by Kacey Stapleton

Created on: September 05, 2010

Annotations are great way to add information and personality to your YouTube video.  Whether you intend your video for a small audience of friends or you’re hoping to create the next viral hit, those small, white pop-up speech bubbles or note boxes lend a professional touch to your own movie project.  

There’s several different types of annotations.  Speech bubbles can be added for comic effect, or to give the viewer insight into the thoughts or speech of the person or actors in your video.  You can pause your video for a set length of time for dramatic effect or to focus attention on certain actions.  Adding spotlights to highlight areas can also narrow attention, and when the viewer navigates over these areas with the mouse your text will appear.  Notes are easily added with boxes containing your text.

 Links can even be added inside annotations allowing the viewer to access other videos, playlist, sites, and channels.  YouTube has examples of how annotation can be used effectively. 

Naturally, you need to create an account on the website if you haven’t already and upload your video to YouTube. Once the video is loaded you should see the annotations toolbar.  If it is ‘grayed out’ or you aren’t able to click on the tools then reload or refresh the page.  You might want to watch the video through once or twice to see any differences in the way it might be viewed in this environment, and take a few quick notes on where you think annotation will be helpful. This is also a good time to double check the spelling of names, or other editing issues to be sure of accuracy. Even if this is only for friends, a little mistake like getting someone’s name wrong can be embarrassing. 

When you have a good idea of where you want to annotation rewind the video back to the beginning.  You can either go through the video putting in the various types of annotation you want or use seek to go specifically to the places you’ve noted.  On the bottom of the annotations bar find the icon marked ‘+’ and choose which type of these features you want to use.  To be sure, you have successfully created the bubble or box in the right place look for the annotations list on the left side.  You should see it listed there, and it’s a good idea to check each time you make a new annotation.  This can save time if you are making many links, speech

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