Uploading High Quality Video to OurStage.com

So, you want to upload your video to OurStage and win a bunch of money. This tutorial will help your video be higher quality than everyone else’s on OurStage.com, except those who find this tutorial. So don’t tell anyone about the tutorial. It’s just a secret between you, us and the internet.

The first thing you’ll want to do is make your video be the highest quality it can be. After experimenting with a variety of settings and options, here is the easiest way to get your video to be really high quality once it’s up on OurStage.

You are going to want to make an Apple Intermediate Codec version of your movie. There are two ways to get started:

A. First, control-click a mastered version of your movie on your hard drive and then choosing “open with” and then “QuickTime Player” as seen below.
Note: You need to have QuickTime Pro installed for the below features to work.

Then choose “File” and then choose “Export”.

B. The other way to get started is to do an “in” and an “out” point on your timeline in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Adobe Premiere or whatever and choose “export” and then choose “with quicktime conversion”. Then in the Quicktime “Save Exported file as…” window, you’ll want to select “movie to QuickTime Movie.”

Then click options:

You’ll now be at this screen:

Then in the “Movie Settings” hit the “settings” button:

Then for “Compression Type” choose “Apple Intermediate Codec” and for Frame Rate choose “Current” and for compressor choose “other” (as shown below). Then hit okay.

Then hit okay:

Now you are back to this screen:

Then hit the size button. Then for “Dimensions” select “Custom” and then type in 480 x 360 for standard 4:3 videos or letter boxed videos.

Or if your videos have true 16:9 also known as anamorphic video and you don’t have black at the top and bottom of your video signal then you should choose 480 x 270.

Then hit okay:

Then depending on whether you are doing 4:3 or true 16:9, your final “movie settings” will look like one of these.

If everything is set, hit okay.

Then make sure you name this version of your movie.I usually call it “apple_intermediate…” and then whatever the name was.Also I usually avoid spaces and weird punctuation and try to us the under score symbol instead of spaces.Hold down shift and hit the button to the right of the zero to get this symbol:

Then hit save:

Now you have an Apple intermediate codec version of your movie.You can now either export this file to flash video or for the sake of simplicity this tutorial is going to walk you through making an iPod codec version of this video which should be great quality for uploading to OurStage.com.

Now find this Apple Intermediate verision of this file on your hard drive and control click it and choose “open with” and then select “QuickTime Player”.

Once your file is open, it should either look like one of the below examples, depending on whether it’s true 16:9 or standard 4:3:

Now, similar to the earlier steps, choose “file and then export.”

Except this time for the “Export:” drop down choose, “Movie to iPod”.

Then name the new file make sure to keep the .M4V as part of the name and then choose “save”:

Now one thing to explain. Why didn’t we just go straight to “movie to iPod” to begin with? Well if the footage was true 16:9 but edited in anamorphic DV, it could have looked all tall and stretched out weird. Also, if the video was 4:3, the “Movie to iPod” settings may have produced a video that is 640 x 480 and that is too big for Ourstage. And why did we use the Apple Intermediate codec? Well the reason is that a DV movie or Animation Codec movie would have been too big. The Apple Intermediate Codec is designed not take up too much space to store on your drive as a master but also maintain enough quality before you export into other formats. And if you’re working with DV source footage, the Apple Intermediate Codec also acts as your conversion from NTSC video to graphics based video. So the video will usually look better on your computer monitor once it’s in the Apple Intermediate Codec.

Start an OurStage account and get your video uploaded.

Go to OurStage.com:

Click Login/register:

Create a user name and password. Use either your actual name or your production teams name. You’ll probably be uploading multiple videos, so don’t use the name of one video.

Next, go to your email and get the confirmation link.

Once your back at the site, log in as an existing user:

Then click at the top of the site the bright “compete” button:

Then you will be asked to upgrade your account, and you’ll have to fill in a little more info:

Once thats done, you should be in the “enter competition” section. In the “Stage:” drop down, you’ll want to choose video.

Then “Choose” the .M4V file you created earlier. Enter a title and description and, if you want, enter a poster image. I recommend doing the poster image, since being able to choose your own is one big advantage of OurStage over YouTube. Finally a video site that lets you select your own poster image. YouTube has proven one thing though: your poster image does have a lot to do with how many people you get to view your video. Also keep in mind that this is OurStage and you want people to vote on your video, so you also want to avoid false advertising. Try to choose a still image that best captures what your video is about. If you are going to skip this image step, then you are done. Just hit upload. But keep reading if you want to learn how to easily making an awesome poster image.

How to make an awesome poster image for your video or music on Our Stage:

Back in Quicktime, scroll through the Apple Intermediate Codec version of your video and use the arrow keys if you have to to find the exact frame you want to incorporate into a poster image. Then choose file and then copy or Command-C:

Then go back to the Finder and choose your applications folder and double click on Adobe Photoshop:

In Photoshop, go to “File” and then choose “New” or just hit Command+N:

Give your poster image a name and also take note that the width and height is the same as the Quicktime movie you just hit Copy on. This is the nice thing about Photoshop. It will always make a new document be exactly the size of whats on your “clipboard” – whatever you just copied, no matter what application you were in.

Hit OK and then you’ll have an empty new document. Then paste the image by going to Edit and choosing paste or by hitting Command+V:

Then you’ll have your image in Photoshop, and you can mess around with it. For example, you can hit the “M” key which will give you the Marquee Tool and draw a box around a section you don’t want, then hit delete.

Keep editing your image until you have something you like. In this case, I continued to paste several freeze frames into photo shop and hit the “V” key to get the “Move Tool” to move the different elements around. Then I hit “T” to get the “Text Tool” to type in a title. Then I used the Lasso tool by clicking Command+L and drew some draggy stuff that I filled in with the paint bucket. Then I double clicked on the layer and checked off outer glow. And then I selected the “image” menu and then the “adjust” option and then “hue/saturation” to put each of the images in black and white. I could go on and on about Photoshop, but that will be another tutorial.

Once you’re all set with your image, you’ll want to go to the file menu and choose “save for web”:

Then make sure you select “jpg” and a quality of at least “70″. Then double check your size to make sure it’s 480 x 360.

Click Save:

Name the file and store it on your drive. Then go back to your OurStage upload page and hit Choose in the photo upload window and select this file.

Then hit Upload:

Then wait for the video and image to upload:

When you’re done, select the category you want to be in and the months you’d like to compete and you’re all set.

Now go email everyone you know and tell them to join the site and start rating all the videos and see if you can win.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, post them below and we’ll respond with either an update to the tutorial or we’ll address your question in a comment as well. Special thanks to our sponsor OurStage.com for making this tutorial possible and for making a cool site and giving away all kinds of money and prizes. They rock!!!