The overlapping was problematic because the YouTube link overlays (called annotations) are all perfect rectangles. This mean that the link for the previous video, which covers most of the frame, overlaps with the links for my Twitter, Instagram, Blogger/website, and Subscribe links. If it were just simply the link activation that overlapped, I probably would care less, but the link itself leaves a semi-transparent border. This border looks really bad if you start overlaying links on one another.
I was also trying a new video editing software called Cyberlink Power Director. It’s rated highly on several video editing review sites, and was cheap if I decided to pick up a license, so figured I’d give it a shot. Glad I demo’d it, because after getting as far as the Outro Sequence, I decided that I didn’t like it. It is missing some fundamental features that I’ve grown accustomed to in Movie Studio (such as direct-to-secondary monitor playback) and playback performance itself was very laggy. I ended up re-doing the entire Outro Sequence in Sony Movie Studio, my current preferred editor, and it now looks like this:
I think this actually looks better all around, I did some re-balancing of the visual elements, putting the video slightly off-left, giving enough room for the social media links to exist on their own without any overlap. I also got rid of the cheesy “previous video arrow” and replaced it with a more cleaner text only approach with includes the previous video title.
So what do you guys think? Expect to see this latest Outro Sequence used in my next video!
In other news, doing the Mont Tremblant video really got me thinking… I want to have more stabilized video! It’s really hard to capture stable, professional looking video when you’re just using a compact camera, cell phone, or GoPro. Actually, the smaller the camera, the harder it is, because even the smallest of vibrations and movements translates to big deltas in the stability of the image. With this new found desire, I’ve been researching several handheld electronic/motorized 3 axis gimbals, and I think I will end up buying one at some point. The problem I have at the moment is all the good ones are not cheap. The ideal gimbals are $600+ or more, which is a bit more expensive than I can afford. I’ll keep researching and looking around!