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One of the final decisions you will have to make when editing your video is whether to put a watermark through it. A watermark is a still image that overlaps a video. It can cover the entire dimension of the video, sit in the center of the video, or rest neatly in one of the corners. It can be opaque, though most of the time it will be transparent as to not interfere with the video itself.
In our opinion, a watermark should be a recognizable image or piece of text that will be visible to viewers but shouldn’t be too intrusive; here we consider the benefits and show you how to tastefully add a watermark.
Why You Should Add a Video Watermark
First up, watermarking is a great way to embed a little subtle branding into your online videos. You can include logos or tag lines, for example, to help promote your business. Even a simple URL of your web site can be very effective in helping you to stick in the mind of the viewer.
The second major benefit of video watermarking – and probably the most important – is so that your videos don’t get ripped off!
If you spend hours and hours planning, scripting, setting up, recording and editing your video you don’t want to see someone else claim it as their own; this can and does frequently happen online, where some people think all content is a “free for all”. A watermark running through helps protect it and identify the content as yours.
In fact we had this very same experience with the Google Vs Yellow Pages video you can see at the top of our blog page. After it had been up for a while we started to notice it appearing over the internet with other business’s logos over it, because we hadn’t watermarked it!
How to Add a Video Watermark
Following are a few pointers about the best way to add a video watermark, if you decide to follow our advice and do it.
Most decent editing software programs should have the option to add a watermark – iMovies certainly does and that’s our software of preference usually. If your editing software doesn’t have it you can get hold of specific watermark software.
It is a good idea, if you are adding your URL as the watermark, to add it throughout the whole length of the video. The primary goal of showing your URL, and even the main goal of many videos themselves, is to get the viewer back to your web site.
So don’t make the viewer wait until the end of the video to display the address; especially important with the low attention spans of viewers, you want to make sure the URL is there as soon as they are ready to click through to your site.
Next, make sure any watermark is kept to the left-hand side of the screen; check this on your editing software as it may default to the right, in which case it may be covered by the YouTube logo.
When you insert the watermark consider the size, colour and other properties, particularly the opacity; you want it to be a watermark – that means visible beneath the surface, not dominating the video, so preview it to check that it’s there but not standing out like a sore thumb!
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