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Oh hey, just realized this thread exists! I've been asking for advice from the editing thread but thought I'd peek in here as well. Here's my crit request: Channel URL: Swift Kick Industries Type of crit wanted: channel (I think? I only have two videos so far) Any specific issues you want help on: Not really -- fire away on editing, audio, pacing, narration, anything that could be obviously improved. Mine is a craft/maker-style channel, and I have zero ambition to make it anything other than a way to share things I've made. The first video was a Simpsons meme joke that got out of hand, the second one is much more like what I'm actually interested in sharing in the future: combination of different crafts, sometimes featuring vintage electronics. I don't know whether I have a theme in mind beyond Making Things I Find Interesting, because I'm a self-admitted dilettante when it comes to arts and crafts. It's less "here's how to make this specific thing" and more "here is how I mix techniques in different ways to produce something that I find cool." And to contribute: 7seven7 posted:[The main criticism I get from friends is that the music dominates the narration, which I think I agree with. I want the videos to be vibey, so I think the music should be high in the mix, but if it's a huge issue I'll rethink that approach. Any other criticism would be very welcome too. I really enjoyed the animation -- I think it truly sets off a channel vs. others. If I wanted to include something like that, I honestly wouldn't know where to start. It's a great hook and clearly custom. And even though I don't really play video games anymore I stayed through the whole video and you made a convincing case for Subnautica  I personally struggled with audio on my second video, so I can't offer a lot of advice there (although it didn't really bother me in your case).One thing I'll ask -- not a loaded question, I genuinely don't know -- is whether an essay needs to have a central thesis or some question it's supposed to answer. If the central thesis is "Subnautica is fantastic because of the awe it inspires" without it becoming a video game review, that's perfectly fair. But if you're going for a particular argument, it might need to be more explicit for dumbs like me.
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Jun 16, 2023 19:42
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Thank you for the feedback and the kind words!  I'm going to keep the stuff you (and a few others) liked in mind when I make the next one. I can at least try not to stray away from what's seemingly working.
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Jun 19, 2023 23:47
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Leng posted:<words of wisdom> Leng, thank you for the insights! (and for being the load-bearing poster itt) If I quote/replied to each point you made, this post would be fantastically obnoxious to read, but suffice it to say you gave me plenty to think about. The big one is on how I position the channel but I'll touch on some of that below. A few of thoughts from my end: - The thumbnail you suggested is perfect and I'm bewildered as to why I didn't think of it. It's probably because I was going for the gag reveal but since I already spoil it with the title... well, why not show it in the thumbnail too. Hope you don't mind if I steal & tweak the concept? - Also, 100% on the glamour shots, esp. on the Sneed's video. Missed that opportunity and realized it shortly after uploading. - The "bonus" part of the video -- the fourth clock -- was something I was always going to include but maybe it could've been a Short instead. It doesn't seem to have hurt retention on its own though, at least based on what Studio shows me:  So it doesn't dive after the final display case shots, but it also hovers at ~20% for the majority of it, which is... uh, bad? No clue. - I've considered showing the final product up front, as I know some maker-type channels do. Might go with that. It could hook those who are interested in how I went about it, but make those uninterested click away immediately. - I actually subscribe to Nerdforge along with... 292 other channels what the gently caress I need to prune that so I can see why you'd suggest looking into them. But if I'm to compare what I was going for, subconsciously or not, it's probably a mix of Adam Savage's Tested, Boylei Hobby Time, Laura Kampf, Make Something, and Wesley Treat. Very few of them post strict how-tos, and I didn't intend to do so either. - That said, I've been thinking my style is more descriptive than prescriptive, but I do see how my shots/pacing are closer to the latter / how-tos. I'll need to think about it some more, esp. given how most of my inspiration comes from personality-driven channels. Finally, on this: Leng posted:Most top YouTubers test video ideas before they film by considering whether they can encapsulate it in a thumbnail and if they can't, they basically don't film the video (because if they can't get it into thumbnail form, nobody is gonna click). This is the finished project and the subject of my next video, a turned + carved wood sculpture I'm calling Janus: https://i.imgur.com/QeRsVVF.mp4 The entire motivation behind the project was roughly "This could be cool" and I think it worked out on that front. I also think it would make for an interesting video too: I haven't seen other items quite like it -- most "carved wood sculpture" videos out there lean towards realistic, not abstract -- and I can probably take a decent photo to make it look fairly dramatic in the thumbnail. But beyond that, it's still very much a selfish choice of what interests me. I guess given that I'm only planning video #3 gives me more freedom to  stuff that I'm happy with vs. someone doing this for a living?
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Jun 21, 2023 17:07
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Leng posted:Go for your life! If you pay attention to your niche and even more broadly speaking to just YouTube in general, there are set conventions for thumbnails and formats, etc. The "vs"/comparison one gets used a lot. Thank you Here's a quick & dirty one I made: Need to play with it a bit more, esp. the text, but I like where it's going. Leng posted:But I would do the thumbnail/title BEFORE you do the edit so you can structure the edit around the story you're telling with the thumbnail/title, if that makes sense. Yup, it totally does! I guess I'll share mY pRoCeSs on the two vids so far, because I'm sure it's rear end-backwards and curious how it compares to those of others: 1) Decide what to make 2) Film the build process 3) If it turns out how I imagined/hoped it would and seems like it might make an interesting video, shoot intro/outro/B-roll/etc. footage <-- the third video is at this stage 4) Edit the footage down to <20 mins (what felt like a good threshold but I'm not married to it) 5) Write script, record voiceover, choose music, make thumbnail I'm aware that the script ought to be the starting point, I just don't know if a maker-style video can truly follow that. For me at least, the build is fairly fluid. It makes a lot more sense to me to reverse the process flow because I can then talk about what happened. And it works for the intro/outro because they can be shot independent of the build itself.
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Jun 23, 2023 14:42
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7seven7 posted:The video's done the best out of any I've done so far and I'm just up to 40 subs. Add one from me to that -- really enjoyed the video edit: forgot to post my own most recent one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mybgpl-228E The thumbnail can probably be improved, but I'm trying to avoid text so... Keeping it as-is, at least for now. I'm pleased with the final reveal though (timestamped). It's interesting: I think it's my most esoteric video so far, at least in terms of having no general (pop or otherwise) culture connections, and it's getting fewest views. But it's also 10 percentage points higher for "average percentage viewed" over my other two videos. Maybe it being shorter helps, maybe it's that those who care about weirdo sculptures will stick around longer, maybe it's both? Trabant fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Aug 26, 2023 |
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Aug 26, 2023 23:24
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Oh hey, my link to this thread has brought life into it! I take full credit  I do, however, also take full blame for never replying to this critique: 7seven7 posted:Awesome - thanks! First off: thanks for taking the time to watch my nonsense and for the kind words! Also, I apologize for whiffing on my response. I do see what you mean by the odd moments of silence. I prob need to move away from keeping the entire track intact and just cut in/out of it as the video requires. Why have I insisted on keeping the songs in their entirety in all of my videos so far?  As for the thumbnail... I don't know, it still seems like some dark magic. Even the broad "maker" category of YouTubers I truly enjoy watching will go with big text or YouTube Face or big arrows pointing at things. I click on those videos despite the thumbnails, not because of them. Sardonik posted:
 This is 100% the case with me. I make stuff across my idiot hobbies simply because I want to, and sometimes I think it might make a decent video so I record the build. There's little to no overall theme per se. I suppose it's just a reflection of how I approach my hobbies so... I think I'm OK with that, even if it means the views stay low.poo poo Fuckasaurus posted:SOCIAL MEDIA. Well that's an interesting insight into how sausage is made!  ---------- And since it's adjacent to social media: I'm curious how everyone shares their videos? Or at least how you did back when you only had a handful of uploads and subscribers? You've just uploaded it, maybe shared with friends and on whatever social media account you've set up, and... Then what? I ask because it seems to me that the best way to get people to view and provide feedback on the with is to post the links on forums dedicated to the topic/hobby in question. SA is actually a good example of that for me, as are crafts subreddits. You do run the risk of running afoul of anti-self-promotion rules though, esp on Reddit, so there's that limitation. But it still seems like a more useful way to get good engagement rather than shouting into the
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Oct 12, 2023 06:38
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I didn't think I'd make Shorts, but I had a very old project that failed so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8LzeYwV35U
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Dec 26, 2023 05:25
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lmao I put this together in 10 minutes and published it at 10pm on Christmas, got order of magnitude more views than anything else I've published. Shorts are different, I know, but it's still amazing.
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Dec 26, 2023 18:09
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Leng posted:Short form content is SUCH a different beast. But all the platforms are pushing them so you can get a lot of reach if you structure them right—and often time spent has very little correlation with how well it does. I've seen the same happen with my attempts at IG reels. The funny thing -- and this seems to kinda track with what I've seen elsewhere -- is that the 2.5k views translated to exactly one new subscriber My other videos are fairly different so I guess it's not that surprising.
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Dec 31, 2023 04:10
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Gologle posted:I wanted to post this video here because I wanted to post it SOMEWHERE on this site, and I figured this thread specifically because the edits in this video are insane and what I want people to focus on. You can tell that a TON of time and effort went into the making of this video even beyond the script and research. I'm not the target audience for this in any way, and I'm a complete newbie idiot of an editor, so there are the two salt boulders for when I say: man, that constant movement just did not work for me. Certainly not for a 30-minute video.
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Jan 3, 2024 06:36
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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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 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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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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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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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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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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Inspired by Sardonik's excellent postmortem of the SG-1 video (watched it about as soon as you published -- really enjoyed it!), here are a few additional observations about my own most recent video now that it's been out for a couple of weeks, albeit not as well-structured: The vase build video is doing... kinda well, by my standards? It's showing a very slow but persistent creep up in view count:  I think it's my first video YT actually started recommending to viewers because all previous ones would have the views peter off after a week or so. But the the source of views is the conclusive bit of evidence:  Compare that against the video before and the difference is pretty stark:  I hadn't bothered looking at the Suggested Videos which were driving my views until Sardonik mentioned the  Westerns thing so I got curious. At least in my case the, uh, "source" videos made sense: I actually recognize several of the channels in question, so thankfully there's no weirdness there. Thoughts to wrap up:
Anyway, feel free to correct me if I'm misinterpreting any of this
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Feb 9, 2024 18:44
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:
Good point!s I used your previous suggestion and changed the thumbnail to:  and also tweaked the description. Given that the views have plateaued, it'll be an interesting test to see if this makes a difference. It's like a puzzle... where I'm vaguely aware of the rules and have few skills to complete
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Feb 10, 2024 22:09
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Mr Interweb posted:oh cool, didn't realize we had our own YT creator thread! With the disclaimer that I'm probably not your intended audience, here's my impression of the video you linked: It's clear that you had a wealth of information and thoughts on the topic, and what to me looks like quite a bit of research backing it up! Both the video and audio were well done, and I liked the thumbnail as well. I thought it could benefit a bit from some more structure or delineation, at least for someone like me. Having sections like (Ancient) History, Creators, Reception, Legacy -- those would give me a breather as you go through the history of the game. Whether you have a formal title card breaking it up into sections is probably a stylistic choice. I like those, but I might be a lunatic. I'll add that even though I'm not a gamer, I would absolutely be interested in some of the things you have in the channel description, including what a game did for the company or genre or, like in this case, the franchise. I imagine financial specifics might be tricky to get a hold of though, and those happen to be extra interesting in the big picture.
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Feb 18, 2024 00:55
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Sardonik posted:
Hot dang It won't do anything for my dumb videos, but it will make it easier to make my dumb gifs!
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Apr 12, 2024 05:44
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Alert, this is not a drill, Davinci Resolve FINALLY supports native .gif importing.