If you want to spice up your presentation, you can use advanced editing effects such as scene titles, bullet points, menus and elaborate backgrounds. They give your presentation an air of professionalism, and they can make your content stand out from that available from other direct sales sites. These types of advanced effects are also usually inexpensive to produce, depending on the editing software you are using. They don't take much time, either. In addition, your viewer will be grateful for this as well, since once you place an effect into a sequence of footage, it can stand screen throughout so that your viewer can look at it and study it as he or she wishes. It's the best way to get the best of both worlds, both the advantages of text that are time independent, and the impact and drama of video, too.

Because these advantages exist, first-time editors tend to use too many effects in a single presentation. Avoid this temptation, because of the reasons discussed earlier. Too many effects can be confusing for your viewer and make your presentation either too complicated to understand, or cheap, hokey and incomprehensible.

When is the best time to use advanced effects? One rule of thumb is never to use advanced effects simply for their own sake.

In practice, this means several things. First of all, let's say that your product is a new piece of software that produces graphics with new innovations. In fact, your presentation shows a screenshot of this particular software in use. Because of this, it's easy for you to do overlay menus and effects, so you fill up the entire screen with them. You label every interesting new feature all at once. Then, let this complicated overlay play on in the background while your presenter is talking about great features of a new program.

The problem here is that advanced effects -- and especially overlay graphics -- give the viewer something very information-dense to look at and to read while the presenter is talking. That is well and good, but:

IF the viewer is spending too much time deciphering and reading your overlay graphics and not spending enough time paying attention to what the presenter or audio track is saying, your presentation is lost. That audio track is key to your presentation, and you want viewers to pay attention to it. Therefore, give your viewers one thing to focus on (your presentation) and leave out other things.

Instead, use overlay graphics in the following way. Take the same example, above. As your presenter talks about feaures of your program, you can add the overlay graphic for each feature (and just that feature) to the footage you produce.

With this, the viewer will look at that feature as the presenter is talking about it. He or she will read the information the graphic and then he will be paying attention to what the presenter is saying once again. This is not only an elegant and simple solution, but it actually helps clarify what the presenter is saying because it gives visual enhancement to what is being talked about. Once the information is on the screen, you can leave it there for the rest of the speech or take it down, depending on what you want to do.

These types of special overlay effects can be fun, but you should also use them prudently. If your presenter is talking about a new CD that you're trying to sell, for example, you can use your editing software to add animation as he makes a certain gesture. It is funny, somewhat cheesy, but certainly gets attention. It can also be distracting if you use it too much. So if you plan to do this kind of thing, do not do it more than once or twice during a video.

Chromakey effects are different, because you will need to be filming chromakey footage right from the concept stage onward. In other words, you can not use chromakey effects lightly, if you are going to film all of your footage against a blue or green screen.

However, you can make sure that your chromakey effects blend in as much as possible. If you can, use existing photographic backgrounds, such as large and clear images of your product. You can use anything thats not blurry, avant-garde, or visually distracting, though. Above all, make sure that your presenter or product is clearly displayed against a chromakey background. It looks hokey at best to have your presenters red top disappear against a sunset background or have similar color-related difficulties occur.

BlueWaterArticles.com: - When to Use Advanced Website Video Effects

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Read more from Leon Edward on internet home business, marketing, website design and home basd businesses online at his blogs and website Leon also presents personal development training and awesome Success University business opportunity.