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Yeah those are some pretty wild statistics! Especially in terms of subscriptions per view.
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Aug 17, 2024 04:04
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Mad impressive!
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Aug 19, 2024 22:07
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I'm launching my new video today. The last couple of releases have underperformed so I've made this next one about a game that released relatively recently in the hopes it gets more eyes on it. I also went with bold bright colours and simplicity for the thumbnail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AgMkFfCXvY
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Sep 3, 2024 11:44
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Well now I'm rethinking all I know of british culture. Is Wallace and Grommit northern representation? My main feedback would be for this kind of thing to maybe launch into the game first for a tick, then go into the more personal intro. That way you both deliver on the core concept of the video early, and confirm it's a game video. While I definitely like the aesthetics of the thumbnail in its current incarnation, you might want to throw in a few characters from the game or otherwise link in the game's unique art style as it definitely looks like a selling point. Also because the steam youtube video linking is back up I'd definitely throw this on the game's video page and if the game has a subreddit post it there too. Other than that, your editing is very impressive! Solid motion, good compositing elements into clips, that kind of thing.
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Sep 3, 2024 15:16
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Sardonik posted:Well now I'm rethinking all I know of british culture. Is Wallace and Grommit northern representation? Oh my, yes. Northerners love Wallace and Grommit. At least from what I've observed. Sardonik posted:My main feedback would be for this kind of thing to maybe launch into the game first for a tick, then go into the more personal intro. That way you both deliver on the core concept of the video early, and confirm it's a game video. While I definitely like the aesthetics of the thumbnail in its current incarnation, you might want to throw in a few characters from the game or otherwise link in the game's unique art style as it definitely looks like a selling point. Also because the steam youtube video linking is back up I'd definitely throw this on the game's video page and if the game has a subreddit post it there too. Thanks! I think you've got a good point - I should've opened with something from the game. I take way too long to get to it. I used test and compare again for this video - one of the other thumbnails was basically the same image with some of the characters from the game along the bottom row. I think I'm going to take the video down and try again without test and compare. Maybe it's just me, but I was consistently getting 5-700 views before I started using it. Now I'm lucky if a video makes it to 100 views. Maybe it's a tool for channels with more subscribers. EDIT::: Upon doing a small amount of research it seems a lot of other smaller channels are finding that Test & Compare is flatlining their views. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Sep 4, 2024 |
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Sep 4, 2024 16:51
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Thread's been a bit quiet lately, but I've got a video about halfway done and I'm thinking about thumbnails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgg0PAOHMbg My last two releases were the worst performing I've ever had by quite a bit, so I'm trying to really drill down into getting the idea across with my thumbnails. I've got a few ideations on three thumbnail concepts. I used Test & Compare for my last two videos, but I'm fairly sure that's what tanked the views so I'm reticent to use it again. That said - I'm not sure which of these to go with right now. Just trying to keep it simple here - I see a lot of black, white, and red thumbnails doing well these days:   Slightly more dramatic with these. I'm thinking maybe the black and white figures add a bit of intrigue?    I think these might be a bit busy and still manage to be boring, but I had a play around anyway:  
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Oct 3, 2024 19:16
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Man, I hate thumbnails. I will say my gut would be the first one, the one you went with, is the most click-friendly. Sorry to hear test and compare is so dangerous, I've heard a lot of horror stories. Speaking of flops, my last video was quite the fall from my previous which was a 160k bolt from the blue. This hasn't even cracked 1k yet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZbM3ZlSaGA My fiancée spent quite a while on the thumbnail. CTR of 2%! Even if people didn't 'get' the subject matter I would have thought it would have been interesting enough to be clickable even to a general audience, but alas. Admittedly it's a diametrically different subject than my previous success but still, geez. At least my next video will be much closer in to the previous success in subject matter, so we'll see if just going further into that niche works.
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Oct 3, 2024 20:15
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160k views! That's insane - congrats! How many subscribers did it get you?
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Oct 3, 2024 20:42
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Currently sitting at 644+ subs form it! 14.3K watch hours too.  I was so sure I had 'made it' at that point and that I'd have enough algorithm juice to have my next video find its audience regardless of subject matter but I guess despite everything, channel effect only goes so far. Every video really is its own thing. The wild thing is I thought this successful video was going to not do great going into it, and I made it largely to reminisce about a childhood classic game with essentially 0 discussion going on about it. I expected it to do similarly to some of the other videos I've made on other obscure games, which generally didn't set the world on fire but sometimes did ok. YouTube really is a land of contrasts.
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Oct 3, 2024 20:57
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Life has been kicking my butt so I’ve done zero YouTubing unless you count my daily streams (which I don’t). Re: the thumbnails, yeah I’m gonna have to agree with the first one being the most clickable. Congrats and commiserations on viral video! It’s really hard to predict which ones are gonna pop off. FWIW, sometimes videos will take off waaaaaaay later after you originally posted them, so don’t get too down if it doesn’t see views now.
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Oct 4, 2024 08:38
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mod note: oh no you accidentally made a bad post! Maybe next time you'll make a good post instead. just a thought i had. I could put it through as a probe but based on the rap sheet i don't think that will do anything so instead i will just blank your posts when i see them in CC since it's unlikely you'll contribute anything good.
Somebody fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Oct 7, 2024 |
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Oct 4, 2024 22:28
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can we get a paraphrasing of what they said? maybe an AI generated summary?
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Oct 12, 2024 01:09
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This was one of the many threads they chose to post a weird unrelated thing that passes for... I don't know, wit? in FYAD.
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Oct 12, 2024 23:41
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mod note: oh no you accidentally made a bad post! Maybe next time you'll make a good post instead. just a thought i had. I could put it through as a probe but based on the rap sheet i don't think that will do anything so instead i will just blank your posts when i see them in CC since it's unlikely you'll contribute anything good.
insane anime fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Oct 13, 2024 |
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Oct 13, 2024 00:28
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I had one video in Latin. Youtube took that as changing my default language, and automatically sets it! Now I have to manually change every video after upload. I can't google up default language setting. Anybody know how to change it? I'm worried it'll mess up autocaptioning.
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Oct 31, 2024 22:07
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Aditum habeto ad YouTube Studio: studio.youtube.com. Optiones: In angulo sinistro inferiore, preme Optiones ("Settings"). Defalta Impositionum: Elige Defalta Impositionum ("Upload Defaults") et deinde ad tabulam Optiones Profectae ("Advanced Settings") accede. Lingua Video: Quaere optionem quae dicit "Lingua Video" et tuam linguam ex indice eligere. Serva Mutationes: Preme Servare ut mutatio tua servetur in omnibus novis onerationibus.
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Oct 31, 2024 22:34
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Megazver posted:Aditum habeto ad YouTube Studio: studio.youtube.com. I'm not saying this is the greatest post itt, but... I don't know how to end this sentence.
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Oct 31, 2024 23:45
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Megazver posted:Aditum habeto ad YouTube Studio: studio.youtube.com. Gratias tibi ago! Next question. Yesterday I uploaded a video that I thought would get lots of views. It did on Reddit.  And it did on Youtube too. As soon as I refreshed the page after uploading it, it got a fireworks gif for #1 in views of my last 30 days' uploads. But this says otherwise:  261 on the previous video is more than 95 on the clip in question, which obviously conflicts with YT's immediate declaration it was #1. Does the platform remove analytics transparency on "unusual" traffic patterns for a channel?
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Nov 2, 2024 15:33
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I've been MIA from YouTube except for continuing my daily streams but I just wanted to pop in here and plug this new channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RuleofThumbYT It's a thumbnail designer's channel. I've only watched two of his videos so far. Both are critiques of bad thumbnails he sees on YouTube and a redesign of the thumbnails and they're GOOD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdDKIAJEVv0 - graphic designers are bad thumbnail designers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijxc3YWvzoc - professional thumbnail designer reacts to terrible thumbnail advice
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Nov 12, 2024 03:00
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I watched both, because dog knows I could use thumbnail help. On one hand, he does offer good advice. Repeats himself, but whatever -- it's important to emphasize a message. His redesigns really are good. On the other hand, my main takeaway is "Put Mr Beast in your thumbnail and suggest his thumbnail design is terrible to drum up attention even if you never discuss it in your video" and it really makes me never want to watch anything of his again.
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Nov 12, 2024 04:08
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Not sure when this was added, but it looks like Resolve now has a variety of generated backgrounds and fancy stinger transitions:  Definitely looking forward to using some of these!
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Dec 18, 2024 02:09
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Was anybody else allowed three minute shorts then cut back to one minute?
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Dec 20, 2024 17:07
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So I posted my video for the quarter, on Earth 2150: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEe_0Z7klWE  I think I may officially be niching down on 'Obscure European games (with a focus on RTS games) released between 1999 and 2005'. The difference in response between these kinds of videos and my others is palpable. In a day I got more watch time and views than the other kinds of videos have gotten since they were published. Fortunately I have like a drawer full of these games from when I was a kid. So initial takeaways from this video:
djed.f.re posted:Was anybody else allowed three minute shorts then cut back to one minute? Apologies, admittedly haven't tried doing a short in a while!
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Dec 29, 2024 01:15
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During the holidays I'm also taking the time to modernize some of my underperforming thumbnails, and add captions: Now, one thing that has been tripping me up for a while is misreading my metrics to determine what thumbnails are underperforming. Specifically, I hadn't realized the inherent issue when using the overall CTR metric as a read on how well the thumbnail is performing. Specifically, certain videos have underperformed for so long that subscriber clicks from the video's initial push are hiding the underperformance in the overall statistic. What do I mean by this? Well, take my Transistor video. If I look at the overall CTR it sits at a not terrible 4.1%, buuuuut, if I pare it down to more recent impressions, the past 90 days, mostly from people watching my other videos and having it show up in their suggested videos, that CTR falls to 2.1%. OOF. So needless to say I took another stab at it. Going from this:  to  And also changed the title from "Transistor as the Death of an Online Community" to "Transistor: Death of an Online Community" to be slightly more succinct . Which, I'm not gonna say it's night and day but I feel it is a lot stronger overall. This uses the style of my Defcon thumbnail which has performed very well in the long term from suggested video impressions. Anyway I'm no thumbnail-ologist but I thought some might think this interesting. Will be interesting to see if this kind of change can help my older videos when I'm getting views on my fresh video. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Dec 30, 2024 |
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Dec 30, 2024 00:45
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Sometimes I upload cat videos, in addition to my usual brainy-explainy stuff. These cat shorts get 500 to 1000 views. I thought I'd add music to my latest one, and the easiest way to do that was to sing my own - I made up some words and sang em kinda to the tune of an old indie folk song nobody's heard of, while barely playing the guitar. Anyways, the algorithm ain't serving the video. Nobody's watching it. I did it this way for the damned algorithm! So it wouldn't complain about copyright. But as far as I can tell, it's not being shown to people because - the only thing different is that I added the music. I guess the only other thing different is I uploaded it as a 1m short from my PC instead of phone. Does anybody happen to know what gives here?
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Jan 28, 2025 00:41
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Someone somewhere took that tune and copyrighted it and now you owe them money from 90 years ago.
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Jan 28, 2025 06:56
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djed.f.re posted:Sometimes I upload cat videos, in addition to my usual brainy-explainy stuff. These cat shorts get 500 to 1000 views. I thought I'd add music to my latest one, and the easiest way to do that was to sing my own - I made up some words and sang em kinda to the tune of an old indie folk song nobody's heard of, while barely playing the guitar. Anyways, the algorithm ain't serving the video. Nobody's watching it. I did it this way for the damned algorithm! So it wouldn't complain about copyright. But as far as I can tell, it's not being shown to people because - the only thing different is that I added the music. I guess the only other thing different is I uploaded it as a 1m short from my PC instead of phone. Does anybody happen to know what gives here? Shorts are a whole different beast. I'd just delete it and repost, maybe without the music, just to see if it does better. Otherwise, pick some music from the available options that YouTube have already licensed and try that, to test out the theory.
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Jan 29, 2025 07:05
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Leng posted:Shorts are a whole different beast. I'd just delete it and repost, maybe without the music, just to see if it does better. Otherwise, pick some music from the available options that YouTube have already licensed and try that, to test out the theory. Same-ish video with diagetic pink floyd's "hey you" clearly audible = a-okay, being served and viewed
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Jan 30, 2025 19:02
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I have a Stalker video game series channel for all things Stalker related, but my twist is satire, artistic camera composition, copyright-free music, action movie style editing and a 90's style graphic novel/meme format (admittedly a little hit or miss, I don't stick with a specific format and my stuff tends to be more meme-focused). I also throw in a little dialog or story elements where it seems natural or funny, but I try not to over-do it because subtlety is more of my forte'. I know the Lore of the game like the back of my hand (Playing since 2007, hardcore modding, ect) so I keep things consistent and complimentary. I love the Stalker series, there's something about it that resonates very deeply with me, from the weirdness (both intended and not) and the brutal gun-play and unforgiving "you're not special in the zone" approach to survival. I've always been fairly good at shooters but never recorded gameplay videos or even considered youtube until a year or so ago. Originally, OBS would almost give me panic attacks when I started recording but I learned to normalize it and persevered. I always wanted to make/direct movies but never did a drat thing about it, so I decided to edit my gameplay using tricks I've noticed by watching my favourite movies. I have only been video editing for a year or two (my YT channel just had its first birthday) but I'm quite happy with my progress/content. I wanted to give up a few times out of frustration (fumbling with relevance on YT, learning the algo-rubbish), but I find myself addicted to video editing and I actually like my own videos.. and while this particular project may not bare much actual success it could be a precursor to a more successful project down the road. Anyways, blah blah blah, homeboy likes Stalker.. Here's some examples of what I've done. Feedback is welcome, my skin is thick. (Working on my thumbnail game) OG Trilogy, fully edited and complete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MpQ-hkigZc Stalker Anomaly Gamma Open-world emergent stories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfpkmQVx2EQ Stalker 2, I'm currently just over half way complete the main story, fully edited. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm_-5kOhGr8&t=184s This is my most recent video, just came out today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nApAQPz-vcA Goddamn Hippy fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Feb 15, 2025 |
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Feb 13, 2025 16:21
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So I've been massively trying to up my game with my content lately. I've really been focusing on making my editing stand out and put a lot of hours into the new video. I've still got a few errors in the visuals to clean up, but I'm happy with the script and the audio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNdghxfYPI I've spent ages looking at successful thumbnails in my niche and I've attempted to replicate some and run thumbnail tests on them: https://imgur.com/a/games-that-make-you-feel-something-thumbs-fRCSzZa I'm thinking of running with images 2, 6, and 7. Would anyone have any other ideas/advice/thoughts about the video? I've put a lot of hours into this one and I'm really thinking about how I can give it all the chances to be successful before I launch it.
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Feb 20, 2025 01:18
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Sorry I didn't see this until now. Admittedly I'm not the strongest on thumbnails but the one you went with seems to be pretty good! Seems like it would convey what you're going for. As to the video itself, I have to say you're reaching new heights of production value. Definitely has a lot of artistic merit there.
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Feb 23, 2025 00:37
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Sardonik posted:Sorry I didn't see this until now. Admittedly I'm not the strongest on thumbnails but the one you went with seems to be pretty good! Seems like it would convey what you're going for. As to the video itself, I have to say you're reaching new heights of production value. Definitely has a lot of artistic merit there. Much appreciated. As with all my videos it got all its views in the first 24 hours and died a death. Time to reapproach for the next one I guess.
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Feb 24, 2025 14:44
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7seven7 posted:Much appreciated. As with all my videos it got all its views in the first 24 hours and died a death. Time to reapproach for the next one I guess. have you considered going the opposite direction? Video game essays are an extremely oversaturated market and have been for some time. They’re practically the archetypal “aspiring YouTuber” genre. If you want to exist there, why do the same thing everybody else is doing? And why spend weeks agonizing over a well polished and hyper-produced video that takes a ton of work only to die on the field and get swallowed up? Make more content with less effort. I’ve been really interested in creators like Swell Entertainment and Professor Skye’s Reviews—people who just plonk a camera down and start talking and then they may edit and cobble down a more thesis-driven and less rambley thing from there. If you have a lot of ideas about games—unique, insightful, interesting ideas about games—then you shouldn’t need to spend weeks agonizing over what, and I’m going to be honest here, are some perfectly cromulent but also entirely generic and forgettable and of-their-genre visuals. Georg doesn’t need visuals. MoistCritikal doesn’t need visuals, the dude just talks at a webcam. Flesh Simulator and Big Joel don’t really need super polished visuals. Some thoughts to consider: 1) you don’t need to chuck out your current style whole hog, but I think you should streamline so that you get more bites at the apple. This will also help you further refine your creative voice and identity so you’re not just another faceless participant in the video game essay mines. At minimum, maybe consider releasing a shorter video halfway through the month where you just chat about something interesting without putting in all of the work of the big films. 2) people like people. Almost all of the successful video essayists are people who show their faces regularly and intercut footage and gags, etc, with periods of simply talking to the camera to reestablish their connection to the audience. Very rare are the ones who never show their faces, and they usually rely on some gimmick, or extremely strong and usually very funny writing, or they’re grifter chuds and they’re hiding their face because they’re cowards and it doesn’t matter as long as they shovel red meat at their audience. Most normal channels seem to do better and retain their audience more easily when people connect to a human face. For you that could mean making more informal, off the cuff style content where you’re facing the camera most of, or all of, the time (ie Professor skye, etc). Or it could mean your current style of essay but with shots of you talking, like Kaz Rowe or Jacob Geller, etc. Even if it’s just you doing the intro and outro. 3) apropos of more informal content—informality, or the idea of informality, is having a bit of a moment right now. You may have seen discourse over the rise of the “handheld lav mic” meme, where some creators are even faking the (mis)use of lav mics to make their videos seem more amateurish and “personal” and less slick and overproduced. People are nostalgic for the older, less polished, more homemade Internet of yesterday and with that has come a rejection of the slick YouTube of the 2010s. This may be what is hurting you (your videos can feel a bit sterile at times), but is also a source of benefit (you clearly care about what you have to say and have a specific point of view). Maybe you should lean into sloppiness and informality a bit. 4)consider other ways of filming if you don’t want to just talk at a desk. For example in your video about grief you could have worn black, maybe gone to a graveyard to do part of your script read, etc. People like Natalie Wynn and Philosophy Tube are obviously v good at that with set decorators and costume ppl and whatnot, but you can look at somebody like Milo Rossi or Dime Store Adventures. You can just go outside or sit in your living room, etc. Do a little mise en scene or none at all. Your video on Thank Goodness You’re Here could’ve been shot on location, amongst various scenes of Northernness, for example. Maybe you shoot some of it in your back garden. Maybe you sit for some of it in the parking lot of a Tesco, or a local market. Maybe for some of it you’re seated on a brick wall, or holding a fox, or petting a whippet, or drinking a pint. Maybe you bring the game along with you on a laptop or switch/steam deck/etc and you literally point to it before cutting to proper in-game footage. Scott Baculum fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Feb 24, 2025 |
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Feb 24, 2025 16:30
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7seven7 posted:Much appreciated. As with all my videos it got all its views in the first 24 hours and died a death. Time to reapproach for the next one I guess. One thing I would consider: It might be harder for the algorithm to find an audience for wider-general video game video essay content spanning multiple games than for a specific game. With specific essays focused on a single game it might be easier to reach a given audience. Admittedly as ever though it's still kind of crapshoot but it wouldn't surprise me if something like that impacts discoverability. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 24, 2025 |
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Feb 24, 2025 16:41
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I've been running a retro VHS channel, emphasizing TV commercial finds (but with lots of one off oddity finds). My work on this has ebbs and flows, a bunch of uploads punctuated by months of inactivity. I tried to catch up on about 4 months of backlog this past weekend and uploaded so much that youtube gave me a 24 hour timeout unless I took a picture of my driver's license and sent it to them (which I didn't do). I fear I have angered the algorithm gods; not that I was drowning in views up to this point anyway. Things I love: Digitizing, transcoding, editing, all the techy backend poo poo that goes into a decent final product. I come from a strong post-production background so that tracks. Things I hate: Thumbnails (graphic design is not my passion), titles, descriptions. How many god drat variations of "COMMERCIALS FROM 1994!" can one man make? My first handful of thumbnails had some terrible overlay and design that I quickly dropped and have since substituted with stills from the video. I feel like I need some snazzy text on it still though. While this is ultimately a passion project, each tape is also a lot of work. I'd love some feedback from the more algorithmically minded goons among us, I feel like my engagement could be better than a couple of dozen views per video. This whole project started about 2 years ago when archiving some old family tapes, one of which was 4.5 hours of the Live Aid 1985 broadcast- with all the commercials intact. I held off on uploading it but I decided I may as well do it now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGoDWI5GIxA
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Feb 24, 2025 16:46
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thunderspanks posted:I've been running a retro VHS channel, emphasizing TV commercial finds (but with lots of one off oddity finds). My work on this has ebbs and flows, a bunch of uploads punctuated by months of inactivity. I tried to catch up on about 4 months of backlog this past weekend and uploaded so much that youtube gave me a 24 hour timeout unless I took a picture of my driver's license and sent it to them (which I didn't do). I fear I have angered the algorithm gods; not that I was drowning in views up to this point anyway. Are you a fan of Found Footage Fest?
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Feb 24, 2025 16:50
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trilobite terror posted:Are you a fan of Found Footage Fest? Surprisingly had never heard of it until now
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Feb 24, 2025 16:55
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trilobite terror posted:have you considered going the opposite direction? Video game essays are an extremely oversaturated market and have been for some time. They’re practically the archetypal “aspiring YouTuber” genre. Thank you for all this - I'm trying to take it all on board and form some ideas on potential new video formats. I'll post my ideas when I've got something coherent put together.
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Feb 26, 2025 03:46
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So here's an algorithm situation I hadn't seen before that scared me half to death. I posted a video today and it yielded this CTR curve: Pretty poo poo, right? I thought it was pretty much GG already. HOWEVER! Digging into the impression sources yielded this:  Turns out the vast, vast majority of the impressions behind that poo poo CTR were suggested videos, which can be legendarily random in the early period of a video. And the CTR for Browse Features is actually looking pretty good, all things considered. Really goes to show how you important not taking analytics at face value can be. Don't give up hope if your video curves you like this!
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Jun 27, 2025 04:34
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OBS technical question: Is there a way to run a macro (not sure if this is the right word, Blackmagic uses it for their ATEM switchers) inside OBS that will, on regular time intervals, cross dissolve to a different video input? I'm looking to run a livestream in a few days. I've got one camera and capture card, but I want the stream to cross dissolve to a still image with the stream details, say every minute or so, then cross dissolve back to the video feed after a few seconds. On my ATEM Mini at home this is pretty easy (at least, to dissolve between HDMI inputs on the unit), but I'm bringing a more barebones single-camera setup to the cottage and I'm curious to see if I can do this within OBS. Thanks!
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Jun 27, 2025 19:29
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