Here are some things I’ve learned over the last 18 months doing YouTube videos.

When I started, I snorted at the industry standard that it takes 1 hour to do 1 minute of video.  Well sure, I thought, if you’re doing a Star Wars movie.  Now I wonder how people get 1 minute done in only 1 hour.

The lights, the audio, I mean, that whole physical layer – it’s the 21st century, right?  Some dude in the 1930s maybe had to worry about acoustics and light and such but now we have computers to sort all that out.  I mean, in that Apple ad the camera and the app just dynamically etc.  Turns out there’s a reason audio and video people are so fussy.

There’s a huge difference between speaking extemporaneously to a room full of people, which I have done a lot of, and narrating without a script.  In the former, you are interacting with an audience.  And of course, reading from a script without sounding like you’re reading from a script is yet another skill.

Nothing you produce with a plugin, template, or add-on will look remotely as cool as the advertising video for it.

While we’ve put out some fun things, it’s nothing like what we could be doing if we’d had a true pro at the helm, as opposed to a guy who bought Final Cut from the app store and skipped the tutorial.  Some who can give the channel the love and professionalism it deserves.

And in the near future, we’re going to have more to say on this subject!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.