Becoming a Youtuber

Not sure if this should be posted to General or Tech, but I figured it'd fit here as well as any place.

I was wondering if there are any other posters here at RR who are active Youtube content creators/posters (gaming channels especially). I'd love some tips from anyone actively involved in the process with some decent experience working with the gigantic google machine. I've done a decent amount of research and watched quite a few tutorials on various aspects of the process, but it'd be useful to gain some perspective from an actual person here. Tutorials and articles only go so far, and very rarely give you input on the writer's personal experience.

I'm launching a Youtube gaming channel, mainly for DayZ, Arma2, Battlefield, and random single player Let's Plays/Walkthroughs. I've got my recording method fairly well straightened out (VAC, Dxtory, TS for game comms), and at present I'm doing editing with Sony Vegas, primarily just because I know the program well and it seems to be relatively straightforward. I have a few friends writing music or otherwise letting me use their stuff so I can avoid copyright and ContentID issues as much as possible, so other than the actual game footage, virtually the entirety of what I'm posting will be free of third party claims. I have a decent idea of the type of footage I want to get, as well as a lengthy document detailing future videos I want to create.

I do plan to monetize. I won't lie, I'd like to make money off my channel if it ever came to that, although I'm by no means treating this as a career. First and foremost I'm posting because I enjoy editing and being able to show off some of the more ridiculous or interesting gaming moments I happen across. I know, however, that I am a long, long, long way off from ever seeing anything in the way of ad revenue from my channel (I literally just launched, don't even have all my channel graphics and banners done yet). I don't intend to be one of those jackasses that spams every popular youtube channel with HAI GUYZ LOOK I HAVE A CHANNEL GO TO IT PLZ, but I do want to gain exposure beyond just sharing my stuff with friends and getting random search hits. As for now, I'm just going to post my videos and see how traffic comes in without doing anything else.

So to any out there involved in producing Youtube content, what's your method? Video editing program? Are you trying to promote your channel, or do you just have it for personal use? If you're on the site for the former reason, how have you attempted or succeeded in getting your channel out there to more eyes and ears? If you're doing gaming videos, have you experienced any issues with ContentID or takedown notices?

Let me know. I'd love to hear from anybody here what their experience has been like.

lanx_sl said:

brand yourself first and foremost, the biggest advice you'll get from yt vets is to brand yourself, this means you, your channel, your following, your twitter/fb you are now that brand.

i would NOT recommend any music of any kind anywhere, remember to turn off any radio streams you have going, or even if you have a radio playing in the background that could pick up music.

if you must use music, yt actually has a full library of royalty free music you can use and you won't be flagged for it.

consistent schedule, you HAVE to release on a schedule, if you develop a following, the number 1 complain you'll have is you don't release stuff on/time/according to schedule

build thick skin, you'll need it

have a backup/exit strat for youtube, alot of ppl are trying out twitch and other such streaming services b/c google is gonna google.

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Already working on the branding angle, and the fact that all the music I use is either made specifically for the channel or donated by friends with a sort of theme in mind. I've got a pretty firm grasp on copyright law and how the ContentID system works, so I'm fairly well covered there. Seems that 90% of avoiding random ContentID claims is just muting background music and cutscenes in games. I'm also convinced that 90% of copyright claims are just music in general, so as long as that proves to be the case and I don't have an actual game dev/publisher trying to smack me, I should be okay. We'll see, though. I won't have the luxury of a partnership with someone like Machinima in any foreseeable future, so I know I've got to tread very, very carefully with monetization.

I've also got a Twitch up that I use fairly regularly, but when I use Dxtory and OBS in conjunction I take a pretty massive performance hit, so I don't stream and record simultaneously, which creates problems when you need every bit of footage for things like DayZ that you can get since Youtube-worthy moments are incredibly random and rare. I know I can use Dxtory in conjunction with streaming, but it's a headache I haven't investigated yet, though I'll probably sort it out a bit later down the road.

Do we actually have any active Youtubers on the site? I'd love to hear from anyone who does this pretty frequently.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

The world needs fewer pewdiepies.

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People hate him, and I can understand most of it. He can get incredibly annoying, especially outside horror games, but I don't really hold any personal animosity towards the guy. He seems to have the best intentions for what he does and I can't find too much fault in him as a person. I think more than anything, the fact that he puts out such an incredible quantity of content that quality will suffer, but the quantity is what keeps him at the top- he just produces too much to ignore completely. That, and kids/teen girls eat the shit up because he's basically a cartoon character.

I have newfound respect for people that can actually produce that much material consistently, although I think it's much easier for personality-centric channels to be fountains of content because there's not as much need for quality editing. He has his own thing, which is basically just being himself/his character and pretty much talking over footage without any particular point. But the fact of the matter is he releases an absolutely astounding amount of content, and even the simplest of let's plays with minimal editing takes ages to finally put together. These are just my impressions, anyway.

I'm trying to approach this from a completely opposite method of content creation- with a focus on storytelling through effective editing and videos made with a specific goal or theme in mind. This has proven to be immensely difficult, especially so when I'm working almost solely with DayZ at the moment. I am astounded by the stuff people like Jackfrags or Frankie can put out in respect to DayZ, Rust, and Altis Life. After nearly two weeks of near constantly filming DayZ gameplay, I've been able to gather barely 10 minutes of footage worthy of any decent video. It's maddening, and it's rapidly causing burnout with regards to the whole thing. I chose DayZ as the initial and primary focus of my channel because of its rather unique propensity for organic storytelling, and when the cool moments happen it makes for some of the most hilarious and interesting gameplay footage (in my mind, at least) that exists in multiplayer gaming. There's just nothing else like it. But I'm sitting on something close to 50 hours of video at the moment and I'd say 40 of that is just me running around eating cans of beans. I see now why even the most prominent DayZ youtubers like Jack, Frankie, Sacriel, & others have put it on the backburner... Mostly, it's the unfinished state of the game itself and the difficulty of getting other players to cooperate, but it's also just absolutely tedious (and boring).

I want to get at least one DayZ video out before moving on, then do a few Let's Plays just to produce more content for my channel. I'm worried about copyright claims, however, especially so with single-player games that make heavy use of cutscenes and rely on music to create atmosphere. I know that the really popular channels out there have an easier time with this, since they have partnership deals with Machinima and others, allowing them greater leeway with potential infringement, but I don't have that luxury and won't for a long time, if ever. It's another reason huge reason why I wanted to use DayZ for content creation- Bohemia is beyond cool with monetization, there's virtually nothing to infringe upon since the nature of videos I want to make place them squarely within fair use even if Bohemia suddenly turned evil, there's no cutscenes or music save for what I create myself, and every piece of footage holds the potential to be fundamentally different from single player Let's Plays, and thus gives people a reason to watch multiple Youtubers doing the same thing. I can't remember the last time I watched two Youtubers do a Let's Play or walkthrough of the same game- I pick my favorite or the first one that releases, and after that I don't have much of a reason to watch someone play through again, since I've been through the entirety of the story/campaign/whatever.

TL;DR- this shit is hard, grueling, ridiculously time-consuming, and discouraging for someone new like me. I need ideas on how to get this done without totally burning myself out on the whole thing. I'm not having much fun with it anymore, and it's sort of ruining the games since I'm playing for footage rather than just entertainment. Jimmies are entering a definite rustle stage, and I've yet to release more than a two minute video.

EDIT: Finally got a video edited and ready for upload. Looked pretty decent as far as video quality went... At least, it did on my PC. I used Sony Vegas and rendered via recommended 1080p .mp4 AAC format with settings from a tutorial. Gamma, brightness, everything looked as well as I could hope for. Uploaded, looks like total ass. Colors look terrible and bland, but most importantly, Youtube's compression did something very, very evil with the video's brightness/gamma/contrast after upload. It's so dark that anything other than blinding sunlight is impossible to distinguish. Worse still, I have several nighttime clips and it's just a black screen with sound. Trying to find a workaround, but what the fuck? I even downloaded the mp4 back from Youtube onto my PC and it looked fine. I reiterate, what the fuck?

Noodleface_sl said:

I hate almost everyone on youtube is what I'm saying. I might hate you. I don't know yet.

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You would definitely hate me if you saw the shitpile that was uploaded last night, before I deleted it. I don't know how many people are having the darkness issue, but the most common solution seems to be "run the footage through handlebrake first, then render it," which might be nice, except I've already edited together all of the clips in their initial state post-recording. I'd have to redo the entire video. I've got to find an alternative solution somehow. Is anyone here familiar with Sony Vegas, Dxtory, 1080p rendering, and all your uploads getting turned into midnight post-upload? Need halp.

Goddamned Youtube sure likes to make things fucking painful. First, it's shoving Google+ down my throat, now this.

The darkness issue was actually pretty easily solved, once I added a Levels FX to my entire video track in Vegas. Following a tutorial from a guy that did a lot of Crysis videos, I went with Sony AVC/MVC .mp4 format, using the Memory Stick SD NTSC Widescreen preset, customized for my resolution (I had recorded all my footage in 1680x1085 16:10 aspect ratio due to my monitor, with a few recommended tweaks. Each of the clips I imported were clocking in at near or above 1gb a piece, but after rendering I wound up with a .mp4 at roughly 500 mb. I know this is part of the problem, but looking at the guy's Crysis videos, they were fairly awesome quality without the pixelation and degradation I'm encountering post-upload. I figure it's the compression from the render combined with the compression Youtube applies to the upload, but I'm not exactly a veteran dealing with video editing, or indeed, anything involved in this entire process. I'm learning as I go.

I know this isn't exactly the place for support as to my specific issues, so I'm constantly researching fixes and appropriate rendering/editing methods, but I assumed initially (based off a few peoples' examples) that the footage would come out fine. It may be DayZ itself and my graphics settings, but as I stated before it looks great on my PC. I've worked with Vegas before in Tribes Ascend and a few other games, but it was ages ago and I'm using a much more recent version of Vegas this time around. I really don't like Premiere Pro and most of the prominent Youtubers I watch use Vegas as well.

Anyway, until I figure this shit out, I'll post the first video I uploaded and let you see the damage done to the file I uploaded before Youtube got ahold of it. It's rough and it's amateurish, but I tried to arrange music/footage in such a way that it didn't resemble most other gaming channels (dubstep/electronica intro, largely unfocused narrative). I think my voice is annoying, but I'll let you guys decide.

Zodiac_sl said:

You need to start out with shorter videos to get subscribers. That vid is 7 minutes long and I would have never watched it unless it got upvoted to top on reddit or something. 1-3 min video going viral/front page on reddit will do more for you than any 10 minute polished video.

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I'll be making more shorter videos of particularly lolzworthy or interesting gameplay moments when I have enough, but DayZ videos tend to be longer and I just wanted to try my hand with editing and transitions, as well as get a feel for rendering/upload times for longer videos.

My first video was actually 2 minutes long, but it was just a low-quality clip I threw up after a friend requested I get him a copy of the fight (it's the clip playing during the papaya song).

I'm thinking I'll do a DayZ how-to newbie guide next, consisting of long videos with less editing breaking up the footage, but I figured enough interesting things will happen while I'm doing it over the course of filming the tutorials that I'll be able to use them as short clips for quick posting, and then maybe a montage.

Also, jesus h christ does processing take a while. My true HD version was around 12gb and needed around 6 hours to get uploaded, but its taken absolutely forever for Youtube to get it up (lol). I pray to jebus this doesn't turn out too dark/shitty looking. Should have done a testing video beforehand.