The Filmmaker’s Toolkit: Essential Tips for YouTube Creators with Smartphones

How To Make YouTube Videos on Your Smartphone

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

It is fun to be able to record a vlog entry whenever inspiration strikes you, and your smartphone is a great choice for recording on the go. Smartphones have really great cameras, and you probably always have your phone with you. You can even post directly from your phone to YouTube!

How To Make YouTube Videos on Your Smartphone

Making a video on your smartphone is similar to making a video with any other camera in a lot of ways. There are also a lot of ways in which it is different. You always have to watch out for camera shake, for example, but it can be even harder to control when you’re walking around shooting on your mobile device. Here are three things to keep in mind when vlogging with your smartphone.

Part 1. Keep It Steady

For a nice, smooth, shot consider resting your hand up on a railing, table, or anything else that will keep it steady while you film. Camera shake is always distracting to viewers, and smartphone videos are notoriously unstable because you are almost always holding your phone in your hand.

There is equipment you can use to cut out camera shake. You can get a smartphone mount for your tripod, or you can even stabilize your phone using a selfie stick. Many of the very newest smartphones have built in hardware called ‘OIS’ – optical image stabilization – that helps reduce shakiness.

Part 2. Be Heard

You have a lot to say, so make sure people can hear you say it! Smartphones do not tend to have very good microphones built in (neither do most cameras), so try to vlog from somewhere without a lot of background noise. It will help a lot if your voice has nothing to compete with.

Ideally, you should get an external mic to record your voice while you vlog on your phone. There are shotgun mics you can plug directly into the audio jack on your phone which will record great audio, or you can get a high quality MP3 recorder and carry it around in your pocket.

Part 3. Tilt Your Phone

When recording on the spur of the moment with your smartphone it is easy to automatically hold it the same way you would while texting or taking a selfie. If you record a video with your phone held so that it is tall – a ‘portrait’ shot – then your video will have thick black bars on either side when you post it to YouTube. If you tilt your phone so that it is wide you will record a ‘landscape’ shot, which will match the dimensions YouTube plays videos in.

The exception to this is videos you plan to post on Instagram. On Instagram everything is cropped into a square, and it is easier to imagine what your footage will look like as a square when you hold your phone strait up. Simply focus on the top of your screen and treat a portion of the bottom of your screen as if it is not there. When you hold your phone horizontally you need to try and estimate how much of the middle of your screen will make it in to your Instagram video, which can be awkward.

Those are the three main things to keep in mind, but if you are planning on posting directly to YouTube from your phone then you should also make sure you have a mobile app you can use to edit it first.

Filmora is a full-feature video editing app available for both Android and iPhone operating systems. With Filmora you can make awesome YouTube videos quickly using Filmora’s one-touch themes, or take a little bit more time personalizing your creation. One-touch themes are sets of related features, like filters and animated titles, which you can apply to your videos all at once. Filmora’s simple interface also makes it easy to apply filters, titles, overlays, transitions, and even royalty free music to your project one at a time.

After you’ve edited your video in Filmora you can post it directly to YouTube or other social media sites right from the app.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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