Long gone are the days when the quality of mobile videos was far from perfect. Today’s smartphones have great cameras. Well, not as great as professional high-end video equipment but still quite good even for professional-quality videos.
In addition to a good camera on your smartphone, you also need to know how to make the most of it. Here are some tips for you to improve the quality and shoot better mobile videos.
1. Don’t Rely Too Much on Editing the Video Later
While there are many good video editors for Android, iPhone, or the desktop, don’t rely too much on this. Even the best video editor can’t compensate for poor lighting, blurry images, or chopped sound. If you don’t shoot a decent video, it rarely makes sense to waste hours editing it – you might improve it a bit, but it will still be subpar.
2. Take the Time to Study Your Camera’s Settings and Presets
Most, if not all cameras, come with presets. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and learn the hard way how to set your camera, just use the presets. Presets vary depending on your camera model, but generally they include video stabilization, lighting settings, and more.
3. Shoot Horizontally, Not Vertically
One of the most irritating mistakes even professionals make is to shoot vertically. Sure, there are cases when you need to shoot vertically, e.g. when you shoot a full-size video of a human, but aside from this, vertical shooting isn’t justified.
I guess it’s more comfortable and natural to hold the smartphone vertically, not only for calls and browsing but also for shooting. However, a video shot vertically doesn’t look well when played on a larger device, such as a computer. Computer screens, TVs, etc. are landscape, not portrait, and vertical videos don’t use the space properly – you leave quite a lot of unused space on the sides. You can make some edits, such as to add an overlay at the sides, but it’s still wasted space.
4. Use Zooming as a Last Resort Only
Zooming is a tempting option to make your videos larger, but this is usually at the expense of quality. Even the best cameras don’t handle zooming too well. In the best case you produce blurry videos. If you need a more detailed shot, you should get closer to the object and shoot from there rather than rely on zooming technology to add detail for you.
5. Get a Tripod, Stabilizer, Mount, Etc.
The human hand is imperfect when it comes to holding a camera steady. If you want to greatly improve your videos by eliminating blurriness due to the tremble of your hand, get a tripod, stabilizer, or a mount for your device. Some of these devices are quite expensive, but there are many affordable ones, such as this tripod for any smartphone.
6. Don’t Neglect the Audio
A video is a combination of images and audio, right? Images might be the more attractive part, but audio isn’t to be neglected. It’s really annoying when you have to listen to chopped audio, muttered words, irritating voices, etc. If audio isn’t your forte, you should ask a friend or hire a pro to record the audio for you – your listeners will certainly appreciate it!
There is so much more that could be said about how to improve the quality of your mobile videos. I hope all these tips are useful to you and that they will help you make your mobile videos as great as technologically possible.
I am a fulltime freelancer who loves technology. Linux and Web technologies are my main interests and two of the topics I most frequently write about.
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