Tips for starting a new mostly KSP Youtube channel?

[SubzeroSpartan7]

So I have a YouTube channel, and due to, my first videos *sigh, my incompetence early on destroyed any possibility of any growth. Due to the algorithm of, you need to get views to get more views and if you don't you are less likely to get views later which starts a downhill slope, I have gotten no where. Now I am pretty decent at making videos and I want to start over. Does anyone have any tips?

[DBT85]

Look at the popular KSP Tubers and see what you can glean from them.

I like Scott Manley because he not only knows the game, but also infuses his videos with interesting tidbits from real space programmes and also doesn't sound like a bum sitting in his mums basement. He's enthusiastic, knowledgeable and clear with what he's doing.

If you want to make videos for complete newcomers, don't use any mods, keep it simple and explain everything as if they are 10 and know nothing about orbital mechanics at all, because they probably don't.

If you want to make videos about using mods, be clear, include links, explain what it does and why its useful/cool.

[Liowen]

One thing I would highly recommend, even if you are not going to use mods, is to use ambient light mod, this will help with making the darkside of planets have more light. Nothing worse than a black screen with a few green, batteries, dots and nothing else. Since it does nothing to affect the game in terms of how things are done I do not consider it a true mod, it is more of a youtubers best friend. Also as for recording I would go with ACTION! (I believe it is around $40 for license) as you can split off your microphone track from the in game stuff, this will allow you to use audacity (a freeware program) to clean up you voice over stuff and not compete with the in game sounds. Another good tip is to make sure the microphone is not directly below your nose or too close to your mouth, this will help with words that have P's, T's, and any others that force air out of your mouth (hold your hand in front of your mouth and say some words to get the idea of this).

[Levelord]

I only have 1 rule: Regular updates.

[SubzeroSpartan7]

One thing I would highly recommend, even if you are not going to use mods, is to use ambient light mod, this will help with making the darkside of planets have more light. Nothing worse than a black screen with a few green, batteries, dots and nothing else. Since it does nothing to affect the game in terms of how things are done I do not consider it a true mod, it is more of a youtubers best friend. Also as for recording I would go with ACTION! (I believe it is around $40 for license) as you can split off your microphone track from the in game stuff, this will allow you to use audacity (a freeware program) to clean up you voice over stuff and not compete with the in game sounds. Another good tip is to make sure the microphone is not directly below your nose or too close to your mouth, this will help with words that have P's, T's, and any others that force air out of your mouth (hold your hand in front of your mouth and say some words to get the idea of this).

I figured all that stuff out the hard way a while ago. Although I still occasionally breathe directly into the mic which is something I will definitely have to work on. I already use Bandicam which also allows me to split the tracks, however I do and will do a lot of post commentary. And I never even knew what the Ambient lighting mod was so thanks for that tip.

[Liowen]

I figured all that stuff out the hard way a while ago. Although I still occasionally breathe directly into the mic which is something I will definitely have to work on. I already use Bandicam which also allows me to split the tracks, however I do and will do a lot of post commentary. And I never even knew what the Ambient lighting mod was so thanks for that tip.

Depending on the mic it might be hard to not breath on it, I know my headset it is hard as the mic sits, to me anyways, too close to my mouth and nose no matter how I have it placed. But with my mic on its stand I have it about 6 inches away and down from my mouth, talking over the mic will reduce the "popping" you get from T's and P's since the air is not directly hitting the mic. I still have yet to build my pop filter yet but I might soon, building one is not hard or expensive and it can be repaired easily.

[Javster]

Make sure you get some good, original content. Tutorials for interesting craft or procedures might be a good way to start.

[EtherDragon]

I say, do videos that you love to do! The main thing that people want to see is you having fun. If you have fun talking about sciency stuff while working your missions - do that. If you have fun struggling through Hard-Mode Career - do that! People want to enjoy what's going on along with you (to point and laugh at you making the same mistakes they once did, having fun learning from it, etc...)

DO NOT be afraid to celebrate your epic failures - but don't be fake about generating them. Be willing to laugh at yourself, especially when you trip over thin air and fall flat on your butt over something obvious.

Now, let me turn the question back onto you - what content or topics do you have the most passion about covering in your KSP Channel? What do you have the most fun doing or talking about with regard to KSP? Is this a channel that will expand beyond KSP? If so, think about your channel theme - of not, think about a lot of different types of content you are interested in that's related to KSP.

P.S. I'm no YouTube Expert, but I do have an active and growing YouTube channel (link in my signature) that features Simulation (mostly space) games, and Science content, including KSP. Check it out and decide for yourself if my advice is worthwhile. Good luck!

Edited December 29, 2014 by EtherDragon

[WanderingKid]

Note: My channel isn't large, and is only about a year old. Take this advice for what it's worth; an amateur who's having fun and wants to see another person join in.

#1: You can't please everybody. Do what you enjoy doing. 100 subscribers who like what you do, when you enjoy doing it, are worth more than 10,000 when you feel like you're going to work to put up an episode. AdSense doesn't pay enough to be worth turning this into a job until you've already enjoyed the hobby for a long time and you create an accidental career. That's almost word for word from some of the YouTube experts who have done it. (Side note: If you're getting a 50% "We can't HEAR you!", lower the music volume and repost the thing... )

#2: Post Production Processing: Do it. Even if you're doing raw Let's Plays, do some post production. Get your sound levels settled out otherwise you'll be all over the place. Letting YouTube handle your raw post production usually ends up with a blurry, and crappy sounding, project. I recommend Premiere Pro, but if you're on a budget go with whatever you can get your hands on. Even Windows Movie Maker improves things. If you've never used them before, expect to spend 10-30 hours learning to use a Non-Linear Editing tool before you don't feel like a complete moron. It's a great skill to get though.

#3: Exactly 16:9 for widescreen. Anything else youtube chews up and letterboxes, stretches, or otherwise mangles. Most screens these days are 16:10 (or close enough in ratio). Use the Bandicam sizing controls (most likely 1280x720) and fit your game window into it. Bandicam also has the ability to record game sound as a secondary .wav. Use this to your advantage. Put the sound into your headphones so you don't feedback onto the voice so you have control of what sounds are in charge.

#4: Watch Let's Plays or videos on games you absolutely don't care about. I personally like to try to take hints from Japanese dating games (though the presentation style is very different). The reason for this is you don't want to get absorbed in the content, you want to evaluate the presentation style(s). When do they put up notes? When do they highlight different items? When do they include sound effects (or mute the background)? Things like that.

#5: Closed Captioning will open your video up to a LOT of audiences... and is very time consuming to do on anything unscripted. It's not hard, but it can add many hours to your post-production. My estimate for CC'ing works (I don't do it often) is ~1 hour/10 minutes of video... and I type at ~95wpm. It's getting the timings right that takes forever.

#6: Try to learn one new effect or tool in every video. It keeps you from getting bogged down in trying to understand the entire process end to end before you start (inertia can fail), but it makes you better as you push forward. If you want a perfect example of just how things change over time, my channel still has my very first video I ever posted up. It's a mess.

#7: Have fun! If you're bored, so is your audience, fast forward the event(s). If you're 'not feeling it', don't do it. Open up a sandbox and just have some fun on your own. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, this is your relaxation and pleasure, not a job.

Good luck!

[SubzeroSpartan7]

Note: My channel isn't large, and is only about a year old. Take this advice for what it's worth; an amateur who's having fun and wants to see another person join in.

#1: You can't please everybody. Do what you enjoy doing. 100 subscribers who like what you do, when you enjoy doing it, are worth more than 10,000 when you feel like you're going to work to put up an episode. AdSense doesn't pay enough to be worth turning this into a job until you've already enjoyed the hobby for a long time and you create an accidental career. That's almost word for word from some of the YouTube experts who have done it. (Side note: If you're getting a 50% "We can't HEAR you!", lower the music volume and repost the thing... )

#2: Post Production Processing: Do it. Even if you're doing raw Let's Plays, do some post production. Get your sound levels settled out otherwise you'll be all over the place. Letting YouTube handle your raw post production usually ends up with a blurry, and crappy sounding, project. I recommend Premiere Pro, but if you're on a budget go with whatever you can get your hands on. Even Windows Movie Maker improves things. If you've never used them before, expect to spend 10-30 hours learning to use a Non-Linear Editing tool before you don't feel like a complete moron. It's a great skill to get though.

#3: Exactly 16:9 for widescreen. Anything else youtube chews up and letterboxes, stretches, or otherwise mangles. Most screens these days are 16:10 (or close enough in ratio). Use the Bandicam sizing controls (most likely 1280x720) and fit your game window into it. Bandicam also has the ability to record game sound as a secondary .wav. Use this to your advantage. Put the sound into your headphones so you don't feedback onto the voice so you have control of what sounds are in charge.

#4: Watch Let's Plays or videos on games you absolutely don't care about. I personally like to try to take hints from Japanese dating games (though the presentation style is very different). The reason for this is you don't want to get absorbed in the content, you want to evaluate the presentation style(s). When do they put up notes? When do they highlight different items? When do they include sound effects (or mute the background)? Things like that.

#5: Closed Captioning will open your video up to a LOT of audiences... and is very time consuming to do on anything unscripted. It's not hard, but it can add many hours to your post-production. My estimate for CC'ing works (I don't do it often) is ~1 hour/10 minutes of video... and I type at ~95wpm. It's getting the timings right that takes forever.

#6: Try to learn one new effect or tool in every video. It keeps you from getting bogged down in trying to understand the entire process end to end before you start (inertia can fail), but it makes you better as you push forward. If you want a perfect example of just how things change over time, my channel still has my very first video I ever posted up. It's a mess.

#7: Have fun! If you're bored, so is your audience, fast forward the event(s). If you're 'not feeling it', don't do it. Open up a sandbox and just have some fun on your own. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, this is your relaxation and pleasure, not a job.

Good luck!

Also very helpful, luckily I have quite a bit of experience with editing already so that should help greatly. But I do have one question that I am not sure if you or any one else will be able to answer due to the nature of it being very much hit and miss. How do you get noticed in the first place? Sure, I could make interesting videos but if no one even knows they exist it would be useless. I don't really care how many subscribers I get as long as they are entertained and enjoy the channel,but how do I get people to find the channel. It seems that there is o easy way because all of the larger channels act like a sponge for new subscribers and views. I don't really have time for closed captioning ( I am a student so my free time can fluctuate between the entire night to 30 minutes.) Thanks.

[mdkendall]

#5: Closed Captioning will open your video up to a LOT of audiences, and is very time consuming to do on anything unscripted .... It's getting the timings right that takes forever.

YouTube has a speech recognition feature that can automatically create subtitles from your video. It is absolutely awful.

However, if you upload a script then YouTube will use the speech recognition feature to match your script up with the video timings automatically. It works very well.

[WanderingKid]

There is no one true way to be found. Just some hints:

Be active in the forums for whatever you're producing, and leave a link in your signature (like below). Don't worry about spamming it, that usually just tics people off. Just leave it there. If they like what you say or how you present yourself, you'll find a curious person or two will come by. Then another.

For my DF content, I started a challenge run (Single Pick Challenge, for those curious) and YouTubed my adventures... and horrid failures... and tried to make sure it was fun to watch. Those curious interacted with me there and would occasionally come over and check out the playlist. As the topic went on and kept popping up on the boards (occasionally with a note that I was posting the next video, at one point an entire two pages got devoted between some subscribers on aquifer piercing) others would see it and check out what the fuss was about.

Tag your videos ACCURATELY, but use a lot of them. You want to hit a crapload of keywords when people search in the box. For example, my videos for KSP use a series of tags, one is 0.90.0, another is KSP 0.90.0, two separate tags. They're annoying but they're effective (mostly because you can't copy/paste between videos in a series).

Build playlists. Many people like to be able to leave YT running in the background while they do other things. Make it convenience.

When you start your account in YT, there's a video series from some of the experts who make recommendations. Watch them. They can't hurt.

- - - Updated - - -

However, if you upload a script then YouTube will use the speech recognition feature to match your script up with the video timings automatically. It works very well.

I'm better off using Premiere Pro for it. YT's interface for adjusting things is horrid when it gets it wrong.

[Overfloater]

Try not wiggling your camera all the time, then

speed up all the footage at least x2/ x3 the real time - if you want your video to be fluent and watchable. Especially if you use laggy high part count crafts, speed up even more. Who would wanna watch all that lag?

You might wanna cut out unnecessary parts from your footage, to make your video more straight to the point.

Then commentate your video.

At least that's how I would have gone about it... xD

[mdkendall]

YT's interface for adjusting things is horrid when it gets it wrong.

Fair enough. I have only used it on about half a dozen videos and it was spot on, so I never had to adjust anything. But they were short (a minute or two each) and they had no background music or other noise except the voiceover, which probably helped a lot with the recognition.

[WanderingKid]

Try not wiggling your camera all the time, then

speed up all the footage at least x2/ x3 the real time - if you want your video to be fluent and watchable. Especially if you use laggy high part count crafts, speed up even more. Who would wanna watch all that lag?

You might wanna cut out unnecessary parts from your footage, to make your video more straight to the point.

Then commentate your video.

At least that's how I would have gone about it... xD

Was this aimed at a particular person or video? It's rather lacking in context.

[manni01]

Was this aimed at a particular person or video? It's rather lacking in context.

Well, he creates interplanetary SSTOs (400-700 parts) that probably take hours to record. He speeds it up and cuts out the boring parts, like the time warp to jool which takes 2 minutes, when sped to normal time. He was also hinting that basically you don't need an insane computer. You can record your footage at the slow laggy time and then speed it up. Then you commentate on your footage. Thats something called post commentary and Scott manley does it in many of his videos (but he also does some real time voice recording, which he deletes most of).

[DBT85]

Was this aimed at a particular person or video? It's rather lacking in context.

OT but I'm going to check out your lets play!

[WanderingKid]

Well, he creates interplanetary SSTOs (400-700 parts) that probably take hours to record. He speeds it up and cuts out the boring parts, like the time warp to jool which takes 2 minutes, when sped to normal time. He was also hinting that basically you don't need an insane computer. You can record your footage at the slow laggy time and then speed it up. Then you commentate on your footage. Thats something called post commentary and Scott manley does it in many of his videos (but he also does some real time voice recording, which he deletes most of).

Ah, I missed that he does videos. It seemed (without being aware of that) that he was commenting on something the OP did but I couldn't find the reference to one of his vids! D'oh!

... *wanders off to find Overfloater's vids*

[Overfloater]

Was this aimed at a particular person or video? It's rather lacking in context.

It's aimed at all the hour-long, slow-paced videos. Just saying that many people will not watch it.

You can instead compress your 3-hour long mission into a 5-min video, and post-comment it. That's how Scott Manley did his old videos and that's why I liked them.

[WanderingKid]

It's aimed at all the hour-long, slow-paced videos. Just saying that many people will not watch it.

You can instead compress your 3-hour long mission into a 5-min video, and post-comment it. That's how Scott Manley did his old videos and that's why I liked them.

Fair enough, but it's a Let's Play, not a showcase. However, just went through some of your vids and they're rather cool. Have a subscriber.

[merendel]

Fair enough, but it's a Let's Play, not a showcase. However, just went through some of your vids and they're rather cool. Have a subscriber.

Even a lets play can stand to have a bit of streamlining done to it to make it easier to watch. For KSP in particular launches are cool the first couple times but get prety samey after that. Unless the youtuber is filling the space with other commentary thats interesting its often better to either accelerate the video or do a simple cut to orbit. Obviously if there is something particularly interesting about the launch its worth showing but the routene launch of your 33rd com satellite that's identical to the last 32 probably isnt worth showing beyond a cliff-noted version. I personaly dont like livestreams all that much because theres alot of dull tedium involved with repeated launches and its a rare streamer that can fill all the time with interesting conversation.

[WanderingKid]

Even a lets play can stand to have a bit of streamlining done to it to make it easier to watch. For KSP in particular launches are cool the first couple times but get prety samey after that.

Agreed. If you've had a chance to watch any of my later items that occurs. I usually jump speeds a lot unless it's something new, or something I thought was interesting. I agree though, it can get pretty boring if it's the same thing continuously. I try to avoid that, though I'm not always perfect about it.

[Felsmak]

My experience with YouTube is a little strange. I had a channel there when I was twelve, where I just posted crappy videos about my shenanigans in various games - which people might have found more hilarious than I realized at the time. All of those got thousands of views, all by themselves, but that's not happening now. I guess it might have something to do with everyone and their mother making video game videos these days.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Felsmak

[White Owl]

Also as for recording I would go with ACTION! (I believe it is around $40 for license) as you can split off your microphone track from the in game stuff, this will allow you to use audacity (a freeware program) to clean up you voice over stuff and not compete with the in game sounds.

If you already have Audacity and a microphone, there's no need to be concerned about splitting the audio tracks. Just record your commentary in Audacity. It's slightly more complicated since you have to synchronize the recordings in your editing software, but the added flexibility is very much worth it.

[merendel]

Agreed. If you've had a chance to watch any of my later items that occurs. I usually jump speeds a lot unless it's something new, or something I thought was interesting. I agree though, it can get pretty boring if it's the same thing continuously. I try to avoid that, though I'm not always perfect about it.

I hadnt watched your KSP videos... and I only just now realized why your name was familiar. I didnt make the connection without the diablo avatar from the dwarf fortress forums. then I see Furnace clans in your link and realize your one of the guys I chated with about the single pick challenge. I'll check out your KSP vids when I have time.