Essential Quick Steps for Effective Double Take Filming

The world of video-making owes much of its magic to small leaps of innovation. One of these leaps is the use of the chroma key background, which most people know by the more colloquial term—green screen.

Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.

In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.

YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.

Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen

How Does Chroma Key Work?

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Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:

• Background Selection:

A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.

• Color Keying:

This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.

• Foreground Filming:

This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.

• Post-Processing:

In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.

Why Green?

Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.

The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Contrast

The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.

Luminance

The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.

Digital Sensors

Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.

Wardrobe and Set Design

Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.

Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio

Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.

Choosing the Right Background Color

The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.

Lighting Considerations

Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.

Positioning/Camera

Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.

High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.

Recording Tips for Chroma Key

• Proper Lighting

Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.

• Keep Distance from the Green Screen

The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.

• Subjects and Clothing

As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.

3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies

• Color Spill

Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.

Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.

There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.

• Poor Lighting

Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.

• Poorly Refined Edges

Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.

VSDC Pro Video Editor is a light professional non-linear video editing suite for creating a movie of any complexity. It supports the most popular video/audio formats and codecs, including 4K, HD and GoPro videos. Preconfigured profiles make the creation of videos for various multimedia and mobile devices absolutely hassle-free.

Key features:

• Import from any devices and cams, including GoPro and drones. All formats supported. Сurrently the only free video editor that allows users to export in a new H265/HEVC codec, something essential for those working with 4K and HD.
• Everything for hassle-free basic editing: cut, crop and merge files, add titles and favorite music
• Visual effects, advanced color correction and trendy Instagram-like filters
• All multimedia processing done from one app: video editing capabilities reinforced by a video converter, a screen capture, a video capture, a disc burner and a YouTube uploader
• Non-linear editing: edit several files with simultaneously
• Easy export to social networks: special profiles for YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter and Instagram
• High quality export – no conversion quality loss, double export speed even of HD files due to hardware acceleration
• Stabilization tool will turn shaky or jittery footage into a more stable video automatically.
• Essential toolset for professional video editing: blending modes, Mask tool, advanced multiple-color Chroma Key

Conclusion

Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.

Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.

In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.

YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.

Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen

How Does Chroma Key Work?

Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:

• Background Selection:

A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.

• Color Keying:

This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.

• Foreground Filming:

This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.

• Post-Processing:

In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.

Why Green?

Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.

The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Contrast

The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.

Luminance

The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.

Digital Sensors

Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.

Wardrobe and Set Design

Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.

Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio

Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.

Choosing the Right Background Color

The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.

Lighting Considerations

Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.

Positioning/Camera

Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.

High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.

Recording Tips for Chroma Key

• Proper Lighting

Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.

• Keep Distance from the Green Screen

The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.

• Subjects and Clothing

As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.

3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies

• Color Spill

Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.

Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.

There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.

• Poor Lighting

Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.

• Poorly Refined Edges

Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.

Conclusion

Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.

Propel Content to Prominence: Leverage TubeBuddy’s Power

The Benefits of TubeBuddy | Manage Your YouTube Channel More Easily

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

TubeBuddy is a YouTube certified extension for your Google Chrome browser. When you visit YouTube after installing TubeBuddy a whole new set of useful tools becomes available.

TubeBuddy’s tools were designed to save you time and effort when performing some of the more mundane tasks involved in running a YouTube channel, like adding cards. Many of TubeBuddy’s tools are completely free to use, but others might require a paid license. There are three levels of licensing: $9, $19, or $39 per month.

The Benefits of Using TubeBuddy for YouTube

1. Increased Productivity
2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More
3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags
4. Useful Data

Benefits of TubeBuddy

YouTubers who use TubeBuddy are able to spend less time on busy-work and more time on coming up with creative video ideas. Here are some of the ways TubeBuddy can help you, especially if you have a large or mid-sized channel:

1. Increased Productivity

Most of TubeBuddy’s Productivity Tools are available for free, but some require a $9 per month Pro license.

You can use these tools to get your videos ready for posting faster, embed them off-YouTube more easily, and save time by creating canned responses or templates for cards and annotations.

For example, you might find yourself creating the same YouTube Card over and over again to include it in every video you make. Creating a template through TubeBuddy will save you this effort.

Another great productivity tool is the Video Topic Planner. You can save video ideas you come up with, or ideas viewers have suggested to you, and arrange them in a queue so you never forget what you are planning to make next.

2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More

Most of TubeBuddy’s bulk processing tools require a $19 per month Star license.

Two of the most time-saving tools in this section are the Bulk Copy tools for cards and annotations. They will save you from having to recreate the same ones over and over. Then, using the Bulk Update tools, you will be able to make changes to all of your cards or annotations at once.

For example: if you use a YouTube Card to link to your personal website and include it in every video, and then you change your website, you change the link in all of your existing cards at once.

Another useful Bulk tool is Bulk Thumbnail Overlays, which will allow you to add a logo to all of your existing video thumbnails at once.

3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags

The SEO Tools in TubeBuddy will help you find the best tags for your videos and suggest tags you might want to target. Many of these tools are free, but others require a $19 Star license.

One of the best free tools in this category is View and Copy Video Tags. It allows you to see and copy the tags of other people’s videos. You will be able to see which keywords your competitors are targeting (and look for opportunities to target them more effectively). This can also save you a lot of time writing out tags that should really be the same as the ones on an existing video.

4. Useful Data

The most useful piece of data under Data and Research Tools is the Best Time to Publish. How many views you get on a video could vary greatly depending on when you post, and the best times to post vary depending on the demographics of your audience. This free tool from TubeBuddy will show you when you should be uploading.

Another interesting tool, which is unfortunately only available with $39 licenses, is the Competitor Scoreboard. It allows creators to compare their channels stats to those of their rival channels.

Have you ever tried TubeBuddy for YouTube?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

TubeBuddy is a YouTube certified extension for your Google Chrome browser. When you visit YouTube after installing TubeBuddy a whole new set of useful tools becomes available.

TubeBuddy’s tools were designed to save you time and effort when performing some of the more mundane tasks involved in running a YouTube channel, like adding cards. Many of TubeBuddy’s tools are completely free to use, but others might require a paid license. There are three levels of licensing: $9, $19, or $39 per month.

The Benefits of Using TubeBuddy for YouTube

1. Increased Productivity
2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More
3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags
4. Useful Data

Benefits of TubeBuddy

YouTubers who use TubeBuddy are able to spend less time on busy-work and more time on coming up with creative video ideas. Here are some of the ways TubeBuddy can help you, especially if you have a large or mid-sized channel:

1. Increased Productivity

Most of TubeBuddy’s Productivity Tools are available for free, but some require a $9 per month Pro license.

You can use these tools to get your videos ready for posting faster, embed them off-YouTube more easily, and save time by creating canned responses or templates for cards and annotations.

For example, you might find yourself creating the same YouTube Card over and over again to include it in every video you make. Creating a template through TubeBuddy will save you this effort.

Another great productivity tool is the Video Topic Planner. You can save video ideas you come up with, or ideas viewers have suggested to you, and arrange them in a queue so you never forget what you are planning to make next.

2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More

Most of TubeBuddy’s bulk processing tools require a $19 per month Star license.

Two of the most time-saving tools in this section are the Bulk Copy tools for cards and annotations. They will save you from having to recreate the same ones over and over. Then, using the Bulk Update tools, you will be able to make changes to all of your cards or annotations at once.

For example: if you use a YouTube Card to link to your personal website and include it in every video, and then you change your website, you change the link in all of your existing cards at once.

Another useful Bulk tool is Bulk Thumbnail Overlays, which will allow you to add a logo to all of your existing video thumbnails at once.

3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags

The SEO Tools in TubeBuddy will help you find the best tags for your videos and suggest tags you might want to target. Many of these tools are free, but others require a $19 Star license.

One of the best free tools in this category is View and Copy Video Tags. It allows you to see and copy the tags of other people’s videos. You will be able to see which keywords your competitors are targeting (and look for opportunities to target them more effectively). This can also save you a lot of time writing out tags that should really be the same as the ones on an existing video.

4. Useful Data

The most useful piece of data under Data and Research Tools is the Best Time to Publish. How many views you get on a video could vary greatly depending on when you post, and the best times to post vary depending on the demographics of your audience. This free tool from TubeBuddy will show you when you should be uploading.

Another interesting tool, which is unfortunately only available with $39 licenses, is the Competitor Scoreboard. It allows creators to compare their channels stats to those of their rival channels.

Have you ever tried TubeBuddy for YouTube?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

TubeBuddy is a YouTube certified extension for your Google Chrome browser. When you visit YouTube after installing TubeBuddy a whole new set of useful tools becomes available.

TubeBuddy’s tools were designed to save you time and effort when performing some of the more mundane tasks involved in running a YouTube channel, like adding cards. Many of TubeBuddy’s tools are completely free to use, but others might require a paid license. There are three levels of licensing: $9, $19, or $39 per month.

The Benefits of Using TubeBuddy for YouTube

1. Increased Productivity
2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More
3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags
4. Useful Data

Benefits of TubeBuddy

YouTubers who use TubeBuddy are able to spend less time on busy-work and more time on coming up with creative video ideas. Here are some of the ways TubeBuddy can help you, especially if you have a large or mid-sized channel:

1. Increased Productivity

Most of TubeBuddy’s Productivity Tools are available for free, but some require a $9 per month Pro license.

You can use these tools to get your videos ready for posting faster, embed them off-YouTube more easily, and save time by creating canned responses or templates for cards and annotations.

For example, you might find yourself creating the same YouTube Card over and over again to include it in every video you make. Creating a template through TubeBuddy will save you this effort.

Another great productivity tool is the Video Topic Planner. You can save video ideas you come up with, or ideas viewers have suggested to you, and arrange them in a queue so you never forget what you are planning to make next.

2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More

Most of TubeBuddy’s bulk processing tools require a $19 per month Star license.

Two of the most time-saving tools in this section are the Bulk Copy tools for cards and annotations. They will save you from having to recreate the same ones over and over. Then, using the Bulk Update tools, you will be able to make changes to all of your cards or annotations at once.

For example: if you use a YouTube Card to link to your personal website and include it in every video, and then you change your website, you change the link in all of your existing cards at once.

Another useful Bulk tool is Bulk Thumbnail Overlays, which will allow you to add a logo to all of your existing video thumbnails at once.

3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags

The SEO Tools in TubeBuddy will help you find the best tags for your videos and suggest tags you might want to target. Many of these tools are free, but others require a $19 Star license.

One of the best free tools in this category is View and Copy Video Tags. It allows you to see and copy the tags of other people’s videos. You will be able to see which keywords your competitors are targeting (and look for opportunities to target them more effectively). This can also save you a lot of time writing out tags that should really be the same as the ones on an existing video.

4. Useful Data

The most useful piece of data under Data and Research Tools is the Best Time to Publish. How many views you get on a video could vary greatly depending on when you post, and the best times to post vary depending on the demographics of your audience. This free tool from TubeBuddy will show you when you should be uploading.

Another interesting tool, which is unfortunately only available with $39 licenses, is the Competitor Scoreboard. It allows creators to compare their channels stats to those of their rival channels.

Have you ever tried TubeBuddy for YouTube?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

0

TubeBuddy is a YouTube certified extension for your Google Chrome browser. When you visit YouTube after installing TubeBuddy a whole new set of useful tools becomes available.

TubeBuddy’s tools were designed to save you time and effort when performing some of the more mundane tasks involved in running a YouTube channel, like adding cards. Many of TubeBuddy’s tools are completely free to use, but others might require a paid license. There are three levels of licensing: $9, $19, or $39 per month.

The Benefits of Using TubeBuddy for YouTube

1. Increased Productivity
2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More
3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags
4. Useful Data

Benefits of TubeBuddy

YouTubers who use TubeBuddy are able to spend less time on busy-work and more time on coming up with creative video ideas. Here are some of the ways TubeBuddy can help you, especially if you have a large or mid-sized channel:

1. Increased Productivity

Most of TubeBuddy’s Productivity Tools are available for free, but some require a $9 per month Pro license.

You can use these tools to get your videos ready for posting faster, embed them off-YouTube more easily, and save time by creating canned responses or templates for cards and annotations.

For example, you might find yourself creating the same YouTube Card over and over again to include it in every video you make. Creating a template through TubeBuddy will save you this effort.

Another great productivity tool is the Video Topic Planner. You can save video ideas you come up with, or ideas viewers have suggested to you, and arrange them in a queue so you never forget what you are planning to make next.

2. Bulk Tools for Annotations, Cards, Thumbnails and More

Most of TubeBuddy’s bulk processing tools require a $19 per month Star license.

Two of the most time-saving tools in this section are the Bulk Copy tools for cards and annotations. They will save you from having to recreate the same ones over and over. Then, using the Bulk Update tools, you will be able to make changes to all of your cards or annotations at once.

For example: if you use a YouTube Card to link to your personal website and include it in every video, and then you change your website, you change the link in all of your existing cards at once.

Another useful Bulk tool is Bulk Thumbnail Overlays, which will allow you to add a logo to all of your existing video thumbnails at once.

3. Quick Optimization for Your Video’s Tags

The SEO Tools in TubeBuddy will help you find the best tags for your videos and suggest tags you might want to target. Many of these tools are free, but others require a $19 Star license.

One of the best free tools in this category is View and Copy Video Tags. It allows you to see and copy the tags of other people’s videos. You will be able to see which keywords your competitors are targeting (and look for opportunities to target them more effectively). This can also save you a lot of time writing out tags that should really be the same as the ones on an existing video.

4. Useful Data

The most useful piece of data under Data and Research Tools is the Best Time to Publish. How many views you get on a video could vary greatly depending on when you post, and the best times to post vary depending on the demographics of your audience. This free tool from TubeBuddy will show you when you should be uploading.

Another interesting tool, which is unfortunately only available with $39 licenses, is the Competitor Scoreboard. It allows creators to compare their channels stats to those of their rival channels.

Have you ever tried TubeBuddy for YouTube?

Richard Bennett

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

Follow @Richard Bennett