My own youtube channel - feedback please

[MrComputerSaint]

Hi,
I'm starting to put out some regualar (and different content) each week on Youtube.

This is Episode 2 of a series I'm calling Old School Sunday.

What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvJrMBvzskg

Please give me constructive feedback.

[Zak33]

honestly.. it's a film of you playing UT (badly)

it's not gonna make you a millionaire

[directhex]

honestly.. it's a film of you playing UT (badly)

it's not gonna make you a millionaire

Seriously, it's all the kids are into these days.

http://www.southparkstudios.co.uk/cl...a#tab=featured

[Saracen]

....

Please give me constructive feedback.

My only feedback is that I'd be the wrong person to comment. The only time I use YT is when I'm looking for something very specific and it comes up in a search, and even then, it's rather like looking for the right grain of sand on a sandy beach. Not a fan (of YT as a whole), personally, mainly because the right grains of sand are camouflaged in a sea of dross. I have no idea on or opinion of which category yours is in, but unless by some unlikely coincidence it happens to be a how-to on one of the very few topics that interest me, like construction and/or modification of model helicopters/quads, it's likely to be camouflage, not the grains I'm after.

The constructive bit is this. Whatever you do, it's unlikely to appeal to more than a very small audience, and a channel has the same problem as magazines .... consistently providing sufficient material of sufficient interest, use or entertainment value to get people coming back, again and again. And that is hard to pull off, and generally requires considerable talent, a lot of hard work, a damn good idea and no small amount of pure luck.

[stevie lee]

first of all. get a better microphone or edit your voice in better. only realised you were talking in it in the last 2 minutes when it was the same image and I wondered what the random popping nose was, had to turn volume way up to hear anything.

then watch what directhex posted

then realise youtube is taking ever increasing amounts of revenue from youtubers and a lot of people are switching to twitch, youtube is starting to decline for big money youtubers, its all in sponsorship money nowadays.

even if you do somehow make it to have decent enough views to actually make any money off it so its worth spending the time to do it (if that's even your aim, you could just be putting videos out for fun and not care how they do, if so, carry on) I know some youtubers take anywhere from 1 hour up to 8 hours to edit a single 20 minute video just to get it to an acceptable quality. so you need a backup job making your money, youtube is just a hobby.

and also be prepared for completely unhelpful comments. youtube commentators have this habit of saying "xxx youtuber does it this way" then the channel changes their way of editing to be like that, then the comments say "well your just like xxx now, no point watching anymore" then you lose all your viewers, no ore channel. then they call you a sellout for pandering to the masses.

so just do it your way, have fun doing it, edit your videos so we can actually hear you and ignore all the unhelpful comments.


oh and expect comments like:

check out this video I did its super



video only used as a comment example


all in all, just don't excpect much.

[MrComputerSaint]

Zak, thanks I know I'm not the best player of any game, although I used to be pretty good at Sega rally on the large arcade machine, but
that's a different story.

Amusing video Directhex, I see your point. The videos wont just be commentary of the game. The Old School Sunday vision I have is that it's playing something that is a bit old to see if: there are any problems with newer hardware, installation with newer OS's or just if there are any servers still on-line. So if someone seems game XYZ on steam and they're like "oooh I could get that for 99p, it'll bring back memories of xyz when I was a kid" then they can watch my video and I'll say: "well I had this graphics problem and it was sorted by doing this and that".

Saracen - thank you. I see a lot of channels out there cater to one game or one genre of games. I plan to keep people interested with just any type of games. (yes, this also has bad points... because people will expect another BF4 video next week and get some RTS game)
But I hope that the different content, sometimes slightly different, will open the channel to more and more of an audience.

stevie lee, thanks for the mic, I think I know the problem, my mic was recording at the wrong level. I've bumped it up by 25 and on the video I'm encoding now it seems good, but there is still some static in the background. I think that's just the noise of my PC. (which I might do a video on quieting my PC down a bit). But good point.

The videos aren't monetized, yet. I would like to make some money from it and I do have a job so I understand this is a hobby.

I've seen a lot of comments on youtube and yes I know a lot of people are just trolling and just being a nasty in general. I'm prepared for that and will probably just ignore them.

and also be prepared for completely unhelpful comments. youtube commentators have this habit of saying "xxx youtuber does it this way" then the channel changes their way of editing to be like that, then the comments say "well your just like xxx now, no point watching anymore" then you lose all your viewers, no ore channel. then they call you a sellout for pandering to the masses.

I see your point, I will keep it to the way I think I like it. If someone does say a constructive comment I might take it and work on it to change the thing they've mentioned.

Thanks for the feedback all so far

[Zak33]

Zak, thanks I know I'm not the best player of any game, although I used to be pretty good at Sega rally on the large arcade machine, but
that's a different story.

you sufferd there at the hands of a "Zak wants to reply in length but actually ran out of time and abridged it.. badly"

So.. at length.

If you want to make a gaming video, make it useful. Find a subject.. and use it

I shall give an example: a technique called shooting in corridors.

Stand with a pillar to your right... move yourself so that your line of site towards a target has a door frame or edge of a wall to your left but further away than the pillar.

This gives you a field of view of maybe 10 degrees and at distance you can see entire areas of kill zone. The enemy coming towards you sees a wall to their right.. and further away.. a pillar to the left.. and you are a tiny little thin target shooting at him.

I once saw a great CoD4 tutorial on it. I learned MASSES from it



It's THAT kind of film that makes people click "next video"

[Zak33]

ok ignoring this blokes inane chatter... this is a video to learn from, especially his corner checking (hence the name) and his ability to hide against a door frame and shoot past pillars etc



So.. what could you do to improve your Utube channel

1) Name the films properly so they can be searched for
2) Teach people something
3) Short and to the point and make it clear
4) create a persona fdor yourself so people come back to listen to you and see your work


Like Ted for example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwslPHbu9Bg

Ted is a dude!

[KeyboardDemon]

I've had a look through some of the videos on your channel, I actually picked your first gaming video with the c4 on a dirt bike in BF3, followed by the BF3 Canals gameplay and then the creating a race tutorial with GTA V. The C4 video came across as you just messing around and that seemed ok as a messing around video, the Canal video was purely gameplay and other than that it seemed to have no real point to it and I saw no compelling reason to watch it through to the end, some commentary or explanation on why you thought it would make for interesting viewing would have been nice, things like that tend to engage people more with your content and ultimately your channel.

The tutorial video left me feeling that you might not have created many races yourself, I got that impression at the start of the video when you showed that you only had the one 20km race in your own races folder, but then that feeling of learning on the job continued throughout the sections where you were placing checkpoints, scenery and jumps. I think if you are going to do tutorials like that then you should practice a few times and maybe even have a selection of prepared races on hand so you can highlight some of the features that you like. With the race itself your audio balance between in game audio and actual commentary audio was off so I couldn't make out what you were talking about, and on a well practised course design you would have been able to demonstrate creating a course that you could drive around flawlessly instead of crashing as often as you did.

Great games and even great gameplay aren't enough to capture people's attention imho. The first thing that I look for in a YouTube presenter is a presentable persona, I don't care if the presenter is not that good at playing games just so long as the presenter can deliver information in a way that captures my interest. I think you are capable of doing this but in the videos that I saw your audio was quite monotone, inject some life into it by imaging you are talking to a person in front of you and not talking to a microphone.

Watch some commentary videos and try and note which ones you liked then identify why you liked them, but don't stop there, you have some rally videos, why not watch some televised rally races and listen to how the commentary on those comes across then see if you can aim for a similar level of energy behind your delivery, personally I tend to look for:

• personality
• knowledge of the game in the commentary
• insight in to the mechanics of the game that I can use to improve as a player
• things to watch for that will stop me from dying as often or losing fewer races etc...
• I like the commentator to be good at what they show or to be able to make up for a lack of skill in what they talk about
• I like to see the commentator engaging with their audience in the comments section

Also 20 plus seconds for a caption with the video title is far too long, which is how long the captions felt on the BF3 videos.

I would suggest going back to some of your existing videos and then recording new commentary for them and edit that over the existing material to see if your commentary improves when you're not trying to record and play at the same time.

[TheDutyPaid]

check out this video I did its super



video only used as a comment example


all in all, just don't excpect much.

Even with my headphones at there lowest it was still too loud for me. Did you boost the volume in edit?

[TheDutyPaid]

I been doing YouTube since 2002, 821 subscribers • 974,323 views I have made £260 pounds from it. Last year the views and money have dried up.

Any gaming video I do now, does not get any views. I get more filming out the front of a bus. lol

Feel free to have a look, if you wish TheDutyPaid

[stevie lee]

Even with my headphones at there lowest it was still too loud for me. Did you boost the volume in edit?

you think I edited it? :rofl:

windows movie maker ftw !

just recorded it on sister Panasonic mini-dv camcorder, or was it her digi camera? cant remember, copied footage off, converted it to avi?? uploaded it, no editing atall. still 130 views on an unlisted video, that's only been posted on here for a competition isn't bad

and it was only posted again as an example of the type of comments Mrcomputersaint might get on their videos.

and I think those type of comments only appear from people who are insecure about having another person on youtubes doing stuff that they do, or they think that that video is better than theirs and they're trying to leech off the more successful one. if they didn't think it as a threat, why would they bother giving it any attention?

anyway. I personally don't care one itty bitty teeny bit about my 303 views across 8 unlisted videos.



Mrcomputersaint - just keep experimenting until you find what you are happy with, it shows in videos if you are happy doing what you do, don't worry too much about any negative things being said, they're either jealous or trying to get rid of you as a threat if they have their own channel, or maybe you do suck at it who knows

[TheDutyPaid]

that's only been posted on here for a competition isn't bad

Just saw that, did you win the HEXUS funny heatsink placement competition, If not why not and who won?

[stevie lee]

http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...k-styleee.html

[Zak33]

now THAT was a long time ago.....

DutyPaid... hats off to you .. THATS a Youtube channel man.. it's very good.