YouTube Series 1

So my first YouTube video has finally gone up today (09/12)! Check it out here:

I never thought I would finally have the courage to create a YouTube channel and film myself just doing normal things. This first video is super short and simple - just me doing my regular routine cleaning on Saturday morning. I knew this first video wasn't going to be perfect or up to par with the type of video I want to eventually make one day but ITS UP! ITS OUT! I am so excited 😂

I figured a cool way to document this whole journey is to start a series on my personal blog of learning/being on YouTube. Creating this short video opened my world up into editing, audio, filming equipment etc. It was certainly not as easy as it looked.

Finding Content: What to even film?

I will be the first to admit my life is pretty boring or can be considered mundane 😄

Working from home and being an introvert led me to be homebody more then anything. I appreciate the comfort of my home and the coziness I feel. Yet how do I create videos that people would actually want to watch? What part of my life is something that anyone would be interested in seeing?

Part of these questions are me just speaking my insecurities. Life is what you make of it and seeing a small portion of my Saturday morning on film makes me see beauty in simple routines. Because so much of life is made of the small things that bring comfort. I am sure there are people out in the world who live similarly to how I do and could be interested in these types of videos.

Although a portion of my focus was wondering how I would be creating enough content, another part of me just wanted to learn without the need for perfection. Successful people on YouTube like MrBeast or Ali Abdaal have mentioned numerous times - Just Start. Get to work and improve as you go.

Editing

This was a frustrating one 😂 but so cool to learn at the same time.

At first, once I had finished filming on my 15 year old Canon Powershot SD780 camera ...

It was time to put all the clips together. Since this was my first video I didn't want to invest too much money in the case I gave up on it 😂 (I'm very risk averse person aka cheap). My first tool I used to try editing was a out of the box Microsoft ClipChamp.

Microsoft ClipChamp

This tool was pretty easy to start using. The UI (user interface) was very simple - just upload your media and start putting them together. The issue came when I tried to add audio to all the edited clips. Once external audio was added the clips became very glitchy and the whole video ended up lagging. Researching online, it was suggested that the editing tool wasn't the best to work with and this issue might pop up because of it.

Time to move onto another one 😊

DaVinci Resolve

Researching this tool, it baffled me this tool was free. There is a paid version but the free has all the tools you would need to create YouTube videos. The UI for this tool was way more complex and is something I am still learning how to use. To add more difficulty 😂 Ran into 2 main issues below

1. Playback
   Once the clips were edited, the playback for all of them running together would lag severely. The video would play super slow in which it seriously slowed down my ability to edit at a moderate pace. Making one change would slow down the editor where running a 5 min video took double the time. Essentially the same issue as with Microsoft ClipChamp but figured to stick it out with this one since it was so highly recommended.
   
2. Windows 11
   Starting up DaVinci Resolve on my 6 year old Windows 11 laptop slowed my entire system down. My chrome browser would lag and take forever to load. Trying to learn this editor while not being able to google features on the tool was difficult. Searching for media files on my file explorer would take minutes to open.

Both issues contributed to a video that could have gone out last week, be pushed to this week 😂. I was worried that by using my apparently archaic equipment would seriously damage my ability to continue learning how to make good videos.

Turns out though my camera was the problem!

Since my camera was super old, when I switched to video taping on my iphone 11 the clips were much easier to edit and format. Adding audio didn't cause any issues either. I am hoping this editing tool continues to hold up as I move forward.

Sound

In the beginning, I tried to find music for free. Finding good quality background music to use was actually harder then I thought. Worrying about copyright issues seemed like a problem I just didn't want to deal with. I did find a track that was for free but I didn't really like it too much so I decided its best to invest in decent sound that I wouldn't get copyrighted on. EpidemicSound offered a free 30 day trial which I am currently on to give it a try.

Emotions

So much has been leading up to opening up my YouTube channel, uploading my first video, and finally just taking that step toward something I have always wanted to do.

It is scary.

What if the haters come after me? What if my mental health starts to suffer? I have an obsessive way of doing things sometimes in the pursuit of perfection... will that bit me in the ass later? What if I am not successful? What does success on this channel mean to me? Am I doing this for the right reasons?

In the end though...

Lets just keep going 😂 Hope everyone is achieving their dreams and chasing their stars!