Category: video

NEW Book about YouTube

On By Rick McIn books, Google, product complaints, product endorsements, videoLeave a comment

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination

A good book. Interesting and entertaining.

By Mark Bergen, a technology reporter at Bloomberg.

Published Sept 2022.

The biggest surprise was learning that YouTube’s algorithm actually kept most of Trump’s BIG LIE from getting promoted in early 2021. They were ready.

YouTube did a surprisingly good job of not promoting vaccine misinformation, as well.

You can find that stuff on YouTube, for sure. But it’s not being massively promoted for money.

As FREE enterprise, YouTube is FREE to post and promote whatever they want.

I’ve removed monetization from all my videos and websites.

If you eliminate ads and ad-driven algorithms, most social media problems disappear.

Google is a great search engine but I find YouTube to be quite lousy at listing either popular, quality, or related videos. Search for any topic you know well. Disappointing.

I spend a couple of hours most days on YouTube. No ads as I pay CAD$12 / month for YouTube Premium.

YouTube was super disorganized right from the start.

After Google bought the video site and made it #1, problems evolved as millions of “creators” devised hacks to make money off the site.

Despite all its growth and success, YouTube has been widely criticized.

Criticism of YouTube includes the website being used to facilitate the spread of misinformation, copyright issues, routine violations of its users’ privacy, enabling censorship, and endangering child safety and wellbeing. …

YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, designed to provide an experience optimized for children. …

YouTube removed public display of dislike counts on videos in November 2021, claiming the reason for the removal was, based on its internal research, that users often used the dislike feature as a form of cyberbullying and brigading. …

… public access to YouTube is blocked in many countries, including China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,Tajikistan, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan. …

related – Nilay Patel – Everyone knows what YouTube is — few know how it really works

I love YouTube

On By Rick McIn Google, product endorsements, videoLeave a comment

The first video uploaded to the site was by YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim, who was 25 years old at the time: “Me at the zoo” 

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That was Apr 23, 2005.

I first embedded a YouTube video on one of my sites in January 2006.

In March 2006, I embedded a clip of Peter and Joyce Long who had been interviewed by a TV crew on a kayak outing.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

In those days, the race to become the #1 video uploading site was competitive. Vimeo launched earlier, for example.

But these guys won out in the end.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube

The trio were early employees of PayPal, three of the PayPal Mafia along with Elon Musk, Russel Simmons (Yelp), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and more.

On October 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. It would have been Google or Yahoo. Google was willing to pay more.

FOX was also interested, but Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation had wasted $580m buying Myspace in 2005. They eventually sold MySpace for $35m.

YouTube had $19.8 billion in revenue in 2020. I send YouTube CAD $12 every month for YouTube Premium. Ad free videos. My music subscription. And a few other perks.

One of my most popular videos is from the early days. 😀 Low resolution. No editing. #bad

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

DJI OM 5 Gimbal – my review

On By Rick McIn hiking, product endorsements, videoLeave a comment

I was quite happy with the DJI OM 4 Gimbal — but somehow lost the magnetic phone clamp.

The magnetic phone clamp is the best feature. The one thing that makes it better FOR ME than competitors like the Zhiyun Smooth Q4. I hate balancing phones on a gimbal. With the OM 4 and 5 you don’t need to.

Rather than pay for a replacement magnetic phone clamp (CAD $35), it was smarter to simply buy the upgraded OM 5 (CAD $149) which includes the phone clamp. I can use the same phone and clamp on either gimbal.

I do feel the OM 5 is slightly better:

  • NEW built-in extension rod for “selfies”
  • lighter and more compact — but at the expense of much shorter battery life
  • ActiveTrack 4.0 and gesture control does seem more reliable. An important feature for me.
  • In “selfie” camera mode, it smoothly tracks your face by default

The MAIN downside is a shorter battery life than the OM 4. Only about 6 hours.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I used iPhone 13 on the OM 5 shooting in portrait orientation to keep the footage as SMOOTH as possible. I’d intended to upload it VERTICAL to Instagram and Facebook. Facebook worked. Instagram wouldn’t upload over multiple attempts.

I certainly prefer landscape and YouTube.

BACK to the OM 5 …

Click PLAY or watch the DJI hype video on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch the DJI tutorial on YouTube.

Here’s the best tutorial I’ve found.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The following tutorial is more comprehensive.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Visiting Valencia, Spain

On By Rick McIn cycling, hiking, travel, videoLeave a comment

I’d never been to Spain’s 3rd largest city, so jumped on the chance to catch a cheap flight down to the sunny Mediterranean coast.

The historic centre is great.

But the highlight for me was walking and cycle the huge green space that runs through the city.

It was once the river Turia, drained and rerouted after a catastrophic flood in 1957. The old riverbed turned into a picturesque sunken park.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I did make it out to the beach.

But best was exploring the City of Arts and Sciences.

Click PLAY or watch highlights on YouTube.

Artificial Intelligence – Video Creation

On By Rick McIn videoLeave a comment

How soon can I use this kind of A.I. to modify my own videos?

To create this new kind of film, Osk trained their A.I. on hundreds of thousands of images of landscapes, architecture and cityscapes. As it learned, the A.I. developed a neural model of our natural and built environments.

… The resulting film is an epic yet intimate journey across our planet imagined by artificial intelligence.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Video Edits Inspired by a Song

On By Rick McIn music, videoLeave a comment

Machine Gun Kelly — play this when I’m gone — inspired Jake Frew’s 2020 pandemic video.

Jake Frew is a master video creator. Right now he’s on a road trip to meet and collaborate with other video editors he admires.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I loved a song by Girl in Red, the indie pop music project of Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven Ringheim. The music dictated everything I put into this fan video.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.