyword strategy. Look at what people are using while searching for content, which is similar to yours? Using names based on keywords that have better search volume will help your videos to rank higher.
Part 7: Why Video Chapter is Not working? [Problem solved]
There are a few mandatory things that you need to do before adding chapters to your YouTube video. Here are some of the common reasons why the video chapter is not working. See if any one of them is true in your case, and rectify it right away.
- Your video doesn’t have the 00:00 timestamp.
- Your video has less than three chapters.
- You have added a chapter that is less than 10 seconds long.
- You have not added the timestamps in chronological order.
- Rather than using “:” you have entered “.” for timecodes.
- If your channel has active copyright strikes, video chapters won’t work.
- Your channel doesn’t have more than 1k subscribers.
- Your video chapters are not suitable for some viewers.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions
If you have seen chapter markers on YouTube of our official channel, you might be wondering how someone can create chapters on YouTube? What is the way to mark different parts of the videos, and how can you add markers to all the existing videos on YouTube? Don’t worry; this article will discuss everything about YouTube chapters that you need to know. Keep reading to find all the details and learn the step-by-step instructions to add chapters to your YouTube videos for better engagement.
- Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
- Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
- Part 3: Why Add Chapters to Videos?
- Part 4: When Add Chapters on YouTube?
- Part 5: Will Chapter Decrease Watching Time?
- Part 6: Video Chapter Adding Tips
- Part 7: Why YouTube Chapter is Not Working?
Part 1: What Are YouTube Chapters?
YouTube video chapters are an excellent way to optimize your YouTube content. When you have chapters for your YouTube video, each chapter will have an individual preview. Chapters will break your YouTube video into multiple parts allowing your audience to have better context and information.
As per YouTube, chapters let the audience navigate better through videos. Chapters will let your audience watch different video parts, which will eventually lead to better engagement. If you want to organize your YouTube content, chapters are one of the best ways to go about it. By using labeled timestamps, your video will be divided into multiple sections. Your audience will be able to see the preview of the content and easily skip to the part they want to see within the video’s progress bar.
Part 2: How to Add Chapter to YouTube Video Progress Bar?
If you are a YouTube creator and want to know how you can add chapters to your YouTube content, here’s what you need to do. Follow these instructions carefully:
Step 1: First things first, please sign in to your YouTube account.
Step 2: Select the video that you want to edit and add chapters.
Step 3: Click on the edit video option. This option will be there under the video.
Step 4: On the add details page, you will see the description box. Here, you need to add the list of titles and timestamps.
Please keep in mind that you must add the first timestamp with “00:00”. You will have to add a minimum of three timestamps with a minimum of 10 seconds for each chapter. Here is how it looks like in the description after published.
Part 3: Why YouTubers Should Add Chapters to videos?
There are two primary advantages of adding chapters to your YouTube videos. Apart from making your YouTube video look organized and neat, chapters will let you provide a better user experience to everyone watching your video because they will find all the information about your video faster and easier within a video. And the second benefit is that your YouTube video will show up in search results. This is a way to optimize your content for more users to find your content.
YouTube chapters are beneficial for both creators and viewers. On the progress bar, these clickable chapters can be added. This will allow a viewer to skip and scrub through a video quickly and skip to parts they actually want to watch.
This feature is quite helpful for videos that are pretty long. Chapters will let you segment the videos into important chapters so that the viewer can rewatch already watched chapters or skip to other chapters in the video. YouTube chapters have been recently added to this platform for better navigation and engagement.
Better User Experience for Users
Just like Google wants browsers to find what they are looking for when they add a keyword, YouTube also wants to help viewers find what they are looking for. Chapters can be immensely beneficial for extended content. For example, if you are uploading a video of your convert video, let the users jump straight to their favorite songs.
Even in tutorial video content, viewers will now have a chance to get straight to the main part of the video. With chapters being added, viewers will have an opportunity to decide whether they want to watch the whole video or not. They won’t have to keep skipping one part to another blindly. Chapters will allow them to find what they are looking for in an instant.
For Creators: Increased Visibility
If you know about the Google algorithm, you must be aware that it regularly changes its algorithm to let people find the information they are looking for easily. Adding chapters to your video will encourage Google to display them more often when someone searches for them, and this will include adding your videos to its featured snippets.
While adding chapters, you need to make sure that it is labeled with correct keywords, and it is clear and descriptive. YouTube videos are often showed as Google snippet when someone tries to find something on the search engine. Adding a chapter will let Google understand the content better, thereby letting your videos gain more search traffic.
Part 4: When should I add or not chapters on YouTube?
If you are wondering whether all videos on YouTube should have chapters, the answer to this is no. A two minutes long video won’t require chapters because it won’t make sense. Think about whether you would want your audience to have reduced watch time. Another thing to pay attention to is audience retention.
We mentioned earlier that adding chapters to long videos will be a good idea, but before you jump in and start adding chapters, you need to understand whether it will help you and should be done in your particular case?
If you are uploading a video on education, science and technology, how-to, news and politics, Q and A, and other similar videos, adding chapters will definitely help. In these kinds of videos, you will let your audience rewatch a section they liked the most over and over again.
However, if you are uploading music, entertainment, comedy, and film and animation videos, we will recommend not to add chapters because this will reduce the watch time.
Part 5: Do YouTube Video Chapters Decrease Channel Watch Time?
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding adding chapters to YouTube videos is whether it will reduce the watch time of a video. Video chapters are a pretty good feature and can enable your videos to engage with the viewers.
Since chapters allow your audience to skip through video content, they are not really watching the whole video, which can’t be suitable for audience retention! Here’s what we have to say to this: don’t put your 100% focus on watch time right now. Your focus should be creating informative and engaging content, which will keep your audience hooked to their screens. Even if you add chapters, if your audience doesn’t find it engaging, they will choose not to go on with the content.
Video chapters are a tiny part of the overall content. Chapters provide value to your audience, and you should try them. If you are uploading a concise video, animation video, funny video, and more, don’t add chapters.
Even some of the most watched videos on YouTube have chapters. Learn from them. These video makers could have thought about numbers rather than giving value to their audience, but they did just the opposite, and here they are with over a million views!
Part 6: Tips for adding chapters to YouTube video
Each video on YouTube is different, and that’s why there is no one-size-fits-all answer. There are some cases where you should not think about adding chapters at all. Whereas in other cases, you will have to experiment a bit before adding chapters.
Here are some tips that will help you.
Do Some Testing
Before adding chapters to a new video that you are thinking to upload, try adding chapters to an old video. See what happens to that video. Have the views increased? How about average view duration? Track these metrics first, and then try adding chapters to your upcoming videos to benefit from videos. Along with these metrics, you will also have to evaluate if adding chapters decreases or increases the watch time and number of views.
Label Your Chapters Using Keywords
Another thing to do that will help you have better traction is using a good keyword strategy. Look at what people are using while searching for content, which is similar to yours? Using names based on keywords that have better search volume will help your videos to rank higher.
Part 7: Why Video Chapter is Not working? [Problem solved]
There are a few mandatory things that you need to do before adding chapters to your YouTube video. Here are some of the common reasons why the video chapter is not working. See if any one of them is true in your case, and rectify it right away.
- Your video doesn’t have the 00:00 timestamp.
- Your video has less than three chapters.
- You have added a chapter that is less than 10 seconds long.
- You have not added the timestamps in chronological order.
- Rather than using “:” you have entered “.” for timecodes.
- If your channel has active copyright strikes, video chapters won’t work.
- Your channel doesn’t have more than 1k subscribers.
- Your video chapters are not suitable for some viewers.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
- Title: "2024 Approved Perfect Lighting Setup for Engaging YouTube Videos"
- Author: Thomas
- Created at : 2024-05-31 12:42:31
- Updated at : 2024-06-01 12:42:31
- Link: https://youtube-help.techidaily.com/2024-approved-perfect-lighting-setup-for-engaging-youtube-videos/
- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
