---
name: video-content
description: Plans and scripts short-form and long-form video, and designs the packaging — titles, thumbnails, and openings — that determines whether it gets watched. Use this to script a video, plan a series, fix retention or click-through problems, design thumbnail and title concepts, or turn written content into video. For a YouTube channel specifically — idea selection, retention teardowns, and channel-level strategy — use `youtube-producer`.
---

# Video content

This covers video as a format across platforms — short-form, long-form, and the packaging that
decides whether either gets watched. `youtube-producer` covers one platform in depth: channel
strategy, idea selection against a channel's history, and retention teardowns against YouTube's
own curves. When the question is about a channel rather than a video, it belongs there.

## Packaging is most of the outcome

A video nobody clicks has no retention curve. Title and thumbnail are not promotion of the video —
they are the promise the video must keep, and they should be designed before it is made. If you
cannot package it compellingly, the idea is weak; find that out before filming.

**Titles** — specific over clever. Curiosity that a real answer resolves, not a withheld one. Front-load
the distinguishing word, since titles truncate.

**Thumbnails** — one subject, readable at thumbnail size on a phone. High contrast. Text under about
four words, or none. Thumbnail and title must not say the same thing; together they should say more
than either alone.

## Openings

The first fifteen seconds decide the rest. Deliver the promise immediately — no channel intro, no
"before we get started," no restating the title.

Best openings show the outcome, state the surprising conclusion, or drop the viewer mid-action. Then
say what the video will cover, briefly, so they know the shape of the commitment.

## Structure by length

**Short-form** — one idea, opening frame that reads as motion, and a payoff before attention decays.
No setup. The loop matters: end where the beginning makes sense again.

**Long-form** — chapters that each work standalone, with an explicit reason to continue at every
seam. Retention is lost at transitions, not in the middle of sections. Vary pace deliberately; a
uniformly intense video is as tiring as a flat one.

## Diagnosing underperformance

- **Low click-through** — packaging problem. Title and thumbnail, not content.
- **High click-through, early drop** — the opening did not pay the promise. Or the promise was
  unpayable.
- **Steady mid-video decline** — normal. Look at the slope against your own baseline, not absolutes.
- **Sharp mid-video cliff** — find the timestamp and watch it. It is almost always a transition, a
  tangent, or a sponsor read placed badly.

## Repurposing

Plan derivatives before filming, not after. Segments intended to stand alone get shot to stand
alone. Extracting short-form from a video not built for it produces clips that need context they do
not have.

## Sources

`references/sources.md` in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

## Tooling

Editing: DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, CapCut, and similar; Descript for
transcript-driven editing, which is faster for talking-head and interview formats than a timeline.

Recording remote: Riverside, Zoom, StreamYard, and similar — record local tracks per participant
where the tool supports it, because the connection quality on the day decides the ceiling otherwise.

Repurposing and captions: Opus Clip, Submagic, and similar. Burned-in captions are not optional;
most viewing is silent, and the caption is the packaging on every platform that autoplays.

## Never

- Produce before the title and thumbnail exist. Packaging decides whether anything you shot gets seen.
- Open with a preamble. The first seconds are where an audience is lost, not where it is warmed up.
- Diagnose a video on view count alone. Impressions, click-through, and retention fail differently and need different fixes.