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> - Practice speaking. Slow down.

This is good advice for most people in general. Speaking slower gives more time to think about what you're going to say, which means you say better things. It's shocking how slowly you can get away with speaking.

Incidentally, slowing down is also good advice for improving your handwriting.

And with YouTube, anyone that wants to hear it faster can just speed up the video anyway.

This is really mostly possible with well enunciated speech, which is only really possible if you slow down a reasonable bit.

I disagree. I think it has more to do with ear training and being familiar with the topics at hand. I listen to most spoken videos on 1.5x by default and can easily go to 2x for channels with hosts that speak slower. This is most noticeable for podcast-esque content that is more free-flowing and unscripted. In those scenarios, I might start out at 2x but slow it down if the podcast hosts/guests get into a passionate argument about a topic and start speaking faster and faster.

Importantly, for topics that I don't understand (learning a new language - Dutch), I often don't speed up those videos because my brain is working a helluva lot harder to keep up. This changed last week however, when I was watching some very basic A1 content and found myself wanting to speed it up just a little bit. Did it help that the presenter was speaking slow and enunciating? Yes, but it's nowhere near the most important deciding factor (imo).

To be fair, a lot of content on a podcast-like format is like 5 minutes of ideas stretched out to 115 minutes because that's what podcasts typically boil down to. Doesn't matter if you miss out on some detail because there's just not much subtlety to anything shaped up like a podcast. You can walk away from it for 5 minutes and come back and often you'll not feel like you've lost any information.

You'd probably miss out on quite a lot more if you played a Platonic dialogue back at 2x speed.

God no, I'm tired of having to set videos to 1.5x

its no consolation but get the Video Speed Controller extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

Or drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar.

  javascript: (() => { document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = prompt("Set video speed multiplier:", "3"); })();

Also speaking slower gives the listener time to think about what you say.

You can also add a second or two of pause between sentences to the same effect.

and people can watch you at 1.5x or 2x anyway

I think people don't like the sound of my voice ha, will experiment with shorts

I disagree. The creator should slow down when writing, but they should not waste the viewer's time when speaking. I don't want to hear someone's ramblings unless they're really someone special.

Rambling and speaking slowly are very different things.

Yes exactly! Speaking slowly without a reason to do so is very painful for the listener. If what they have written is worth slowing down for, I'm all ears.

> - Get a good mic, mic stand, shock mount.

Audio is 80% of video.

People will watch potato-quality video; no one will listen to garbage audio.

> Audio is 80% of video.

It's 100%. Even god himself needs thunder during a storm that has lightning.

(Or that's what I was told when I did some TV shows and how important the audio engineer on set was.)

I second this as a consumer of a lot of MOOCs.

Bad video as long as you can read everything on the screen is okay.

But poor audio is an absolute bummer. Cannot tolerate this at all.

This doesn't make rational sense to me. I think it is probably because people have access to decent audio for much longer time than they have had good video.

You can close your eyes but not your ears, is how I've always heard it explained.

I can never tell the difference between supposedly good audio and the equivalent of two cans connected with a string. Dunno, maybe I'm lacking the audiophile chromosome or something.

This video has pretty good environmental examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUb9kIwHfoE

This one has a good example of bad vocal audio (at 1:00): https://youtu.be/-PLMiA18tBc?t=60

A lot of it is just "is the can the string is attached to 3" from the speaker or 3'?"

A mediocre mic placed 3-6" from the mouth is going to almost always sound better than any price of mic placed 5' away, except in sound treated studios with excellent technique and strong post-processing.

“ means inches and ‘ means feet in case anyone else needs to know because I had to look this up

Thanks, I thought it was an odd quote.

Is this just a US thing? I thought this was common knowledge.

It’s (mostly) just a US thing to measure in feet and inches, so most people don’t learn the shorthand for feet and inches.

> Is this just a US thing? I thought this was common knowledge.

Have you seen the movie This Is Spinal Tap? Good scene on this "common knowledge":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg5Ovdu6bOE

Audio is only as good as its weakest link. recording, compress to youtube, compress by youtube, playback. I guess it is possible to not be repulsed by audio compression artefacts and judging from the average video posted by mobile <slur>s it is shocking common.

eh, it depends.

i'm not an audiophile either, but some videos really had audio that was terrible enough to make me quit that.

examples: some buzzing in the background, high-pitched noise in one of the channels, or audio in mono (you only hear the person talking from the right ear, for example).

> I got annoyed that I was making content for YT for free

If anyone is interested, I run a PeerTube instance and am looking to add more people aside from just myself creating content on it.

Obviously the reach is not good currently because there is only myself on my instance but imagine what we could do together if a handful or a dozen or so people regularly crate content about tech, programming and/or music on this PeerTube instance. We could grow a nice community together I think.

>- Downsize your screen to 720p when you record so it is large enough for the average laptop screen to read. It is absolutely ridiculous when someone is recording a tutorial on a 4k monitor and the text is microscopic.

This echoes to basically anything creative in nature. Always consider the average situation of your customers when making your product.

As a programmer, consider whether your program runs properly on a $300 dollar potato from Walmart rather than your $8000 dollar development workstation. As a videographer (aka Youtuber), consider whether your video looks nice on a $300 dollar potato from Walmart rather than your $8000 dollar 8K 60" monitor.

I literally went through the same making my first video.

Had to do a lot of retakes but thanks for the tips. I won’t be able to invest in a mic yet but I’m okay using my apple headphones once I gain some traction I’ll be buying a new mic

buy a new mic to gain traction?

Sorry what I mean by this is that once I see it’s gaining popularity I’ll invest in a mic

Ha sorry I was suggesting you should first buy a good mic so that you can gain traction. From other comments here audio quality seems to be critical

Subconscious, but true: it will impact the feeling your viewers get when spending time with you.

Agreed,

I just posted my first video

Let me know how you guys feel about it https://youtu.be/PU75M0QkwTQ

I only watched a minute, but the audio volume is too quiet. You could boost the gain but there’s static that detracts from the voice. A good mic will help with that, but you’ll also need to adjust the sound levels before uploading the video. Also, do I hear a very slight bit of music in the background? Either embrace the background music or remove it. Right now it’s just barely audible which is a little distracting.

You don’t have to spend hundreds on a mic. Even a $50 mic with a pop screen will help a lot (I got a $70 one with a boom arm from Amazon and it sounds amazing compared to standard headphone/laptop mics).

Thanks for the feedback and I thinks really good feedback.

I’ll definitely invest in mic and make the sound quality much better

Any mic recommendations and can I also use a headset

I got my mom a Blue Yeti for teaching online classes and it's been pretty solid. I thought it was around $100, but looks like it's $120 on Amazon right now.

If you have a bit more budget, the Shure MV7 seems like a great option. One of my friends is an audio engineer, uses one of those and, at least, sounds pretty great over Discord :P.

I got the Fifine T683. It was one of the cheapest I could find that had a boom arm and a pop screen.

I personally recommend getting something with a boom arm. You can put the mic right up in front of your mouth and move it to sit comfortably. And it takes it off the table so it doesn’t pick up as much table noise.

Someday I might invest in a more expensive option but this was a huge upgrade for me in terms of quality. Beyond this it’s diminishing returns in terms of improvements vs cost. I think something like this is a good starter option.

A headset could probably work but I don’t have any experience with them.

Samson Q2U is an affordable mic which you can use over USB.

It also has an XLR output that provides an upgrade path for a better audio interface.

You can also monitor with headphones directly on the mic through the 3.5mm input.

I'm watching for like 2 minutes and I already got lost. What's a python virtual environment? Why do you need it, can't i just install python and be done with it?

There’s a lot of noise in the background - strong hiss and what sounds like music playing on the radio.

> Grew my channel pretty quickly to 1k subscribers just by sharing them to reddit.

How do you find subreddits you can self promote on without getting a ban?