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Phylodox posted:This is good advice, and I think it kind of zeroes in on a major flaw in my whole channel. The characters I've drawn (so far, there are videos with fan art of popular characters in the pipeline) are original...but they're not mine. My process has been to browse the r/characterdrawing subreddit, grab a character concept I found kind of interesting, record myself making art of that character, and then upload the video. I've been thinking of these as, like, process videos with a minimal focus on the characters because, for the most part, there's not a lot to go on for the characters other than, like, a mood board and a vague description. Dillran in particular was someone going "This is my character, he's a purple tiefling" and I had to take that and run with it. I guess I've been assuming people would be tuning in to see the process of making art, and if that's the case then I guess I should have the thumbnails focus on that rather than the characters? 1) Youtube is entertainment first and foremost. Any educational component or value to your work must exist in the context that videos that aren't entertaining or compelling in some way are not attractive/retentive to people on a platform that prioritizes selling ads, etc. 2) This is true for all video education. A good but dry and boring professor or teacher can make it work in a classroom/1-on-1/in person/etc setting but that goes completely out the window online. There are lots of people doing art, teaching art, and demonstrating art at a very high level and being funny/interesting/compelling to watch on YouTube, so people will naturally go there instead of suffering through something boring. You don't have to be Drawfee or Jazza, just having a nice scripted (or maybe unscripted if you're good doing commentary) narration/exposition/commentary and some solid music (the music you're using is really nice, some of it is a bit downtempo and/or generic for the subject matter IMO. Maybe lower music and more voice narration to keep ppl engaged). I think Boylei's style is really good for this. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 20:47
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Phylodox posted:Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WXSRUiZ5tsUaPm0QmPt8A There is 100% an audience for live art draws. There's even an audience for minimalist/chill style channels that don't show face or use voice, etc. The problem is you're using your YouTube channel as dumping group for what basically amounts to sped up Twitch VODs. Problem #1 is your thumbnails. You're an art channel and you're not making most of your biggest advantage: YOU HAVE ART! Instead you're making thumbnails where you can't see most of the art because you've zoomed in on a small chunk of it AND you've slapped text on top of it AND your text is hard to read at thumbnail size. Problem #2 is your title. As trilobite terror pointed out, nobody knows who these characters are. "Art Practice - Nicoletta" doesn't leave me wanting to click and I am someone who watches a LOT of artists do live draws because it gives me ideas on how to improve my own drawing. Revamp your thumbnails and titles so that in combination, they tell some sort of story/create a curiosity gap that compels people to click. Before/After is a format a lot of art channels use, where they juxtapose the beginning and the end. Another format I've see, mainly for acrylic painting channels, is a thumbnail that's just a blank canvas with dots of paint in the palette they plan to use (no text), and then the title has the subject of the paint (e.g. "Painting a sunset", "Painting a snow-covered mountain", "Painting a spring garden", etc). The draw of this format is you see the blank canvas, the colors, the title and you're compelled to wonder "how? what will the end result look like?" and you click and stay until you see the finished product. You do not need to get a mic and add voice commentary if that's not what you want to do. There are loads of channels that are chill, no face and no voice, where they add commentary via subtitles or put text on the screen. See Jay Lee Painting as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngCg3rrckdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3uz9geGVPI Another example (uses subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW5fJyxoN9E A cooking channel instead of an art channel, but Cooking Haru uses text and sound effects plus physical motions to convey story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYUhtNe8sBg A lot of art channels that upload live draws and talk but aren't doing them as tutorial videos usually have the commentary on something else but they are always showing their live draws while they're doing the commentating. See MimimooIllustration as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnhxny0STrk Phylodox posted:This is good advice, and I think it kind of zeroes in on a major flaw in my whole channel. The characters I've drawn (so far, there are videos with fan art of popular characters in the pipeline) are original...but they're not mine. My process has been to browse the r/characterdrawing subreddit, grab a character concept I found kind of interesting, record myself making art of that character, and then upload the video. I've been thinking of these as, like, process videos with a minimal focus on the characters because, for the most part, there's not a lot to go on for the characters other than, like, a mood board and a vague description. Dillran in particular was someone going "This is my character, he's a purple tiefling" and I had to take that and run with it. I guess I've been assuming people would be tuning in to see the process of making art, and if that's the case then I guess I should have the thumbnails focus on that rather than the characters? Nah, dude, this is a cool concept/process. You're essentially doing art challenge videos, not educational videos. The problem is this is not coming through in your presentation of your channel/videos via your thumbnails/titles. When I look at your channel page, I'm not clear on who is the target audience for these videos. Observe:  You describe your channel/about bio as "I record myself while making art" and then you've captioned everything as "art practice" so to the average viewer, this looks like the channel page of someone who's uploading stuff as a personal record for them and not necessarily something I want to watch. Comparable creators who've done similar concepts in different niches who have proven this style of video can work:
Notice that in both cases, their thumbnail, title, and intros all focus on establishing the "genre" of video as a challenge video and they also set the tone in the video by establishing what the rules of the challenge are. That's what gets the click and targets the right viewers. The thing that gets retention is them pacing the video so that you stick around for the process and the reveal. Ryan's videos are probably the better example for you because they're long form, so you can see more clearly that he's structuring the videos around mini-challenges and obstacles and people he's meeting. Connor's videos are shorts so he pretty much sets up the challenge, narrates over the actual process of doing the collab, then skips straight to the end result, spending most of the duration of the video on this part, because the purpose of Connor's shorts is to funnel you to the full length music video. trilobite terror posted:1) Youtube is entertainment first and foremost. Any educational component or value to your work must exist in the context that videos that aren't entertaining or compelling in some way are not attractive/retentive to people on a platform that prioritizes selling ads, etc. I will disagree with this somewhat. Entertainment channels are a big part of YouTube but not every channel needs to be an entertainment channel. There are a lot of educational channels that take an entertainment first approach (e.g. Mark Rober) but equally, there are education channels that aren't there to entertain. Instead, they're there because they're needs focused (e.g. think those channels that optimize purely for search and it's literally a video optimized for "how to <insert topic here>", like "how to clean your dyson <insert model here>"), community focused (e.g. "let's grow together"), personality focused (e.g. "this is my personal journey"), or connection focused (e.g. "<do X with me>/<watch me do X>" type videos). A channel can have a blend of these things in each video or they may have different videos that target different areas. They all have one thing in common though: they all understand WHY their audience is watching their channel and they tailor their thumbnails/titles/content accordingly to get the people who are after that thing to click on the video and watch it all the way through.
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Jan 5, 2024 05:51
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Okay, that's a lot of amazing advice. I've started by changing the name of my channel. Instead of just my name, I'm calling it "Drawing with Character" because I draw characters (and I often get inspiration from r/characterdrawing). I've embellished my bio a bit to say: "Hello and welcome to my channel! My name is Alan and I'm a character artist. I record myself while making portraits and character pieces and then upload time lapse videos here!" I'm not sure if that's enough, I could add more. More importantly, I've experimented a bit with some different thumbnail ideas, trying to capture that curiosity and also convey that it's a process from initial sketch to finished piece. I've come up with a couple of ideas:   I can't thank you guys enough, you're really very helpful!
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Jan 5, 2024 17:51
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This prompted me to recall the other thumbnail style that'd work real good for you: those sharp contrast ones where you have the character centered and then the left half of their face is a silly pencil sketch and the right half of their face is fully colored and finished. A lot of personal improvement/transformation channels do this style of thumbnail. Like this one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU4YAsMYiGo
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Jan 6, 2024 11:52
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I have a question that's somewhere in between a technical and a taste issue. I want to explore adding chyrons, tickers - you know, lower third poo poo, to my DJ livestreams/videos. If you check the link in my av, you can see that I've got a three-camera setup through an ATEM Mini, on a crossfade macro every 45 seconds. There's a fourth 'camera angle' piped into the ATEM that's just some reactive video from Synesthesia over my channel splash screen. That comes out of the same computer that the ATEM is piping back into OBS for streaming. The question is, on what level do I add the graphics & text? I know it can be done within both the ATEM and OBS. I wonder which is a more robust or elegant solution, whether using OBS is going to tax my old computer significantly further, and which is most versatile? There's also the 'taste' component of the issue; the setup I described means that since OBS just sees the whole program from the switcher, using it for graphics precludes me from withholding the graphics from the Synesthesia logo splash screen, something I think I might want.
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Jan 12, 2024 17:05
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I've just come across Zackary Smigel's channel. I'm probably late to it, but there's some really interesting things on there. I really like the big one on how YouTube feels different recently, but in this video he mentions TubeBuddy and VidIQ. I doubt it, but are they any cop?
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Jan 14, 2024 17:55
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https://youtu.be/JvtQwc1CTvQ?si=8OhY7lJ6jzoPA70r Second Thought JT made a nifty basics video, maybe this helps somebody
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Jan 20, 2024 07:38
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Ok, so, I'm looking to post a video next week. Been working on this one for the past 3 months or so. And unlike some of my other videos, I'm looking to get my title/thumb right the first time. The video is a media analysis video essay on Stargate SG1, which I feel has been woefully underexplored in that space. The video focuses on a slew of different episodes with dystopian qualities. So, first question, the title. Right now I'm feeling 'Analyzing Stargate SG1's Dire Dystopias'. Which I think is an accurate encapsulation of the entire thing. Though I keep going back and forth on dropping 'Analyzing' as I feel that part could be understood contextually based on the video length, but it does set up the promise that it's actually doing analysis and not just hackey media-repetition as seems to be what a lot of creators are doing these days. (Although there is of course a bit of that so the video is approachable to people who haven't seen the show, of course, but it's not *just* that). I dunno, I think I'm leaning for it right now but if a shorter, punchier, title is preferable I would entirely buy that. Next question, the thumbnail. Big thanks to whoever posted the very detailed explanation video on the topic. I even went back and updated some of my weaker thumbnails to be less terrible, although some of my video topics are unfortunately rather un-thumbnailable, but I'm a lot happier with the revised ones, either way. Anyhow, for this project I actually had the idea for the thumbnail in mind from the beginning. I do think Stargate SG1 lends itself to certain thumbnail constructions and I think I've hit on one that could be effective. Or at least something in the neighborhood. Definitely open to opinions. So to start out the image, I wanted to use this particular frame from the legendary groundhog day episode, which is definitely a meme-able moment from the show that will appeal to both core fans and a general audience, and conveys a good bit of curiosity-driving emotion:  After that I decided to go in kind of a more lovecraftian direction and throw in a set of tentacles:  Giving the thumbnail something of a cosmic horror vibe, which I think does somewhat go with the dystopian topic of the video. Admittedly I realize this isn't a great 1:1 with the concept of the video but I think it may be close enough at least. I also realize I'm not the best at paint.net but I recall the main thing being the concept of the thumbnail, less the execution. Anyway, definitely open to ideas if somebody has a better one. Or improvements I can make to the existing thumbnail concept. I'm pretty jazzed about this video, there are some edits/jokes that I am ridiculously proud of and can't wait for people to see. Definitely will do whatever it takes to make the best impression. Right now I'm aiming to get this video out on Feb 1st. I've heard Thursday mid-day is the best time to make videos live, but as with a lot of things in this space I wouldn't be surprised if that was relatively overblown. Either way, can't wait to get this video in front of people. I think a lot of people here especially will appreciate some of the gags I did with video editing. Think I'm finally starting to get the hang of resolve, even did a chroma key without having to look it up for once. 
Sardonik fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 27, 2024 |
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Jan 27, 2024 05:17
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Ooh! Being a Stargate fan myself, the topic is definitely up my alley so I'll make a couple of observations from that angle: The thumbnail is indeed instantly recognizable to anyone who has watched the show, but it doesn't really relate to the "dystopia" part in any way. I can see grognards complaining about that. Then again, engagement is engagement! I'm a little torn on the tentacle version: on one hand it's more related to dystopia aspect of it, but it also didn't happen so... I don't know. You could do a split screen thumbnail like so:  although that does get dangerously close to some of the stuff I hate but it seemingly works so  (I am indeed mixing Atlantis, a random GIS result, and a Groundhog day screengrab, buuut I also spent all of 5 minutes on it) As for the central thesis, I'm genuinely curious how you'll approach it. There is so much to choose from, although the most obvious to me is the Aschen future timeline. Looking forward to it! Somewhat related: I stumbled across this kinda-themed? music channel : [url]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcZHufaUP38GAvTb3NTi4DA[/url-
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Jan 27, 2024 20:51
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Trabant posted:Ooh! Being a Stargate fan myself, the topic is definitely up my alley so I'll make a couple of observations from that angle: I definitely see what you're getting at with that split screen style thumbnail! I might try to make something in that style, I definitely think the stargate itself has to be in at least one part of the thumbnail itself to take advantage of all the iconography of it. God I wish the A/B testing feature would come out already. In terms of the structure of the video I went through the whole SG1 episode list and categorized episodes by dystopic qualities, from there I decided on which categories to use in the video. You'll be pleased to know the Aschen timeline episodes 2010/2001 are definitely in there in a chapter I'm calling 'The Darkest Timelines'. And GOOD LORD did 2010 age strangely in the wake of all the antivax conspiracy theory stuff during covid, which I do call out a little in the video but drat I think one could probably make a good whole video on just that episode. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 27, 2024 |
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Jan 27, 2024 21:04
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 Looking forward to it!---------- In my own YT attempts, I tried something a bit different with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iShOw24qXic (I know that my thumbnail game is garbage, trying to come up with a better one) Different thing 1: start with the full reveal, then back up and talk about the inspiration behind the project. This came about as I just didn't feel that the first edit was... well, interesting. There are so. many. videos of the "cut wood, shape wood" nature that I didn't think me making one just like it added anything new. Instead I made sure to talk about the inspiration behind the object, as well as the channels which taught me how to do this. Different thing 2: I wanted to see what (if any) traffic it gets with next to no attempts at promotion. Next, I'm giving the woodworking / crafting subreddits a shot (without running afoul of the self-promo rules). It's going to be interesting seeing whether any of that has an impact. I did, however, get a nice comment from an O.G. YouTube woodturner -- whom I linked in the description as an inspiration, among others -- and that was very satisfying 
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Jan 27, 2024 23:15
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I'm not a Stargate fan myself, but if I saw this pop up in my recommendations, I'd think, "Huh, probably looking at the sillier parts of Stargate" (which is what I thought as I first saw it in your post), and give it a look. Whereas this was too busy for me to really parse on first glance, and I'd thus give it a miss; even though it has that cosmic horror bit.
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Jan 27, 2024 23:20
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Trabant posted:
Nice job! I’d let people know in the title that it’s a wood-turning project. Wood-Turning an Alhambra-Style Vase, etc. I like your thumbnail, but maybe you could show some kind of progression between the initial block form and the final product. Maybe a before/after. I’m not rly wedded to this suggestion regarding the thumbnail, but I definitely think you should refine the title a little bit. I initially expected a nice and technically competent but relatively run-of-the-mill pottery project, lol, and the revelation that it was going to be wood was a pleasant surprise that made the whole thing more interesting to me, and that I may have otherwise missed and skipped over if it weren’t posted here and I was just browsing YouTube. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 27, 2024 |
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Jan 27, 2024 23:22
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trilobite terror posted:Nice job! I’d let people know in the title that it’s a wood-turning project. Thank you for the kind words We actually had very similar thoughts -- esp. re: thumbnail after I suggested the split-screen thing to Sardonik -- so here's the new one: I also renamed the video per your suggestion and added a couple of tags (woodturning, woodworking) although I have zero clue if anyone actually uses tags on YouTube.
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Jan 28, 2024 03:01
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FouRPlaY posted:I'm not a Stargate fan myself, but if I saw this Thank you for this, definitely think I'm going to hold off on the calamari one way or another. Trabant posted:Thank you for the kind words Looking very good! you're quite the craftsperson! I've heard tags don't do anything anymore, that youtube just takes the word you're saying in your video and generates the data that tags used to use. But I'm by no means a professional and I definitely use tags anyway just on the off chance it does actuallydo anything. So following the earlier feedback, I'm trying out the two column format. I definitely think I was also off base before to use stuff that wasn't explicitly in the video. Better to set up the promise with episodes that 100% show up in the video, and early. Any of these look more clickable? 1.  2.  I did also do this one which is just one episode, but framed better 3.  E: Seeing them all together, kind of leaning number 1, even if it doesn't actually have a stargate in it. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 04:31
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Definitely #1 of those three. You could try to get the gate in there by having it bridging the two parts of the screen, maybe even activating from left to right? Although you'd probably need to sacrifice Jack for that, my guess is that it would be pretty noisy to have four elements in there. Including an Aschen reference -- or maybe the "getting shot and tossing the paper through the gate" moment -- in one of the background shots might work too, if you feel that's a big enough part of the analysis. But otherwise yeah, something more eye-catching would be better.
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Jan 29, 2024 08:48
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Trabant posted:Thank you for the kind words Judging by which woodturning videos on Youtube get the most views, this might actually be your money shot as far as thumbnails go: 
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Jan 29, 2024 11:39
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Sardonik posted:So following the earlier feedback, I'm trying out the two column format. I definitely think I was also off base before to use stuff that wasn't explicitly in the video. Better to set up the promise with episodes that 100% show up in the video, and early. O'Neill going WHACKO! is great but the background images aren't doing anything for me except the Scorched Earth terraforming ship. The other background images don't look dystopic so they're not serving any narrative purpose for the thumbnail. You can't even see the characters' faces and they're just standing there placidly, if you're doing a video about the dystopic elements of the show the thumbnail kinda has to reflect that really immediately and clearly and I'm not getting that here. Comedy option: the terraforming ship and its flames take up the entire background of the thumbnail, photoshop the distraught faces of other major characters (screencapped from episodes you discuss) into the flames so it looks like they're writhing in hell   , have O'Neill in the foreground being a wacky fun guy   Now that's clickable!  Goddamit Amanda Tapping, would it kill you to emote just once??
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Jan 29, 2024 12:55
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Comedy option: the terraforming ship and its flames take up the entire background of the thumbnail, photoshop the distraught faces of other major characters (screencapped from episodes you discuss) into the flames so it looks like they're writhing in hell Ok, yeah, honestly, I think this might be the most conceptually clear of any of them, do you mind if I try to use this concept?
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Jan 29, 2024 17:27
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Judging by which woodturning videos on Youtube get the most views, this might actually be your money shot as far as thumbnails go: You're not wrong! The approach among turners seems to be split between those showing WIP vs. finished work but I hadn't paid attention to respective views. I might give the current thumbnail another couple of days before switching. Snowglobe of Doom posted:
lmao
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Jan 29, 2024 17:50
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Sardonik posted:Ok, yeah, honestly, I think this might be the most conceptually clear of any of them, do you mind if I try to use this concept? Ok admittedly I went ahead and tried it, and while this an absolutely baller concept, I've come to the unfortunate discovery that I don't quite have the paint.net/photoshop/what have you skills to pull this off. HOWEVER In the search for faces to use in the concept I think I've hit on a solid face/emotion conveying concept that I think works for me:  Even though it looks like Teal'c might be about to take a nibble off of little O'Neill there I think this might be my best bet. Bonus Stargate Trivia: can you name the episodes the two sides are from? Left: Beneath the Surface Right: The Gamekeeper E2: "This is where I watched my parents die, Samantha" Sardonik fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 20:26
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Sardonik posted:Ok admittedly I went ahead and tried it, and while this an absolutely baller concept, I've come to the unfortunate discovery that I don't quite have the paint.net/photoshop/what have you skills to pull this off. Now it's time to gently caress around with the color correction, saturation and contrast of the various elements!  A really important acid test as to whether your thumbnail is going to be effective is to shrink it down to the size it will appear onscreen in the sidebar/suggestions section of Youtube and see whether it's still legible and communicates effectively at that scale. This is probably the size that the large majority of your potential viewers will be exposed to the thumbnail so this is a real make-or-break moment on whether your video will get views. If we shrink that thumbnail down real teensy we see that Teal'c's face is very dark and indistinct, and the upper half of Daniel's face is also very dark and hard to see: If we increase the brightness and contrast of the background images then everything becomes a lot clearer and more legible:  ..... but it feels like the background and foreground kind've merge together a bit too much and aren't immediately indistinguishable. O'Neill and his smiley plate are getting a little lost down there and might need a little pop. Here it is with the backgrounds desaturated and shifted towards sepia tone and spooky blue:   I pushed them pretty far to show the difference, you might not want to go quite that sepia or blue And finally, here it is with the background behind Daniel coloured in to really differentiate the foreground/background:  I also went in with the dodge/burn tool to slightly lighten the highlights around Teal'c and Daniel's eyes and increase the shadows underneath their faces so that their expressions were a lot clearer, and I also increased the contrast and saturation on O'Neill to make him pop even harder Here's a before & after comparison: Now none of this stuff is really necessary but when you only have a split second to reel in a potential viewer as their eye scans across the Youtube 'suggested videos' screen then every little bit helps
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Jan 30, 2024 02:15
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Trabant posted:You're not wrong! The approach among turners seems to be split between those showing WIP vs. finished work but I hadn't paid attention to respective views. I might give the current thumbnail another couple of days before switching. Yeah it's a weird aspect of woodturning videos in particular. Usually when you're posting a video following the process of creating an artwork the general rule is that you show the finished piece in the thumbnail because that's what the viewers are going to be invested in but with woodturning the process is often the most fascinating aspect of the production. After all, a candlestick is just a fuckin' candlestick, but making a candlestick appear out of a chunk of plain wood is goddam magical.
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Jan 30, 2024 02:20
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Anyone know much about the loudness standards for certain streaming services ? I'm using a new limiter as part of my DJ streaming setup, and I'm curious if it's being set wrong. I heard somewhere that Twitch asks for -14LUFS but someone commented in another thread that my stream seemed quiet when I aimed for that number. Can music streaming be louder than other content, or is that unwise?
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Jan 30, 2024 02:28
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Literal Image Magic From To  Thanks again! Sardonik fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jan 30, 2024 |
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Jan 30, 2024 03:23
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I guess if we were really following current thumbnail trends we'd go the MrBeast route and make their teeth and the whites of their eyes unnaturally white and bright, lol drat but that poo poo is weird 
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Jan 30, 2024 03:37
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That's too dystopic for even my video
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Jan 30, 2024 03:48
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Judging by which woodturning videos on Youtube get the most views, this might actually be your money shot as far as thumbnails go: Trabant posted:You're not wrong! The approach among turners seems to be split between those showing WIP vs. finished work but I hadn't paid attention to respective views. I might give the current thumbnail another couple of days before switching. Thinking about it further, there's also a middle option  The original Alhambra vase is also a great visual hook, this way you get the best of both worlds. Fonts, font colours, border colours and arrow design options are of course all down to personal preference, as is whether you pixellate the finished woodturning project or not
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Jan 31, 2024 04:59
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For the streamers, Ludwig just dropped an updated guide to streaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtVkI21963k If you've never seen his original guide, it's still well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i9gkprYekI In unrelated chat: it's been so long since I did a longform upload that I have legit forgotten how to get in front of a camera and do that. Which is ironic and kind of ridiculous considering I stream ~6 hours a day 5 days a week and ~2 hours a day on the weekends. I actually tried to go outside and film today, after jotting down some notes, and completely locked up on camera, feeling like a socially awkward and very uncomfortable idiot. And right now I'm posting instead of working on the half a dozen or so video ideas that I have in the works. Ugh. Part of it is just being out of it for so long but I also know the other part of it is because I think I'm lacking clarity on what I want to say. At this point, I'm seriously considering moving to a YouTube model like Ludwig where I set up dedicated streams that are designed to be YouTube videos and edit them down later, otherwise at this rate I'm never gonna get around to filming them. Like I have a video that I've been planning for aaaaaages but have been putting off filming because I know it's gonna be a long rear end 40 min complete walkthrough video and I'm just sitting here, staring down the YT production pipeline knowing that it means something like 2-3 hrs of raw footage and 10-15 hrs of editing. Like I'm already prepped, I just keep putting it off because I'm like ughhhhhhh I have a book to finish revising. Actually thinking that I've convinced myself to run it as a livestreamed "workshop" instead during the course of writing this post. Yeah, okay. I will do a trip report in due course.
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Jan 31, 2024 05:24
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Thinking about it further, there's also a middle option  You are really good at this! I very well might take you up on that concept -- if you're cool with it -- depending on how the next day or so goes. On that:Here are the stats for that video about 7 days in, with the caveat that a microchannel like mine and a 100-view video are probably not a great source of insights, but it's what I've got to work with : And some basic observations -- I'm happy to be corrected if my interpretation is wrong: - Sharing on craft subreddits doesn't appear to have done much, but I'm not surprised. Most have rules about promoting social networks outside Reddit, and even those that don't usually require you put it in the comments rather than the main post. I did post about it on Instagram too, but that was basically at the same time as the YouTube upload so I can't really judge its impact. - But it sure looks like the change in thumbnail and title did something! It's actually visible in the clickthrough rate doubling as well:  - That said, the overall impressions rate of 1% looks abysmal but is in-line with most of my videos, so... there's that. The only one that's appreciably higher is the Janus sculpture at 10%, but that one took 117 days to get to 100 views. The Alhambra vase did it in less than a week. Maybe YouTube decided to push the vase video way, way more, to the point that the volume of impressions is just overcoming the low clickthrough rate? - Also, I have zero idea what could be causing the third stair-step that started near the end of day 5. That bump starts around 4am my time (CST) which suggests an audience starting to watch it in... Europe maybe? The analytics are blank on geography on account of "not enough data" so it's purely a guess on my end. Anyway, it's late. It would be really interesting to see what happens if I decide to change the thumbnail yet again.
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Jan 31, 2024 08:22
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Trabant posted:
Yeah of course Trabant posted:On that: Yay, stats and graphs! I unironically love this poo poo. What your 'traffic sources' looking like? That'll tell you a lot about how people are finding your videoHere's the traffic source on one of my moderate videos:  Pretty much most of the hits were via the algorithm recommending the vid and less than 2% of hits came from direct searches but weirdly enough 8% of the views were from 14 total strangers adding it to playlists 
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Jan 31, 2024 10:53
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I really wanted to get the A/B thumbnail testing by the time I was done with my next video, but I still don't have the option. So with that in mind I've done a little experiment. I've gone super clickbaity with the title and thumbnail. But not necessarily the content itself. I'm hoping the thumbnail is clear, simple, and recognisable as a GTA thing. It's a bit baity in that it's an inflammatory statement, but having watched a lot more content on getting views I guess that's part of the game?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAVyXjbfmH0 Hopefully that all comes across. And if it gets views, my thinking is that the opening statement is enough to deflect a bit of hate from the title. I haven't launched it yet since I'm having trouble getting the player to work while I edit the subtitles. On that note - has anyone found a reliable way to get YouTube to format subs correctly when you upload your script? I've tried .txt files with no breaks, a break for each line, and double breaks. I've tried timed uploads, un-timed ones, and nothing seems to output subtitles that don't require upsetting amounts of editing. Is YouTube's subtitle system just a bit crap and this is something everyone has to do if they don't want auto-subs? 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Feb 1, 2024 |
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Feb 1, 2024 18:25
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7seven7 posted:I really wanted to get the A/B thumbnail testing by the time I was done with my next video, but I still don't have the option. So with that in mind I've done a little experiment. I've gone super clickbaity with the title and thumbnail. But not necessarily the content itself. quote:I haven't launched it yet since I'm having trouble getting the player to work while I edit the subtitles. On that note - has anyone found a reliable way to get YouTube to format subs correctly when you upload your script? I've tried .txt files with no breaks, a break for each line, and double breaks. I've tried timed uploads, un-timed ones, and nothing seems to output subtitles that don't require upsetting amounts of editing. Stargate SG1 Video is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0_pVvGqPKU Currently on pins and needles waiting for it to hit the algorithm proper. What do people think on best practices for promoting work externally? Will that hurt or help the ability of the algorithm to find the audience? Should I just let the algorithm do its thing for the next 48 hours before sharing it out more broadly?
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Feb 1, 2024 20:06
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Sardonik posted:I'm no expert but I think this is 100% a valid approach. I think that thumbnail is great too. I'll try this next - that sounds better than chopping them up the way YouTube does it from uploading. Sardonik posted:
I clicked on this out of curiosity, watched the entire thing along with your video on leftism. You've got a new subscriber! Sardonik posted:What do people think on best practices for promoting work externally? Will that hurt or help the ability of the algorithm to find the audience? Should I just let the algorithm do its thing for the next 48 hours before sharing it out more broadly? Generally I've tried posting to the relevant subreddits, but every single post I've tried on Reddit has been immediately downvoted and any comments I've got were pretty hostile. I can only imagine that's hurting my initial numbers, but it's hard not to want to fish for that one success on Reddit that'd give me a little boost. I'm holding off on posting my new thing anywhere and just seeing how the numbers do without external posting. I've only had one video get picked up by the algorithm and it got a hundred views early on from Reddit, then died on its arse, then got picked up from YouTube recommendations a day later. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 00:31
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7seven7 posted:I clicked on this out of curiosity, watched the entire thing along with your video on leftism. You've got a new subscriber! quote:Generally I've tried posting to the relevant subreddits, but every single post I've tried on Reddit has been immediately downvoted and any comments I've got were pretty hostile. I can only imagine that's hurting my initial numbers, but it's hard not to want to fish for that one success on Reddit that'd give me a little boost. I'm holding off on posting my new thing anywhere and just seeing how the numbers do without external posting. I've only had one video get picked up by the algorithm and it got a hundred views early on from Reddit, then died on its arse, then got picked up from YouTube recommendations a day later.
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Feb 2, 2024 02:40
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I launched my new thing on Friday and it seems to have stopped getting views. I got just shy of 2k, which is more than twice what I usually get, so I'm relatively happy. It looks like it got two pushes around about midnight GMT on both days. Which interesting to me because it seems like most of my audience is in the UK:  The gender split is pretty much what I was expecting, but I'm quite surprised to see the audience skewed younger when all of my other videos have been almost 100% in the 35-44 bracket. I got absolutely bodied in the likes/dislikes ratio when it's normally around 95% in my favour. But I'm sort of assuming it's salty fans seeing the thumbnail and immediately hitting the dislike button. I was hoping my opening line might mitigate that, but I'm not surprised it didn't. I'm somewhat OK with the average duration as well. I was imagining it to be around thirty seconds, so I'll take four minutes.  In terms of retention I'm somewhat pleased. There's a big dip in the graph when I mention not fitting masculine stereotypes at 0:34, another one when I start criticising the series at 06:54, and another one when I shift to praise a series that isn't GTA at 08:49. All in all I'm OK with the performance, but I was hoping a spicy title and putting more effort into the concept and thumbnail would produce a better result. I'm not really sure what I could've done differently with the title and thumbnail and I'm still looking at improving my numbers, so I'll keep working on it. One nice thing is I now how three people regularly commenting on my posts and videos. It's such a tiny number, but the fact that two or three people like what I'm doing is a really nice feeling. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 4, 2024 14:33
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Sardonik posted:Stargate SG1 Video is up: Getting very close to 500 views ..... 
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Feb 5, 2024 11:57
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7seven7 posted:I launched my new thing on Friday and it seems to have stopped getting views. I got just shy of 2k, which is more than twice what I usually get, so I'm relatively happy. Nice! Nearly 2k off the cuff is a pretty grand start! Snowglobe of Doom posted:Getting very close to 500 views .....  I have good faith in this video in the long term, I have been able to get a few slow-burn videos going, where they don't exactly set the world on fire at launch but eventually settle into a rhythm of ~100 48 hour views. Also this is one of the highest AVD's I've had on my longer projects:  So I'm getting a real solid watch time from this, which I hope will spell algorithmic success in the long term. I've got a lot more post-mortem thoughts but I'm going to hold off until the videos' been out a complete week. Overall though, feeling ok with it, though I'll admit to hoping for a bigger day 1-2 viewership, but given my choice of topic that may have never been in the cards. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Feb 5, 2024 16:34
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Sardonik posted:I have good faith in this video in the long term, I have been able to get a few slow-burn videos going, where they don't exactly set the world on fire at launch but eventually settle into a rhythm of ~100 48 hour views. One of my videos simmered for 15 years before it hit the boil, lol  I guess I was just ahead of my time. 
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Feb 6, 2024 03:40
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Alright, so, one week out postmortem thoughts on the Stargate video for those curious: The Good As mentioned before, this is the highest average view duration I've ever had for a video this long by a pretty fair bit. 31% for a 1:10:30 video, yielding 202 hours of watch time for 803 views. So irrespective of other issues I feel confident that this is probably the best video I've made yet. The video also had the effect of boosting my earlier works as I had hoped it would, leading to almost 1K overall watch hours for the past 30 days, which isn't something I'd achieved since the MST3K video was pushed. I realize these are probably baby numbers compared to a lot of quality longform creators but I am still considering this a marked improvement over previous output. I was able to deploy a meme short based on a part of the video that seems to have been fairly successful given its niche subject matter. This short yielded a solid 2.5k views and 94 likes. Not a huge amount as shorts go I imagine but still successful to me, particularly in the like engagements. While the conversion rate from shorts views to views on the related main video wasn't earthshattering, it was significantly noticeable in a period where the algorithm was not pushing the video. More interestingly the AVD actually went up during this period. Contrary to what some seem to have experienced (on the newtubers reddit and all), promoting the video via the short was seemingly a gain on all fronts. This may be due to those interested in the subject matter having a higher preference for longform content. The short is still receiving a few views here and there, 16 over the past 48 hours or so, leading me to believe it will continue to be of use in driving traffic to the main video. I also made an unlisted 'template' for the meme, linked in the video, which a few people seemed to appreciate. In promoting the short I leveraged the r/Stargate subreddit. This turned out to be a wildly successful approach (relatively speaking), and I am considering this to be the optimal way to promote short content on reddit if it falls within the permissible norms of a given subreddit:  In terms of my video editing process, I leveraged some new technologies in this project that I think really paid off. First and foremost: Dialog Isolation. My understanding is that this is a paid version only thing for DaVinci Resolve but holy poo poo it might itself be worth the purchase price. It's as simple as activating the filter via the inspector on the audio entry and sliding the strength as desired. I won't say it sounds 100% natural all the time, and it's clear in certain areas where I'm using it, but it still is a tremendous improvement in being able to understand spoken dialog in media. It also directly made the short possible as you might expect. It also tremendously helped with the audio dialog clarity in some Stargate SG1 clips. I saw that something similar seems to be coming out for audacity with the power to even isolate specific instrument tracks, which seems incredibly promising for future projects. Specifically to isolate out certain aspects of background music that might detract. Definitely something to keep an eye on. This was also my first time to meaningfully use frame interpolation in resolve. Specifically the 'Retime and Scaling' options that generate frames based on previous and future frames. This is how I did the slow wormhole effect background video used throughout the video. Notably I started with the longest wormhole sequence I could find, and zoomed in pretty hard as the algorithm seemed to break down a bit on the edges, but the effect still seems to work well and is what I was going for. I slowed the clip down to a minute %, added the effect to the clip, then used the render in place option to avoid the overhead of having the interpolation calculated at runtime. Letting me smoothly reuse it throughout the video with no performance hit during editing. I also used the interpolation in one of the chapter title segments to better time it with a clip running at an exceptionally slow framerate that would have been unwatchable otherwise. This had more mixed results as a lot of the panning motion got blurred weirdly, but this is expected as you're generally supposed to use it on still shots. Even still, it too achieved most of what I was going for. In order to elevate the '1000 years' joke a bit more I added a light Room Echo Effect to the audio of the songs giving them more an illusion of being played in a room. Nobody's directly commented on this but I definitely think it's one of those 'you might not have noticed, but your brain did' sorts of things. For sure helped the joke, relative to just playing the songs directly. Was honestly surprised how relatively straightforward it was to use the effect in Resolve, though I still had to play with it a bit. This was my first time making a new video since acquiring a 15TB external hard drive for slow media storage and project archival. Would definitely recommend, storage space cheap AF these days. You don't need literally every piece of media on an nvme ssd to edit successfully. Also still backing up to the google drive though to be on the safe side. Feels good to have the project files and the compressed .dra files if for whatever reason I need to go back and roll a new version either way. I also received one of the nicest complements I've ever received on the platform, even if I don't feel I'm quite there yet   The Bad Even as the short took off on Reddit, my strategy for promoting the main video failed completely:  Promoting longform on reddit in the best of times is a dicey proposition I realize, but I was curious to try a strategy I had seen discussed where you link the video in a post rather than having it be directly shared in the reddit feed and uncomfortably autoplaying, leading to lower AVD as people click away. Having people self-select for only those most interested in the topic. Admittedly maybe I should have used the combination of having the post type be an image - the thumbnail image - with the words and video link in a comment, but I have the hunch too this might not have gone over great either. It may legitimately have been better for audience finding to just have the video linked directly in-feed, even if it did potentially hit AVD. I did share the MST3K video I made a while back on Reddit this way, and that may have been part of how it found its audience faster. Probably not too late to wipe the old post nobody saw and post again with that direct method, which might be something to try sometime soon. I also see now I had a typo, saying SG1 twice there, but I doubt that was enough to sink the entire post conceptually.  More concerningly I believe I may have significantly overestimated the mainstream appeal of my thumbnail concept:  While youtube cheerfully points out that the CTR is extra low because the algorithm tried to find an audience for it by pushing it out for a time, I was positive the design I had been working with was going to be mainstream-clickable. I thought the emotionality of it would be enough to attract people who were not familiar with the show, but that seems to have not been the case. Regardless, I don't really have a better thumbnail idea at the moment, so I think I'll let it ride. A thumbnail is judged on it's CTR so I guess on that metric it's a failure but it still feels like it should have been a successful one somehow. Ah well. If anyone has any remaining tweaks I may be missing I'm definitely all ears. And I definitely am not blaming anyone who advised me in the creation of it! I'm sure it would have been significantly worse had I gone with my first instincts. The Ugly The suggested video recommendations recommending the video have been... weird:  On release the only videos recommending the video were... westerns of some kind. While one could read SG1 as a western through enough tortured logic I don't think it makes a lick of sense for these videos to be the only ones that suggested the video for the longest time. I used tags, said Stargate SG1 scores of times in the video, even did the manual subtitles to ensure nothing was misheard. Video's title and description clearly had Stargate SG1 in it too. I can't fathom why it pushed it out to old west audiences. It was not until literally today that I started to see SG1 videos correctly recommending the video in the list. The short may have also nudged the audience in the SG1 direction as it was tagged with #stargate #sg1 and seemed to show up in searches well enough from the jump. Not sure what else I could have done to tell the algorithm the main video was an SG1 video. Conclusion A mixed bag overall, but still, I believe the video itself is strong, and I remain hopeful it will find its audience one way or another. Impressions have cratered, though I remain ever hopeful YouTube will try pushing it out again eventually. For now it has stabilized at ~30 views in the past 48 hours or so, which still puts it at my third most passive-view gaining videos. Fourth even in my 10 most recent longform videos view-count at this point. Guess a big lesson for me to learn is that it's not quite enough to have a good AVD/view time for YouTube to promote something obscure to the point it concretely finds its audience. Regardless, I'm going to keep the faith and start working on my next project pretty soon here. This video, perhaps more than any of my previous ones, has been quite the learning experience.
Sardonik fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Feb 9, 2024 |
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Feb 9, 2024 01:27
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