Short video, how short is the most appropriate？
Short video news is changing people’s habit of watching TV news for a long time. The All Media School had previously paid attention to the trend of Washington post’s short video strategy. Today, it once again focuses on methodology. How short video is the most popular?
The Journalist’s Resource website synthesizes many reports and sorts out the essential tips of video editing. To get the best "input-output ratio" of news video production, we need to figure out how long it is most appropriate!
In 2014, a report from the Pew Research Center showed that in the United States, more than 6 out of 10 adults had the habit of watching online videos, and 36% of them chose to watch news videos.
YouTube has more than 1 billion registered users, and the massive user viewing data can most intuitively reflect how long videos are the most popular.
As early as 2012, Pew Research Center began to study the video viewing data on YouTube, and concluded:The most popular video is about 2.1 minutes long.. This video is slightly longer than the local TV news, but shorter than the online evening news collection.
Research institute ComScore found in a report in 2014 that,The average duration of online video (excluding online video advertisements) is about 4.4 minutes.
The Tow Center Digital Journalism Research Center of Columbia University also published a multimedia research report in 2014, compiling the challenges faced by newsrooms, such as how media organizations try to use video as a profitable editing tool.
Although many organizations have published research reports, there is no "absolute standard" for the duration of news videos. This is because, to a great extent, readers’ tastes and standards are constantly changing.Therefore, in the discussion about the length of moving vertical video, there have been various opinions.
However, the latest research from the University of Texas at Austin provides some new perspectives.
The research team published their research results in the professional journal News Research this year, focusing on the quality and length of news videos, trying to find out the characteristics of news videos that attract readers and estimate people’s viewing preferences.
Peter S. Chen, the first author from the University of Texas, published a paper with two co-authors from the University of Southern Mississippi. The core findings are as follows:
1. High-definition image quality and information determine the "first impression"
Although previous studies have proved that if video content can arouse the audience’s interest, they can also tolerate low-quality video images.
But,Readers won’t tolerate pictures that are not informative, poor in texture and have no sense of pleasure.I will not recommend this to others.
2. Don’t ask the source of the video, talk about the hero by length.
It is found that it is most appropriate to keep the video content of a short video at 2.08 minutes. A slightly shorter video is most suitable in 24 seconds.
3. When both image quality and duration are taken into account, image quality takes precedence.
When both quality and length are considered, compared with other videos,People will prefer long and high-definition videos or short and high-definition videos.
4. Quality is paramount, and video editing also needs professional training.
The quality of a news video can affect the audience’s cognition of news organizations, and the longer the video, the deeper the cognitive impression.
In recent years, many editors are required to be able to produce and edit news videos, but they have not received professional training.
"This enables employees who lack professional visual training to post videos online, especially those short videos."And such reckless practices will leave a "bad impression" on readers.
"Just like the paper media dealing with the content crisis, publishing news videos online can only solve the problem of how to attract audiences by overcoming quality problems."The researchers stressed that other components of video still need more research. For example, audio quality and its composition, which is also an important factor for the audience to decide to start or stop watching.
Related research:
In 2011, a paper in the journal News Research proposed that "the more relaxed the content, the more clicks it can get" by studying YouTube videos. Of course, this is not to deny that traditional news videos can’t gather popularity.
//www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2010.511951? journalCode=rjos20
In 2015, the report of Reuters Institute of Journalism of Oxford University counted the application of data news around the world:
//journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/mobile-social-news-oxford-reuters-2015-report
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This article is an exclusive editorial of All Media School.