Setting up an intro for a series of educational videos.
September 19, 2020 8:39 PM   Subscribe

I'm recording some educational videos for a local university level math class and I'm looking for help setting up a 5 - 10 second intro clip for my videos.

I am in the process of recording some video "lessons" for university students. I put lessons in quotes because I'm not a professor, I'm doing this as a private tutor with the idea that students may want to pay for these videos to learn the material outside of their regular lectures. I know very little about video editing. I've been able to set up OBS Studio in such a way that I can record the lessons. But, I'd also like to have some kind of intro and outro to make the videos look a bit more polished. I've downloaded Camtasia and built something like what I'm looking for here: https://imgur.com/a/R2MKAPI.

Then I realized that Camtasia costs several hundred dollars. Is there some freeware software that will allow me to built a simple intro like what I've linked to and allow me to stitch it in front of the recorded videos I'm making? I've looked on Fiverr, but I don't really know what I'm looking for and a lot of people seem like they're more for Youtubers who want a single intro (rather than what I'm looking for which is a template which I can customize with the title of each video). I've looked at websites which will render a video for something like $10 - $20 per video - but that seems like it would get expensive quickly. I'm just looking for something cheap and simple and I'm not sure where to find what I need. Can anyone help?
posted by NoneOfTheAbove to Technology (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
There is a free video editing software package called Da Vinci Resolve which will do everything you need it to and a whole lot more. It has 90% of the functionality of a professional editing program. Plenty of Youtube video tutorials.

I also feel like this is probably something that Windows Movie Maker can do, and might (?) even be easier. Also free. Or iMovie if you are a Mac person.
posted by seasparrow at 9:29 PM on September 19, 2020


Also check out Shotcut. It's free and cross-platform.

I haven't used it much at all, so i don't know what kinds of features it has for motion graphics like in your sample.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 11:11 PM on September 19, 2020


Vimeo Create has a free trial and good looking templates for what you might want?

Alternatively, if you want to spend a few $, I'm sure you can find someone on Fiverr to make custom intros/outros for you for very little money. might save you the frustration of trying to figure it out yourself.
posted by PardonMyFrench at 11:40 PM on September 19, 2020


Adobe has a free basic video editor called Adobe Spark that might be worth a look for you.
posted by eisforcool at 5:20 AM on September 20, 2020


I'm recording lessons for my high school students, and I used PowerPoint for this. Mine doesn't have animation, but you could add some if that was what you wanted. It won't look exactly like your mock up, but it could be close. At worst, it could be a temporary solution if you needed something RIGHT NOW.

I just created a simple screen with our school logo, class name, and lesson number/name. I think I started with a template that I liked and adjusted to use our school colors. Instead of animation I narrate over it for about 5 to 10 seconds to introduce the topic. Example: "This video is for Rakaidan's Tea Pots 101 class. In this video we will cover lesson 5 - regional variations." I also have a closing screen using the same logo and format that has my contact information, which I also narrate over. It's not flashy but it looks nice, and it was free and fast.
posted by rakaidan at 9:27 AM on September 20, 2020


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