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Just chiming in to say that this is an incredible OP. I'm in the process of making my first channel and this is gold.
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Jan 31, 2022 14:44
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Type of crit wanted: channel Any specific issues you want help on: Just a general critique, really. I don't think I'll ever get an audience - I can only really pump out one of these things every three months or so, so I can't imagine getting many views. But I'm really enjoying plugging away at a thing when I clock off of work. I wanted to start making video essays a while back. I started with this 45 minute thing on why Star Wars kinda sucks. It was the first video I made and there's a bunch wrong with it. The first three chapters are paced way waaaay too fast. Every single sentence comes in too quick and it feels massively rushed. Then I forgot about it for a year and made this thing on why I really like Subnautica. I've just released it, but I think the opening animation is a bit too long. It kind of comes off like the preamble you get before a recipe online. 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. EDIT: I didn't follow the request format. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Nov 17, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 13:23
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Leng posted:Hey and sorry for taking so long to reply. It's been a helluva month for me. Anyway! Thanks! Your OP is incredible btw - it really cleared up a lot of things I hadn't taken into account. Leng posted:This is an easy fix because it's a sound mixing issue. I wouldn't change your music level or how you narrate, I would just up your vocal levels so it's more easily heard over the music. I think I've got the audio balance right on the next video. I've also gone back and had another pass at the mix on the Subnautica video and I think I've got it right this time. I don't think you can change the audio on a video once it's uploaded, so is it better to delete the old video and relaunch with the new audio? A few hundred views is probably worth eating, right? Leng posted:I think what might be the problem is that you've got a thumbnail/title mismatch with your intro. Your current thumbnail is a pretty awful screencap from the game with giant text that's trying to utilize a pun and then your title explains the pun. It doesn't really evoke the emotions of the personal story that ties the whole video together nor does it convey the sense of wonder and awe you get from playing the game. I definitely haven't mastered the art of thumbnails yet. So far everything else seems to come pretty easy, but I can't seem to get inspired about making them. I'll definitely do some reading before I finish my next thing. Leng posted:What's your current click through rate and retention rate for it? I'd expect both to be low, but I'd also expect that anyone staying past the first minute or so will probably watch to the end because it's high quality content. And 391 views in the first 10 days for what is basically a brand new channel is really good stuff. I think you've definitely got an audience out there and make 1 high quality video every 3 months doesn't preclude you from finding an audience IF it's a really great idea because not all ideas are created equal. Click through rate is 1.1% and retention is about 2:30 which is not great, I guess.  I watched that video and really got a lot from it. I've got a big list of ideas I pull scripts from, but I'm gonna refine it and spend longer developing them.Trabant posted: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: I watched all of your first video and a good deal of the second. I'm not much of a craftsman, so I don't have much to critique on that level, but I have to say everything here was really high quality. The pacing, the cuts, how long you linger on what you're doing before you move on. Audio levels sounded bang on to me. The background jazz with the brushed snares in the first video really sets the tone nicely and I also liked the more spacey beats in the second - it really fits the theme. Your cadence is good, you speak clearly, and you keep things interesting. I really liked the intro on the second video - especially the cross fade to the top down zoom. I honestly don't really have any notes - I enjoyed both your videos despite knowing nothing about the subject matter. The thumbnails are really good shots - super gorgeous and informative, but do YouTube thumbnails need text maybe? Trabant posted: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 Thanks! It was kind of fun learning to animate, but it was way too time consuming, so I'm not sure I'll commit to anything that long any time soon. I didn't notice any struggle with the audio on your second video - the music dips when it should and doesn't come up too loud between the narration. I think you nailed it. Trabant posted: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. I think maybe a fairly floaty video essay doesn't need a central thesis, but I'm not really sure. I don't necessarily want to commit to anything you could call discourse - I'm way to dumb to even attempt it. I guess I'm just trying to say "Hey I liked this video game" in a somewhat entertaining manner? I have thought about trying to make the narrative a bit more concise, but I'm really bad with words so I'm hoping I can distract away from that with pretty visuals.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:44
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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).
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Leng posted:Not specific to video essays but applicable to ALL videos. To get people to click, you need to know what your video is about and clearly communicate that in a thumbnail. To get people to watch to the end, you need to structure and pace the video so that every part of the video develops that core idea in some way. I really tried to take this on board with my new thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH7K-EyINYY I laid out the script in a hopefully much more thoughtful way, edited it down to roughly equal lengths, then tried to make each section flow onto the next. I think I got the audio balance a bit better this time too? The vocals are a little fried - I tried to clean them up but I tried my soundcard's auto gain and I think it came out a little crispy. Hopefully it's not noticeably cooked. The video's done the best out of any I've done so far and I'm just up to 40 subs. Absolutely stoked about that, but I still pulled only about 500 views. I'm gonna make the next thing about something a bit more relevant and see how that does. At the moment I'm pushing these things out about one a month. Leng posted:Channel Makers recently put out a new guide to thumbnails that's pretty good. These were all absolutely excellent watches and I recently went through and redid all my thumbnails with it in mind. I think they're better without being too corny. But they could definitely still use some work.  I really like this, but I don't think it's YouTube-y enough  This one isn't too bad I think?  This one sucks Do they convey a message a bit better than the old ones? I'm still not sure that I understand the brief when it comes to thumbnails but I had some nice comments on my editing on the Vampire Survivors one. This thread is an amazing resource - thanks OP! 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Aug 26, 2023 |
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Aug 26, 2023 04:00
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Trabant posted:Add one from me to that -- really enjoyed the video Awesome - thanks! I watched your new video and there was a lot that I liked. I feel like you pair your music beds really well with the subject/theme of the piece you're making. I liked that your beds felt very meditative and serene whilst you're working with the wood. The pace of the narration is great and it feels natural with the timbre of your voice. The only criticisms I have are that I would bring the first notes of the first music bed right up to the start of the video. This might just be a personal taste thing, but dead air at the start of a YouTube video makes me want to click away. But those opening notes and the opening shots would really intrigue me if paired together. I also feel like the thumbnail for this one might be a bit of a miss. I like that you don't have text on them, but in this case I don't think the shot of the final product tells me enough about what the video will be about. But a simple title with a nice font and heavy tracking would give me a sense that something real good is about to be made. That said - I enjoyed the vid and have no other criticism to offer!
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Aug 28, 2023 17:12
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poo poo Fuckasaurus posted:SOCIAL MEDIA. God, any and all social media promotion is scary and way outside of my realm of understanding, so this is mega helpful to me. Thank you so much for taking the time to dump all that here. My new thing is out and I've finally figured out how to get high-res thumbnails onto YouTube. I still think my thumbnail concepts need work but I'm getting closer hopefully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__eYV6Ruf-M Any criticism would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I'm getting quicker at these, but I'm stuck on a style that's enjoyable to make but I have no idea if it's enjoyable to watch. I don't really feel like I'm improving so any pointers would be taken on board! 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 14, 2023 |
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Oct 14, 2023 22:01
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I had my last video get picked up by the algo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hwgJYqbwHE 20k views in a week and 200 new subs - I'm dead chuffed. I got the analytics back and can post them here if anyone's interested. I imagine it got picked up because it's a bit of a hot button topic. I've really enjoyed interacting with folks in the comments, but I was not prepared for the level of pendantry from people with differing opinions. I tried to say "I really like this company and things could be better" but a lot of people didn't pick up on that and just focussed on the negatives, so I'm going to try to be more conscious of the words I'm choosing in the future. 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? EDIT: I was also trying to stay anonymous online, but I managed to trace my own name with a simple Google search, so I guess that's out the window and I haven't been as clever as I thought I was. 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? 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. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 11:28
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Sardonik posted:Hell yeah, congrats! Thanks! This is all great! I've changed the next subject to something a bit more mainstream, but I'll probably not be able to sustain a mainstream audience. I liked getting views on this new thing, but I still want to do this for fun, so I guess I should make my peace with less views. I'm also not really expecting to make any money off of YouTube, but it would be nice if it happened!
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Nov 22, 2023 15:48
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7seven7 posted:Thanks! This is all great! I've changed the next subject to something a bit more mainstream, but I'll probably not be able to sustain a mainstream audience. I liked getting views on this new thing, but I still want to do this for fun, so I guess I should make my peace with less views. Well I royally hosed the follow up with this one. 25k views to less than 100 on the next release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-Zy9q1Bmw I changed the subject to something I thought was niche, but had appeal. I did a bit of research and saw some big channels with videos on the same subject with around a million views, so I thought it might have potential. I hustled to get a quick turnaround and went with a much more YouTubey thumbnail to garner some early clicks for a push, but I don't think the push happened. It got so few views I haven't even got the analytics. If I think about it, the intro for my Bethesda video lasts thirty seconds then goes straight into the title sequence. This one lasts about a minute thirty and I thought if I load it up with jokes and a really punchy sequence people might engage, but I judged it really poorly. Shame, but I'm going to keep going. I do want to get views, but I think what I need to do to get those views is understand what gets people watching whilst still making the videos I want to make. For the next one I'm going to aim for another thirty second intro. I think the subject of the Bethesda video really helped, but I suspect the Net Yaroze one would've done better if I'd cut the intro down. Hard to tell without analytics, but if anyone has any insights I'd really appreciate the advice. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Dec 1, 2023 |
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Dec 1, 2023 13:49
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Leng posted:The intro might be a factor in drop off and perhaps with the new auto play preview it might contribute to a lower CTR but if I had to guess, I think it's your title/thumbnail. Sorry for the late reply. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up. I'm still wrapping my head around a lot of this, so I appreciate another perspective. The new video ended up getting some views and got me a few subs, but still failed to crack 1k. It made 22.3k impressions with a CTR of 2.6% - so not great. What I'm taking away from your advice is that my thumbnails and titles still need some work. With the Net Yaroze one, when I think about it, I think I failed the concept right out of the gate. I'm not really sure who the core audience would've been. It's a retrospective on the system for people that haven't heard of it. But if you haven't heard of it you're not going to know what's going on in the thumbnail, nor are you going to give a poo poo about the subject matter because it's mega obscure. Really what I'm hoping for is to foster an audience that knows I'm going to talk about something esoteric in a gentle manner, giving you a summary of my subject with some nice vibes, a tiny bit of leftist analysis, and a couple of jokes along the way. Basically I'm going for the HBomberGuy audience without the explicit politicising. I'm starting to consistently get one or two comments saying that my channel is underrated, but I'm guessing that's just because I've been really finnicky about production values and not because I'm doing anything particularly great. I've been really resistant to the idea due to misplaced artistic integrity, but I think I have to make my peace with using some more clickbaity titles and thumbs. I can't naturally foster an audience if nobody watches the things in the first place. I'm going to spend a bit of time thinking about concepts that might engage an audience, but I still think there's a balance to be struck between "You won't BELIEVE what this company did" and a thumbnail with The YouTube Face versus "A Six Hour Appraisal of Jungian Interpretations of Tomb Raider" with no production values. Leng posted:Ok so I asked my husband to watch this one too because I suspect he's actually part of the target audience who would vibe with your content (as I'm typing this, he literally saw you had a Ridge Racer video and clicked on that right afterwards without me saying a thing). This is super interesting to me - thanks again! I tried to make the thumbnail super easy to parse with a two colour background and the devkit highlighted with an outline, but I'm realising I failed at that. Similar to what I wrote above, but I'm taking from this that again, my thumbnails and titles need work. So far I've been concentrating on making the visuals and audio interesting, but I need to seal the deal with more engaging concepts. I'm starting to see small numbers of engagement with my community tab and my next piece is going to be a top 10 of the year wrap up without much visual flare, so it'll be interesting to see what my subs make of something a bit more straight forward. I suspect it'll flop, but I'd like to do a top 10 every December. Thanks again for the advice. I want the channel to be somewhat successful and I've been putting a lot of hours into editing lately so maybe it's time to compromise on making the videos I want to make versus the videos a YouTube audience wants to see. EDIT:: Just to add on to this - is it a valid idea to make some moreainstream videos to garner a following, then gently switch it up to more obscure topics, or is that dooming myself with an inorganic audience? 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 13:58
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Leng posted:This is only a problem if you keep thinking that your title/thumbnail HAS to feature Net Yaroze. It doesn't. If the draw is sharing an esoteric cool piece of retro gaming history that's just awesome, then make that the hook: "The indie game revolution that never was" or "The indie gaming gold rush history forgot" etc. This in particular is incredibly helpful and really lets me get my head around the general idea and where I went wrong. I don't think I'll be able to do it for the thing I'm working on, but I'm already thinking about how I'm going to go about the next thumbnail with all this in mind. Normally that'd be the part I'd procrastinate over so I'm feeling better about it. Thanks again - I don't really know anyone irl I could talk to about this particular hobby so I can't tell you how nice it is to have somewhere to ask someone about thumbnail theory.
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Dec 10, 2023 05:42
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Leng posted:!!! YouTube is rolling out A/B testing for thumbnails: Oh drat that's awesome. I don't have the feature right now but I'm hoping I'll be part of the rollout before my next one is ready.
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Dec 15, 2023 11:52
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Trabant posted:lmao I haven't had any luck with shorts - congrats. And the concept is cool as hell! I still haven't got the ability to do A/B thumbnails, but I've got three new thumbnails for each of my existing videos ready to go. Also been spending a lot of time researching how to make the concepts of my videos appealing and how to get the idea across in a single sentence. Now that my latest thing is out I've got a few ideas about making the next one something that might get some clicks. I spend hundreds of hours on making the actual thing - it's finally getting through to me that I need to invest a decent amount of time into figuring out an interesting concept, title, and thumbnail if I want to see numbers.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:41
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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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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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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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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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The Archaic posted:Hi folks, I've been doing a failed marxist political stream on Twitch for a few years and only just found out about this thread so I've been using Streamlabs unfortunately. Recently some friends of mine approached me to start a podcast with them, so I guess I'll try failing at podcasting too. They sometimes come on my twitch stream and have a blast so they wanna do more. I used to record and edit a podcast over Discord and I'll say this - if you want the audio to reach a decent level of quality you'll need to put in a lot of time in the edit suite. Discord lags and in order to get natural sounding discussion every sentence from every speaker will need a hard cut. I had a two hour record, and to edit it down to forty five minutes it took an average of nine hours of cuts. I absolutely hated it. I'd also recommend recording the whole thing locally in one program on your end. Syncing several streams in Audacity isn't reliable and you'll most likely end up with a delay/overlap. Especially when using the delete silence function. But if you record on your end using your DAW it'll be synced from the start. In terms of filter apps I'm unaware of any as I prefer to mix and master on my own. That said - sweeping for frequencies and compression etc doesn't take that long once you're familiar with the basics. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 10:26
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Trabant posted:With the disclaimer that I'm probably not your intended audience, here's my impression of the video you linked: Agreed - I might be the target audience. I watched the whole video and enjoyed it. Your voice, knowledge, and presentation are all up to snuff, but this video would've really benefited from some title cards just to break up the pacing issues. Other than that - good video!
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Feb 18, 2024 20:44
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Got a new video ready to go. Last release I tried a spicy title and a spicy thumbnail, and while it did more than double my usual views, it also go me ratio'd in the likes and the vast majority of the comments were not positive. The views also absolutely tanked after the first week. I'm talking no new views at all. This time I've been a lot more focused on the thumbnail concept. I've read in a fair few places that simplified thumbnails using red and white are doing numbers recently. That and simplification - getting your idea across with as few elements as possible. I still don't have the A/B testing for thumbnails yet, so thought I'd try my three ideas here: This is my favourite, but might be a bit niche and the characters are hard to make out on a phone, but hopefully the idea still comes across to fans.  This one looks good small, but the Tekken logo may be illegible. I might swap it out for something a bit simpler but keep the rest of the image. I'd say it's the one most similar to my one successful video, so I'm leaning towards this.  This one might be good for the meme factor, but the text needs addressing. I'm finding it hard to get it readable in small form, but if it's worth a shot I'll keep at it. Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2qO6T4Lor8 EDIT:: Tried a cleaner logo but I feel like it doesn't pop/grab the eye as much?: 
7seven7 fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 22, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 21:14
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:You could always split the difference Great idea - clean logo and it still pops. I'll give it a go - thanks!
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Feb 22, 2024 16:25
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Got a new thing ready to go. It's a fairly wanky thing about grief tied into gaming. It's a way slower tempo than anything I've tried before and I'm really struggling with the thumbnail, Here's what I've got so far if anyone fancies weighing in:   I think they're OK at conveying the message but I'm worried they're not serious enough. If someone comes in expecting something funny based on the thumbnail they're gonna click away in two seconds as soon as they see the visuals. Or am I wrong and I should just go with the most eye grabbing thing regardless of a tone mismatch? EDIT: The video in question - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsPaC24A7Hc 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Mar 30, 2024 |
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Mar 30, 2024 02:14
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trilobite terror posted:BRB gonna make a video essay comparing the Yakuza series to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot Dang - is it too poncey? I tried to be self aware and keep the language plain. Sorry if it's super cringe.
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Mar 30, 2024 17:04
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Megazver posted:Sorry about whatever's happening. The Disco Elysium shot is an especially good idea. I'm gonna see what I can do with that one first then give the other idea a go if it flops. Both super good ideas and I'm annoyed I didn't come up with something as clear as them. You're absolutely right about the missed symbolism. I'm still really struggling to convey concepts in my thumbnails so this is excellent advice. EDIT: Here's what I came up with -   Angryhead posted:FWIW I like it so I didn't think. It's real and you're being vulnerable and hell, I found it relatable. (here's hoping everything will work out for you Thanks for the criticism - I definitely whiffed getting the message and the tone across. trilobite terror posted:no lol not at all. I was half being facetious in a general “video essays, amirite” kind of way, but half being semi-serious after one of your comments in the video about Ichiban being an unrelenting fountain of optimism and selflessness and goodness in the face of constant abuse and hardship and skullduggery from others made me legit think of Prince Mishkin All good - I'm overly sensitive at the moment what with the things going on and all. I do like the idea of a more serious thumbnail. I'm not really sure why I went with the jokey one. Sardonik posted:I thought it was pretty solid! I've used games for escapism for a sizable chunk of my life so I definitely get it. This is also a really good idea that I'm gonna play around with. Much appreciated! trilobite terror posted:Not to give you notes, but you could probably expand the scope of the essay quite a bit if you wanted to further contrast games as escapism vs games as meditation by talking about games that explicitly deal with the concept, and particularly with regards to your thesis/focus of being in a state of anticipatory grief where you’re expecting somebody to pass in the near to immediate future. That Dragon, Cancer comes to mind. I tried expanding the script on a rewrite, but in the end I settled on keeping it shorter since it's a fairly heavy topic. I haven't played That Dragon, Cancer but I'm definitely going to now. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Mar 30, 2024 |
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Mar 30, 2024 18:49
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Sardonik posted:Planning on dropping a video this Friday, think this one has real mainstream potential. My evidence is entirely anecdotal and backed up by zero research, but my most successful videos are the ones where I resisted the urge to share them with friends or Reddit and just let the algorithm do its thing. I've tried sharing them to some relevant subreddits after a week or two if the video doesn't do well on YouTube, but that's never gone well for me. I've also just started posting snippets of my videos on TikTok but nothing promising yet. Not that I'd expect much crossover traffic between competitors. I've just got my YouTube URL rendered on the video with no mention of YouTube in the description or my bio. This might be dumb but I wonder if TikTok picks up the mention of YouTube from the video itself. Megazver posted:I like both of these! Unfortunately the video tanked. I launched it before the DE thumbnail finished uploading so I'm guessing that had an effect. I'm thinking of relaunching - it got about a hundred views. Is it ever worth relaunching a video or would that be detrimental? 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 01:24
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trilobite terror posted:Try just changing the thumbnail first. I've changed the thumbnail twice now and each time the views haven't budged. It only got about a hundred views, so maybe that's just too small a number to move the needle? I notice other people in the thread mentioning it helps, but for every single one of my videos, the views they get in the first week are the views they settle on whether I switch out the thumbnail or not. I've recently changed a bunch of thumbnails just to test it again and yeah - not a single new view Sardonik posted:Welp, here goes nothing! It hasn't hit the algorithm proper yet but I'm feeling fairly confident about this thumbnail: I really really like this thumbnail. Good luck!
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Apr 7, 2024 00:34
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trilobite terror posted:Here’s an, I would say, related video from a small channel that was extremely successful in the past month and was recommended to me today. IDK if this helps you in any way but maybe seeing somebody else’s approach to the subject matter gives you some clarity on what to do next. Bit late to this, but this was an excellent watch and gave me some clarity. I'm going to relaunch the video with a new title/titlecard.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:00
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Sardonik posted:
Genuinely great news.
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Apr 12, 2024 13:17
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Alert, this is not a drill, Davinci Resolve FINALLY supports native .gif importing.
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Sardonik posted: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: I still don't really understand how to raise my CTR other than making my videos as good as I can and try to get better at thumbnails. I understand the concept, but I can't figure out what else I can focus on to raise it. I wish I'd thought of not pushing out my last video to my subs. It did better after relaunching with the new thumbnail, but it still underperformed and stopped getting views after a week like normal:     The CTR was pretty abysmal, I badly missed my age demographics, but I'm super surprised with the average view duration. I was really expecting it to be around 5-10% with the subject and presentation I went with. It's also the first video to get suggested on other vaguely gaming themed videos, so maybe YouTube is starting to figure out where to put my content? Either way I decided to start focusing on my thumbnails again ahead of the new video. Normally I start them after finishing the edit, but by then I'm normally tired of the concept, so I don't give it much brain capacity. This time I'm really trying to think about how to get the concept and the flavour of my content across using the language that I can pick out in other YouTube thumbnails. Here's what I've got so far:    The simple title card is my favourite, but the second is probably the most YouTubey. But I do like the last one and I think it might be the most suitable - it's simple, grabs the eye with the laser beams and colour palette, and might be meme-y enough to get the point across. But I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, so I'm probably way off base. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5K2n6wi_hg 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Apr 22, 2024 |
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Apr 22, 2024 19:28
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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.