Category: Tutorials

When you’re using WeVideo, make sure you balance the music and the audio. You don’t want the music to be too loud, otherwise your voice will be too quiet, and viewers will not be able to understand you. You also don’t want your voice to be too loud, or else you won’t be able to hear the music. WeVideo gives you the option to adjust the sound levels of any audio that you insert. Ideally, your audio recording should be slightly louder than your music track.

First of all, to insert an audio recording, click on Project bin in the top left corner. From there, click on Add media, and you will find a drop down menu where it says Upload. Click on that, find the recording, drag it to the uploads and it will appear in your Project bin. Drag the audio recording down to the bottom of the page, where you will be able to insert it in the audio section.

Once you’ve inserted an audio recording or a music track, click on Audio and Opacity. From there, a drop down menu will appear with the options “Show audio level” and “Show opacity level”.

After clicking on “Show audio level” you will see a straight blue line across your audio recording and music track.

You can click anywhere on this blue line to establish a point. By moving the point upwards, you are increasing the sound of the audio, and vice-versa.

I keep my audio recordings at max volume, and I keep the music track around halfway, and toward the end of the video, I fade out the music with the credits for extra effect.

If you find that there is not much of a difference between the audios, double click on either bar and it will take you to a screen where you can further adjust the volume. For my video, I had my music volume at 70, while my audio recording was at 300. Make sure your audio is loud enough.

In addition to your audio recording and music track, you also have access to special sound effects. These can be found by clicking on “Audio” in the top left corner of the screen. From there, next to the “Search audio” search bar at the top of the screen, there is a drop down menu on the left. Click on this menu and you have the options to search for either Music or Sound Effects. As stated above, to adjust the sound of the sound effects you do the same that you did to adjust the sound of the music track or audio recording.

While I was writing my close reading essay on Lincoln’s letter to George Robertson, I went through several drafts with Professor Pinsker to improve it. Here are a few small tips that I learned along the way, from getting started with ideas to working with citations. 

Hard at work!

1. One way to close read is to briefly draw in another document to compare the ideas and gain context. For me, this was somewhat easier; the Robertson letter was presented with two other letters that contained Lincoln’s thoughts on the sectional crisis, so it was easy to track how his ideas evolved and changed based on who he was talking to. Think about all the documents that are a part of the curriculum and try to see where one might reflect or differ from another.  
2. For most history classes you will take in college, your professor will want you to use Chicago footnotes. Although it is not required that you use them here, it could be useful to try them out now. Remember not to put a footnote in the middle of a sentence, and instead place it after the punctuation. Normally, you would use an actual footnote, but because WordPress doesn’t have this option, place the number in brackets. Often, you will include an entire hyperlink in the citation. However, to make it appear less messy, try to just type out [WEB] and attach the link to this word. 

1. For these essays, it isn’t necessary to use ellipses for quotes unless you are omitting something from the middle. Make sure, however, that you don’t change the meaning of the quote for your argument by cutting key information. 
2. One of my main takeaways from writing this essay is to try to explain things succinctly. I often fall into the trap of thinking that for a college-level essay to be “smart,” it must use big words and long sentences. However, this sometimes ends up hiding your meaning. 

Good luck writing! 

Image and text effects are a great way to make your video more engaging and to add life to your images. These are just a few examples to get you started, and I am sure that when you begin playing around in WeVideo you will be able to discover a lot more depending on what image you are looking at. Think about what parts of your image and text would be the easiest and most useful to enhance and how it would help your viewers to understand the topic better. 

• I use an app called Vimage to easily add overlays to images. For images that illustrate an outdoor scene, I have added overlays like falling rain, snow, or tree branches/grass swaying in the wind. There are a ton of different options, so take some time to explore.  

• You can also use Vimage to add simple animation to images. Effects “Zoom” or “Layered Foreground” (located in the 3D Parallax section) will scan the image, locate the key figures, isolate them from the background, and have the two layers move separately from each other. I normally have used this with images that already depict “action,” like the illustrations found on the Slave Stampede website. 

• With both of these above options, make sure to crop out the watermark at the bottom of the finished product! 
• If there is a keyword or phrase in a letter, poster, or newspaper (for example, the headline of a newspaper), you can gradually enlarge it. Add the image like normal to the video, but add an additional video/text track above. To this track, add a version of the document cropped to just the words you want to highlight and position it over where the words were in the original document. Go to the animation settings and make the words grow gradually in size. Make sure they don’t end up overlapping with another word. 

• You can also modify the above directions to layer different images. Play around with adding transitions and animation to the image added above to add additional movement.  

• It is also fun to add a “Page Turn” transition between pages of letters, newspapers, or other documents. 

• Sometimes it can enhance your video to add extra information/a caption. I did this for my Frances Harper video; although I wanted to include context on her grave, I couldn’t start talking about something completely new after finishing the poem. If you feel like there is a certain part of your narration that you want to highlight, you could also add that to a text box. Try to keep the font/color somewhat simple, and feel free to add a transition to the text.

• Don’t be afraid to have a few extra images or videos after your spoken audio is finished. Think carefully about what the lingering effect should be. For example, for the video I did that narrated Frances Harper’s poem, I added a few images of her published works, her at different points as she aged, and her grave. This helps to draw out the fact that even though Harper didn’t know at the time of writing the poem if slavery would ever end, she was eventually able to live in a free land. This also gives you an opportunity to add some more information with a caption.

When I first started making videos on WeVideo, my instinct was to only use a few transitions for the entire video so I wouldn’t distract from my content. However, this just made my video feel unfinished. Transitions can be a fun way to add variety to your videos, making them more engaging and highlighting the specific meaning of your photo/video. Below are a few tips that I have learned while working to hopefully help you create a better video. Happy video making! 

• Try to think about what type of transition fits the image/clip. For example, “Filmstrip” wouldn’t make sense with an 18th-century illustration, but I like to use it with a photograph or a black and white video. 

• If you are trying to show the contrast between two images, maybe play around with a transition that would momentarily hold both images on screen at once, like one of the “Wipe” varieties or “Slide.”

• Try the “Page curl” when transitioning between pages of letters or books. 
• However, just because a transition makes sense with the first photo doesn’t mean that it makes sense with the second. For example, for one of the videos that I made I used a “Page curl” transition after an image of a letter, but it led to a painting of King George, which I eventually had to change. 

• I sometimes use the “Burn” transition when I have a more violent or painful image because of the association with fire.  

• “Fade to white” is sometimes useful when I have a more positive/hopeful image related to emancipation or freedom. 
• Sometimes when I am using two similar images back to back (like two of the illustrations colorized by the House Divided Project), I use “Cross fade” to make the transition more seamless.

• When in doubt, use a simple transition like “Dip to Black.” Having a different transition in between every image, especially if the images are short and in rapid succession, could be distracting.
• Stay away from colorful/complicated transitions like “Rainbow” or “Paper Plane.” They could detract from the seriousness of the message you are conveying in your video. 

• If you are creating different layers of images/clips in WeVideo, you can still apply transitions to multiple images to add some additional movement. 

• I like to place a simple transition after the last image/clip so that the video does not end abruptly. 

• Another thing to keep in mind is the minimum amount of time that a transition can last is 1 second. Make sure to rewatch your video to make sure that the transitions didn’t cause the images and audio to fall out of line.