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I too did not realize this thread existed until it came up in the PYF Tweets thread. I'm on YouTube as SardonicSays I primarily focus on game/show video essays I picked up YouTube largely as a covid hobby. Video essays are like, the ultimate form of posting, I love it. Even if I'm pretty sure I spent longer working on certain videos than their total watch time.  I got exceptionally lucky this year and one of my videos got picked up just enough by the algorithm, comparing and contrasting Classic MST3K with Netflix-Era MST3K and I was able to get monetized. Of course what a lot of people don't know is you have to hit $100 to get an actual payout, so that's the next big milestone I'm looking for. In terms of channel issues, I know exactly what my main problem is: lack of focus. I've admittedly been very inconsistent, making videos mostly on topics that struck my interest, this has led to slow sub and overall channel growth as people aren't sure what they would be subscribing to. I don't think I'm prepared to unlist any videos at this point (except one which you can probably guess), but I'm definitely going to focus down on at least just show/game essays going forward, at least until growth looks better. It's all well and good to make videos as self-expression, but it does get awfully depressing if few are actually watching them. Fortunately I've found that well-performing videos can cause people to go back and look at the older stuff, which is a good feeling. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 17:48
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7seven7 posted:I had my last video get picked up by the algo: quote:I was planning on making the next video a fairly throwaway Top 10 Games of the Year summary, but I've read that once you have a video picked up your next video is pretty important in terms of YouTube figuring out who your audience is. Is there any truth to that?  So I would say there may be some truth to that, I'd be sure your next video is one that can resonate with a mainstream audience. quote:I'm also not far off of monetising the channel just from one video. But one of the requirements is to have three videos uploaded in the last 90 days. I met the requirement last week, but fell outside of it in the last few days. If I get another hit and meet the other requirements, is there anything stopping me from just throwing up a twenty second video to meet the requirements and get myself locked in to monetision or are the requirements rolling? quote:One more observation - I haven't had any of my other videos pick up many views off the back of this, but I have had a few people who went through and watched all of my stuff and say that they liked it. That got me pretty stoked, but I think from now on I'm gonna have an ending that flashes my thumbnails and a subscribe button as soon as the main body of the video is over. It's tricky though - I want to have a Patreon callout and a nice attributions scroll, but end cards can only be on screen for twenty seconds, so that means I need to get everything squeezed in on one screen pretty much. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 16:57
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BrianWilly posted:My general process is to go into Audacity and use noise gate to get rid of breathing sounds, although sometimes that seems to go awry and I end up clipping a lot of consonants as well. Then I normalize and compress to try and get the volume standardized...but in my experience that really doesn't...like, do enough. There are still parts of the audio that are too quiet or parts that are too loud and I end up having to manually edit those parts one-by-one, which can be really tedious when your videos are an hour or longer. I'd appreciate any suggestions on what else I should be doing here, or if anyone has a particularly good audio workflow they can share, or perhaps a magic button you can just press to automatically fix all sound issues in any videos. Sounds like you do about the same I do, though have you tried using noise reduction instead of noise gate? I've had good results with that. Also some of this may come down to the microphone type and settings, have you tried changing the gain settings? You may have them a bit on the high side if it's noticeably picking up a lot of breathing. In terms of magic button solutions if you have an NVIDIA GPU you could try Nvidia Broadcast to process your audio as you record. Just install it, turn on noise reduction, and use its audio output device as an input in audacity. I don't use it myself because for whatever reason it hitches for the first few seconds of each recording and sometimes has weird distortions, but maybe it may work better with your setup. If you're on the paid version of Davinci Resolve its voice isolation effect is exceptionally powerful and might be able to help, though I haven't used it for this purpose. I'll also say for volume issues after compression, a lot of the time I'll use volume keyframes to manually even things out in Resolve, rather than manually amplifying segments in Audacity. That might be a bit faster. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Nov 26, 2023 |
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Nov 26, 2023 19:54
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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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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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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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We actually had very similar thoughts -- esp. re: thumbnail after I suggested the split-screen thing to Sardonik -- so here's the new one:
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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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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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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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That's too dystopic for even my video 
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Jan 30, 2024 03:48
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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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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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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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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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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Meanwhile, waiting patiently on the sidelines .... Hah, oh god, still tempting for sure! Worth a try for a few days with your permission perhaps at least...
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Feb 9, 2024 08:21
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Ha ha lol yeah I'd love to see that. Oh honestly I think those sources are perfect, especially Carter's 'guess I'll die' face there! Same thing at higher res at thumb dimensions would be perfect, maybe I could try running that thumb all next week even!
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Feb 9, 2024 08:50
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I'd cleared out my recycle bin and it was taking me forever to track down the source photos all over again but then I realised the online photo manip app I use autosaves files so I still had them all in there lol Alright, the thumbnail is in place, let's light it up!  Gonna run it for a week or so and report back with the results, currently the CTR graph looks like this:  Man I wish they'd release AB testing already. Though admittedly I've read the system required 5k impressions to get results, which would take quite a while at current rates, still, good for video launching in the future I bet.
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Feb 10, 2024 23:06
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Alright while this was definitely a worthwhile experiment I think I'm going to revert to the previous thumbnail: I'll totally grant that if it had had this thumbnail at launch it may have accelerated things with that set of impressions, but for the set of impressions it's getting now I think the best bet is to use the previous thumbnail. Thank you again for letting me experiment with that thumbnail design, and the tips on crafting the other one!
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Feb 16, 2024 18:21
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I thought it was pretty solid! I've used games for escapism for a sizable chunk of my life so I definitely get it. I'm probably not the person to talk to about thumbnails but I could see the concept of a game box with arms hugging a person under distress, literally comforting them.
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Mar 30, 2024 17:46
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Planning on dropping a video this Friday, think this one has real mainstream potential. Does anybody know offhand if there's any truth to the rumor that sharing the video around causes the algorithm to push it less in the initial impression pushes? Or does the information of people viewing the video prior to any big algorithm pushes help the video target where the impressions go? The algorithm being what it is I doubt there's any hard and fast answers to this but I would be curious what lines up with people's experiences.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:26
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Welp, here goes nothing! It hasn't hit the algorithm proper yet but I'm feeling fairly confident about this thumbnail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6moe69uWtp4
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Apr 5, 2024 23:13
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 Alert, this is not a drill, Davinci Resolve FINALLY supports native .gif importing. I know this doesn't sound like a lot and I'm sure most other editors did it natively just fine for years but god finally. Having to convert things before use was deeply annoying.
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Apr 11, 2024 19:26
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I'll do a full retrospective on my latest video if anyone's interested but wow do the changes of the clickthrough rate seem interesting: It's almost like the algorithm actually got better at finding the audience for the video over time.  I shouldn't be surprised but it does seem like it actually went through the effort of finding and refining the audience - something that feels like it hasn't always happened for me.For this one I did a few things different that I'd expect could be in play - mainly I unchecked 'send video to subscribers' as I didn't think my existing subscriber base would go for this. Based on the initial period clickthrough rate this was probably the right call as the video did not attract much viewership from being listed as a suggested video when watching my previous videos. The downturns in the clickthrough rate correlate with when I was mainly getting suggested video impressions. The video did *significantly* better with the browse feature impressions, and continues to do pretty well there (relative to my other videos at least). Average View Duration is kind of rear end (16.6%) but I think that might be at least a little forgivable given it's coming from browse feature impressions. It's quite the contrast with the Stargate SG1 video, which had a much better AVD (31.3%) but far weaker CTR (2.2%). This is probably stating the obvious but I think this is another data point that CTR is king. The new video already has more views than the SG1 video, and I'd expect that trend to continue. Fortunately I have a card and end card set up in the new video pointing people to the SG1 video, so hopefully others will enjoy it in time and help it build an audience. Also definitely successfully reaching my targeted age demographics which is heartening:  So uh, thanks, algorithm! Thalgorithm.
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Apr 13, 2024 05:15
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I think 2 and 3 are definitely solid choices there! I should add a caveat to my previous post that despite the CTR being high for a time for the browse impressions it did come right back down after those dried up, and the video is sitting at about 1.5k views. So even if something is getting a good CTR through browse impressions it's still not a sure thing to success. Perhaps it couldn't overcome the other impressions it was getting on my channel. Definitely going to do a more core-audience friendly video for my next one that should fare better.
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Apr 24, 2024 18:13
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