The Enthusiasm Project
The Enthusiasm Project
The Only Good Review is a Bad Review
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What makes a good YouTube review? More and more it seems like negative and critical reviews are thought of as being the most "honest," but is that really true?
🎙This week's mic:
•Shure SM4
https://geni.us/shuresm4 (Amazon)
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——————————— CONNECT ———————————
Electronic Mail: tom@enthusiasmproject.com
Main Site: https://himynameistom.com
Social Medias: @sodarntom
——————————— PODCAST GEAR ———————————
•Ecamm Live: https://geni.us/ecammtom
•Rodecaster Video: https://bhpho.to/3Ub88j2 (B&H)
•Rodecaster Duo: https://geni.us/ULKDFkp (Amazon)
•Elgato Prompter: https://geni.us/elgatoprompter (Amazon)
•Mic Arm: https://geni.us/zc7hAbW (Amazon)
•Elgato Stream Deck Plus: https://geni.us/EzyY6o5 (Amazon)
•Headphones: https://bhpho.to/3JNacqg (B&H)
•XLR Cables: https://geni.us/bluexlr (Amazon)
S13E02 | Series Episode 176
Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez
Thank you, hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project, season 13, episode 2, coming straight to you. Video and audio baby. Yeah, so back, just going full steam ahead, right, full stream ahead. I want to.
Speaker 1:Before we dive into today's episode, I definitely want to thank everybody for listening to last week's episode, listening to the season premiere. That is the longest break I've ever taken in making something in my content creator journey here, like you know, many, many months, and it was nice that there were people who were, you know, asking about the podcast and wanting to come back. But a big part of me was like, obviously, you know, most people would have forgotten about it. It was really cool to see that either people didn't forget about it or at least their feed popped up in their feed again and whether you listened to the audio version or watch the new video version, I really, really appreciate that support. It was sort of a nerve wracking thing to, you know, bring something back after such a break and I'm glad you gave me a break on that and it seemed cool like both the feedback I got from people listening to audio only it's basically like cool episode doesn't detract and the feedback I got from people on the video side of things was pretty huge. I was kind of surprised at how many people watched the video thing, and we'll talk about that, and I got some cool feedback to share with you as well. So that is really exciting, really really appreciate that. It's been fun to sort of dial in this workflow a little bit more and sort of figure things out, and so today we're just going to jump straight into it. We're just going, if I can push the right button here, we're just going to go full on in to talking about things, starting, of course, with I don't want to be distracting. I need to let you know what I'm using. So this is the mic of the week segment, with the chill background beats included as an intro over here.
Speaker 1:One thing I said last week and this was an idea that somebody else gave me is to use a different microphone in every episode this season and then at the end or after the season's over, I guess, have people vote on which one they think sound the best and that's just which one they like the most. And so that's something I'm going to do, and this week the microphone I'm using is the Shure SM4, which is a microphone I haven't used in a while and a reason for that for me not using the 4,. I actually really like this microphone. I like the way that it sounds a lot. It's not as neutral as something like the SM7B, but it was really cool to see Shure come out with a condenser microphone, a new condenser microphone, and it does have a different profile. It has a. It almost kind of reminds me of the Rode NT1, where it has sort of a signature sound right out of the box without any EQ or processing. I am running it into the Rodecaster Duo, of course, and I have just the generic condenser setting. So if I turn that off, this is the microphone's native sound and if I turn the processing back on, this is what that sounds like. Not a major drastic difference, I don't think, but something I really like.
Speaker 1:I quite enjoy this microphone. It sounds great. The reason I haven't used it as much on streams and things is just because I have found that positioning it and with the windscreen it does kind of end up being the microphone at least with this camera angle that blocks my face a bit. Not that like a face is so important it can't be blocked, but sometimes people just find that distracting when there's something in front of your face. So it's nice, you know, you can position things off to the side a little bit. But this one I just I have found that to make it sound its best, it kind of needs to be positioned right here and it sort of covers up my face. So using it for audio only stuff has been a dream. I love it, love the way that it sounds For this specific video setup. Sometimes it just sort of blocks things and that is something that sort of keeps me from using it as much as I might like to, even though I really do think this is actually an absolutely fantastic microphone and I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Well, we're just going to jump into today's topic, because I clicked the button early. So we have several segments, which is a fun thing that I'm trying, but I always want to have like a meaty topic. You know, like what would the, what would the episode be titled? Right, and I titled this one. The only good review is a negative review, because that is something if you've been in the world of YouTube reviews for any amount of time, whether watching them or making them that might be something you catch on to is negative reviews seem to be the thing that get the most. They just get the most attention. And it's a strange sort of sad thing where, if I'm like you know I guess I shouldn't say that because I feel like I have evidence otherwise but if I say, hey, this water bottle is awesome and I love it, there are people out there who will be interested in that and who will really like that. But if I say, hey, this water bottle sucks and you shouldn't get it, way more people are going to watch that video.
Speaker 1:Now the downside to that or I guess the trick to that is the thing I have found is that, even though not giving in to sort of that negativity does slow growth and does it slows things, it slows everything down because it's not what's popular, it's not what gets attention. The people that gravitate towards that stuff are generally probably not people I would really connect with in a way, whereas the fact that I am able to share stuff that I'm enthusiastic about in this case it's the example of the water bottle that's something I'm excited about. I want to share it with you. Hopefully you catch my excitement, you're onto that, you feel that it's genuine excitement and that brings in sort of like it just creates a positive atmosphere and a positive vibe and it brings in you know what I feel are really positive, excited people, because everybody I've connected with you know like I'm just stunned at how awesome the people are that watch my channel and listen to the podcast and it really feels like. It really feels like it attracts a certain kind of person to just the whole vibe of everything and it's really really rewarding. And so I would.
Speaker 1:I would take slow growth or less growth or whatever, for that specific reason to have stuff that's more valuable rather than like, wow, my numbers are really high but everybody's just a negative jerk in the comments. But that's sort of a thing is there's also this flip side where people feel like and it's not even feel like it's true People are becoming a little more savvy in how content creators and influencers can sort of lie and manipulate their audiences. And you know, companies pay for things, whether they disclose that, they don't disclose that, all that kind of stuff. And so there are people who say positive things about products and services outside of, like sponsored segments and things make it seem legitimate but it might not actually be legitimate, and so people are very wary about that, whereas obviously, if you say something negative about a thing, it's pretty clear that you know you're not being paid by that company to say something negative, because no company would pay someone to do that. And so I think I think there's some logic there, right.
Speaker 1:Like, okay, you know, and you can kind of find that, you know, sometimes, even in paid reviews, people will have like I guess you can't really do a paid review, but in like a paid showcase, people might have like a critique, but it's a pretty like minor, almost nothing critique, and sometimes people feel like, well, yeah, of course you can't actually say how you really feel, because you know you're being paid or whatever it is, and so people sort of calibrated their I don't know whatever their sensors to like if this person is being critical of something, obviously that means it's an honest, it's spin things negatively, then it gets you a lot more attention. And so it's this weird thing of like I'm going to be real honest and be super negative about stuff or be just jaded about things, and I genuinely dislike that a lot. I don't find that interesting, I don't find that to be honest a lot of the time and I find that to be. I find that to be, in many cases, its own way of being manipulative. Obviously there are bad things, there are bad products, bad services out there, and if people want to share that or explain that in an honest, open way, that's not a bad thing. But the thing where, like you can trust me because I'm saying bad things about this, can just be be just as manipulative as someone who's only saying good things and not disclosing they're being paid for it. So I wanted to talk about I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit and go into what I think makes a good review and the key here.
Speaker 1:This is just my opinion. When I'm talking about what I think a good review is, it's what I think. It's not an objective truth or, or you know, law of the universe or anything like that. But obviously you know there are differences too between reviews and showcases. But I think honesty is probably paramount. Honesty is probably key when it comes to a good review, and that goes with everything from just disclosing it. How you know, are you being paid? Did you get the thing for free? What is your you know? Have you used it a lot? Did you just open it and make the? You know all that kind of stuff, like what even is a review? I guess If you're being paid by a company, I don't think you can call that a review just out of like I don't know integrity and ethics. I guess.
Speaker 1:An example I have is when, personally, is when Sennheiser released the Profile microphone, which I love, that was a sponsored video. They like they. It was kind of crazy. They let me be the first video that like announced the microphone, like before it was even on their website or whatever. It was kind of awesome and they gave them, they gave the microphone to me. It was a sponsored video, so there's a sponsorship fee included and I did not call that a review. That's a product showcase, that's a first look, that's a first impressions, that's I think I specifically use the term product showcase, product spotlight, like it's not a review, even though there's really nothing that would have been different if it were a review.
Speaker 1:If I went to Amazon, bought the microphone and used it and shared my thoughts, it would honestly be the same video. But the fact that money changed hands, that it is a sponsored thing, like I don't know, you know, I guess if it, I don't know what would have happened if, like I hated the thing. I know I've never been in that situation. So I've known people who commit to reviews before trying a thing and then they have to make a video about a thing that they hate because they're on like a contractual hook for it. I've never been in that situation because it was always with Sennheiser and with any situation even remotely similar to that, it's always been. Let me see it. Let me see how I feel about it. Let me see if I like it. If so, then we can talk about other things moving forward.
Speaker 1:So once I got the microphone, I used it and I liked it. It was like, yeah, cool, I would love to do a paid thing with this because it's awesome and like I genuinely really like it. I still really like it. It's still my favorite USB microphone. You know, two years it's been two years already oh, time flies. That's scary. No-transcript to use to do what you need to do in your workflow. That's fine. Just let people know how you're using the thing. There's nothing wrong. You know, in the world of content creating I've talked about this a lot Companies send you things for free. It's a thing that happened.
Speaker 1:Shure sent this microphone the SM4, for free when it was released. I don't have to do anything about that, didn't have to make a video, don't have to use it in a podcast. I did a review because I found the microphone to be very interesting. I liked it. I think it's a good microphone and it was interesting to see Shure, you know, who have stuff like the SM7B, who've been focusing on more techie things like the MV7, mv7 Plus. It was interesting to see them go with just here's just a straight solid XLR microphone, xlr condenser microphone. I found that really interesting and so I wanted to make a video about that. For those reasons.
Speaker 1:I feel that I can still be pretty open and honest, the same way I would if I, if I, paid for this microphone with my own money. But it is important that people know the context that that I did get it like because intellectually I know what it's like to spend, you know, a couple hundred bucks on a microphone. I feel like I have a pretty good gauge of. Even if this was sent to me, would I or would I not? Is it, is it not worth that amount of money? But there is. That is different than spending the money on the thing, like there's the theory and the practice right. In theory, I understand that In practice of bank account being debited a couple hundred bucks, that is a different thing and I feel like I know I can navigate that and walk that line pretty well. But it's up to me to disclose that to other people so that they can make that decision for themselves how they feel about that and whether that's something they trust or not.
Speaker 1:But that's all part of just being open, honest and transparent with how you review things, how you explain things and then, of course, being honest in your opinion, which probably does include, you know, maybe some critiques, probably does include things that aren't necessarily perfect about the product. That is totally normal. That's something that should be expected. Very few things are just absolutely perfect, but yeah, so honesty obviously is a big part of a good review.
Speaker 1:I think relatability is important and that kind of goes into how you use it. I don't think that you need to. You know, like I said, if you have something that has 18 switches and buttons on it but you use three of them, I think that's fine. Explain why you use those three, how those three buttons help you, how those three switches help you. It doesn't matter that you don't use any of the other features. There are people who will probably be upset by that review because they're going to feel like it did not give them what they wanted, it didn't cover every possible detail. But I think, more importantly the people who are in your same situation because if you're in that situation you can pretty much guarantee someone else is as well it's going to be the most helpful, the most useful, the most relatable review for those specific people, compared to just if you just try to be all things to all people all the time. So making your stuff relatable is very important and you do that also through contextualizing.
Speaker 1:I think, both contextualizing use cases, your experience with it, but also where things fit, and that's something that I have found, at least in the audio video niche. People really do kind of need help with sometimes is contextualizing stuff because there's so many products, gear gets updated so often and you know, and new versions of things come out and markets get saturated and it's like where does something fit? You know, the Rodecaster video is a good example. That's what I'm running my camera through right now. That is, you know, at its core it kind of looks like a four input HDMI switcher which is like an ATEM Mini. And then you're like, well, the RODECaster is $1,200 and the ATEM is $300. Why would I spend almost $1,000 more on the RODECaster?
Speaker 1:And then helping to contextualize people explaining that like, okay, yes, at their core, if all you're doing is switching between four HDMI sources, it makes no sense to get the RODECaster video. If you want to do that and you want to build in graphics, build in scenes, have built in extremely high quality audio processing, all of those kinds of things that really level up the RODECaster beyond what an ATEM is capable of, that really level up the RODECaster beyond what an ATEM is capable of, then suddenly it actually becomes a really good deal for that price. When you think of how you would have to do all of those things elsewhere, with separate software, separate equipment, separate everything. So you know, helping contextualize stuff is really important. That's one of my favorite things to do, because I feel like stuff becomes so much more understandable, so much more. I feel like so much tension can be, you know, eased if people take the time to understand the context of things. That goes way beyond product reviews, way beyond audio video production, just life in general. I feel like. I feel like contextualization is huge. That's one of my favorite things to do is try to contextualize things.
Speaker 1:I also think a good review, at least in a lot of cases for content creators, is good professional development. I think sometimes people can sort of fall into the trap of like having such a system that it's almost like a conveyor belt right Like you're standing here with your camera thing comes over on conveyor belt. You talk about things, set it down new thing on conveyor belt, talk about the new thing, and there are certain things where you might be an expert in that, in that field, on that topic, where you can do that pretty accurately and pretty actively. But I really do think that you know ongoing professional development, as I call it, is an important part of product reviews and that's that essentially comes down to using the product and something that gets tricky. You know everybody's journey is like a reviewer or a content creator is a little bit different.
Speaker 1:But something I've talked about in the past is, you know, starting the channel and doing product reviews. I'm just talking about stuff that I have, or maybe I bought something new that I'm really excited about and I wanna share it. Time goes on and then you have companies reach out that want to send you stuff or you know, whatever it might be. And that's where things can get a little bit tricky, and I've even talked about on this podcast in the past. I've thought about, like well, if I just don't accept anything from any companies, that will make my life simple, because then there's just never the question of like oh, this was sent to you, like all you know, like, the only stuff I talk about is stuff that I bought because I needed it. That's going to be the simplest way to approach this completely. However, the reason I chose not to do that is because there were a number of people who actually support and care about and encourage what I do and want to know, like specifically, for whatever reason, want to know my point of view on a thing.
Speaker 1:And if you find yourself in that situation where there are people like, hey, yeah, what do you think about this? That's probably because you did make past reviews relatable and contextual and it connected with that person in a way that they've sort of calibrated to your senses, where you know it's like a movie critic, if I guess. Maybe this isn't as common anymore, maybe it is, I don't know YouTube channel instead of like newspaper movie critics. But if you find, like a movie critic, that every time they recommend or don't recommend a movie, you find that you agree with them. You know, you know your tastes are kind of calibrated and if they say, yeah, this movie is great, you should go see it, you probably know, like, yeah, I'm going to like that movie. Sort of the same thing here. Like people calibrate their tastes and their preferences to you and if somebody has found that, like you know, if this person says that something is good, I tend to think it's good.
Speaker 1:If they, you know, ignore something, aren't interested in something, I'm probably not interested in it it can be incredibly helpful. And so, in the spirit of being as helpful as possible, taking on, you know, taking on the idea of reviewing stuff that I wouldn't necessarily buy on my own, like not even that I wouldn't want it, but maybe I just don't need it, right, like I have the RODECaster video, but Feel World sent out the L4, which I'm going to talk about later today, the L4 video switcher. I don't need that, I have a video switcher, I don't need another video switcher. But lots of people, it pops up regularly. What about that Feel World switcher? What do you think about the Feel World. How does that compare here?
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, it's not that I need it, but I can offer context. I can actually offer some help. I can benefit people by sharing my thoughts and experience with this product. I can benefit people by sharing my thoughts and experience with this product and also by doing that, I'm learning more about it, right, I'm learning more about that workflow, even something like this video podcast, right. Like the way I want to use different microphones, the way I want to use different audio mixers and video switchers and software and applications and all the things.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's good professional development. It's not me just in theory going like, yeah, I feel like that's good professional development. It's not me just in theory going like, yeah, I think this is a good thing. It's getting your hands dirty, understanding how something works, understanding the pain points in the workflow or with the product or whatever, and then being able to speak more honestly and openly about it. So those are some things that I think really do lend themselves to making what I would call a good review. So the flip side to that, then, if that's what I think a good review is, what do I think a good review is not. So what do I think might make a bad review? Not that it's a bad review in terms of the thing is bad, but the review itself not necessarily ideal. This might kind of I don't know, this might be controversial, so this again is just my opinion.
Speaker 1:Spec rundowns I hate these. I cannot stand when a review is just reading the tech specs of a product, like I can go to the product website, I can go to B&H Photo and just click on specs and then read everything and and it's going to take me two seconds, I don't need to sit through a 12 minute YouTube video about that Including specs in reviews is very helpful because I can help contextualize. I can help people understand. Maybe you can explain some things, but I think this thing has happened. It's always like you know. You know everything starts from the best of intentions, right? I'm going to look at somebody in my niche. I'm going to look at someone like Gerald Undone, right, who is very well known for being spec heavy. When Gerald reviews a product, he goes deep into the specs and he has established a really strong reputation as being someone trustworthy and someone reliable and people trust him.
Speaker 1:I think that has been misinterpreted, though, and some people see, okay, gerald goes really in depth on tech specs. If I want to have a good review, I need to read every tech spec, and then it makes it sound complicated, it makes it sound technical, and you have a copy of a copy of a copy of that and at the end then you just have someone who's just like reading the thing from the product website. That offers no additional information. What people are missing when it comes to Gerald? Someone like Gerald, and how he approaches his stuff at least as I understand it is he doesn't just look at the tech specs, he actually does explain those things how this would affect this, what this might look like, how this would affect this, what this might look like, how this does compare to a previous version and then he puts them to the test. So if something says it's supposed to do something and the specification indicates that he checks, does it actually do that? If it does, he tells you. If it doesn't, he tells you. So it's not just reading the spec list, which I think it almost gets distilled down, and people see someone like that and they go oh yeah, you just all the tech specs. No, he's like he's really digging in there in a very nitty gritty technical way, a professional way, and I think that kind of gets lost in translation and then you just end up with people reading tech specs, which is not helpful because you're not giving any new information. If anything, it can be harmful because sometimes people leave out you know now you're giving incomplete pictures and it's just.
Speaker 1:I do not think a spec rundown makes a good review, even though it makes it sound very, very technical, and that is again just my opinion. Specifically, I leave out lots of tech specs in my videos. I don't and I don't care. Also is the thing which goes into what I also think a good review is not it's just benchmark heavy. This could be, you know, this could be something. If you have your camera that's like this is supposed to have 48,000 stops of dynamic range, like you know, that's that's double check, all the crazy. Like oh, it only has 47,000. I know a camera doesn't have that many stops but you know like, oh, it's two stops short of that, like I don't know, maybe that's helpful to know.
Speaker 1:You see this a lot with computers, where it's like you know, recently the M4 series max came out and of course you see all the geek bench scores would be like this the M4 has a has a score of 28,000 and the M3 had a score of 22,000. Okay, that that means absolutely nothing to me. I don't know. It's like you know, living in America and then hearing people go like this thing in Japan costs a million yen, and I'm like I don't know what that is. Is that like $2 million? Is it like $10? Like I have no context for what these things mean, these benchmarks. Okay, it looks like that new computer is faster because the number's higher. Is that like a big difference? You know, whatever, in this case, in my example, 6,000 thingies. Is that a big difference? Is that a little difference? Am I going to notice that? Am I not going to notice that? And that's again.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can feel like I made a really good review because I read all the specs and I ran all the benchmarks and I showed people the numbers and it's very objective and it's very factual. But you have given no information. You've given no actual information, whereas it's like you know, I'll explain. When the M1 Max came out, like the M1 Mac Mini, I made a couple of videos about that because it blew my mind Like I bought mine just at Best Buy, nothing crazy.
Speaker 1:I bought the base model, the cheapest one. That's the computer that's recording this right now. It's four years old, maybe more at this point, and I had a 3000, I think a $3,200 MacBook Pro, an Intel MacBook Pro at the time. That was my main computer and it was just driving me crazy because it just seemed like it was getting slow and the fan was so loud. And then I bought this $600 base model M1 Mac mini and it just crushed the Intel computer and an eight gigs of Ram and, like you know, I couldn't figure out how that was even possible. And so in my videos that's what I was trying to explain the benchmarks. My Intel MacBook had 32 gigs of Ram. The M1 Mac mini had eight gigs of Ram. You would think that the Intel MacBook would be so much better, and that's what I was trying to explain. It was like, oh my gosh, especially at the time when Apple just released the M1 chips.
Speaker 1:It was like this almost causes you to reframe how you think about things, how you like, what 32 gigs and eight gigs of RAM actually means in these different contexts. And it was like, instead of just showing, I think I did include Geekbench scores in there. Just to show an example of like here's a very expensive computer with one number. Here's a very cheap computer with, I think, even a better number. But I also wanted to show what that meant. So it was like okay, now let me show you what that looks like. Here's me running Ecamm Live and a Zoom meeting and Final Cut Pro and Photoshop and whatever I just.
Speaker 1:I opened up like every application on the computer and was using them in real time with like no lag, no dropouts, no anything. And I'm like this is the cheapest version of this computer. This is the first version. That means it's the worst version of this computer. Anything else is going to be at least this capable and probably faster and probably more powerful. And literally just doing the thing where it was. Like here's all of these applications open at once. Like that shows people much more than just what the geek bench score, what the benchmark shows. Like you need to explain what these things mean. You can say, like well, this camera, it has X number of stops of dynamic range and here's a little chart that kind of shows what that means. Okay, cool, show me like go outside and take some video, take some photo that shows me what the shadows look like, what the highlights look like compared to something with less dynamic range. Like, show me what that actually means, because I don't know. I can read that it has all these things on the website. Please help me to understand it more. And if you're not doing that, if you're just giving benchmarks and specs with no context, then you really aren't helping.
Speaker 1:And another thing I think a good review is not is negative for clicks and giggles, which is what I kind of said at the beginning is just being negative for the sake of being negative, because you know that negativity gets more clicks, because you know that it gets more engagement, because all of those things right there and and sometimes too, like people really forget to contextualize, like not even just the product for the viewer but for themselves. Like sometimes negative reviews really seem to be like here's my impossible wishlist. This $400 product didn't meet that. Here's all the ways it fails to live up to it and why it's terrible and it's like it was never supposed to be. That you know. Like that is also a thing, is like what is this thing supposed to be? Who is this supposed to be for?
Speaker 1:I've been doing a lot of reviews lately on like 2.4 gigahertz wireless systems and supposed to be for. I've been doing a lot of reviews lately on like 2.4 gigahertz wireless systems and I know some of them have like pro in the name or whatever and they can be used professionally You've seen them on TV or whatever sometimes. But realistically, when someone buys a $200 wireless mic setup, it's not designed for like the professional you know, it's not designed for that workflow or that thing, even if a professional uses it that way. So if someone shows up with like, oh, as a professional, I need X, y and Z because that's the only thing that would work and this doesn't have that and that's terrible, it's like yeah, of course it's not for you. Like you're telling me all the reasons that like a sports car is a bad pickup truck, like it's not what it's intended to be at all. And especially in those cases it's happened so much with tech stuff where it's like this is geared towards consumers.
Speaker 1:Right, this is geared towards someone who wants to spend as little money as possible, get as much functionality as possible and have it be as usable and easy, like frictionless, as possible. They don't wanna read the instruction manuals. They don't wanna to read the instruction manuals. They don't want to have to sit there and fiddle with it for an afternoon. You know, like that's something with the Rodecaster video is very clear, and someone even just asked me in a comment the other day. They were like, what would you say the learning curve is on this? And I was like the learning curve is very steep, like, and the thing I have said is like if you need to use this on an event, give yourself at least a month with it, like that's what I would say for the RODECaster video or even something like a YoloBox. Like give yourself significant time to understand these things because the learning curve is super steep.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at something like what's the learning curve on that Hollyland Lark wireless system? What's the learning curve on the, you know, the DJI Mic 2 or whatever you know, learning curve is 10 minutes. You really can't. As long as it's charged up with battery, you're probably going to get something that works pretty good and then you can fine tune and, you know, adapt a little bit better as time goes on. But you know those are more consumer-based devices and if I approach that through from the lens of like as like top industry professional would look at this, what's going to be terrible, terrible, of course, it's gonna be a negative review.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that happens is if you find yourself in the world where you review stuff regularly, you can get jaded. You can sort of see like here's another thing, here's another thing, here's another thing, and that can lead you into maybe not looking at why something exists in the first place. Is it just a cheap cash grab by a company to try to like copy what someone else has done successfully? Are they bringing something new to the market, which I'll just kind of talk about a little bit later when we talk about what I've been working on lately. But yeah, so that's what I think a good review is and is not. And then so the next question, which, again, this is all my opinion, my own experience. It's not fact. But the next thing is then for me why are my reviews usually positive?
Speaker 1:There's a lot of reasons for this. The first one is why would I waste my time with something that sucks I think I've talked about this before, but, like, if I get something and it's terrible and I don't like using it, and I don't want to use it and it's not fun to use and it doesn't work. Well, why am I going to, like, put all the time into making a video about it, right, like, why am I just going to waste? I'm just going to torture myself? So I have a video that, like, about this thing that sucks, whereas I could find something I'm really excited about and that I want to use and I want to learn more about and I want to tell people about because I think it's really cool. So that's kind of a thing there. The caveat I would say to that is if I found something that I thought was genuinely harmful or deceptive or misleading, so just because something is bad, I guess for me I shouldn't say that if something's not reviewed on my channel, that is my bad review, because I'm not trying to review everything everywhere all at once, like there are just things that I am not interested in or just don't have time for, or whatever it might be. So just because I don't make a video about something doesn't mean I think that it's bad. But that is kind of that is also what my. If there's something that really I don't know, if there's something that just seems bad but not harmful, I'm just not going to waste my time with it. If there's something that actually seemed like the thing I can think of.
Speaker 1:The one time I've made sort of a negative review this was actually a number of years ago was for my little. Actually. It was for the Peak Design travel tripod. I made a review for the travel tripod that I bought, which was like $120, $150. It's a Benro travel tripod that I bought which was like a hundred I'll say, 120, $150. It's a Benro travel tripod. I bought it in 2018. Still use it to this. Actually, it's set up literally right over there because I was using it this morning to record a video. It's great, like such a good use of money. It's been all over the world with me. It was 150 bucks A number of years ago, when that peak design travel tripod came out with a really small, lightweight one.
Speaker 1:I think that's super cool. Like came out with a really small, lightweight one. I think that's super cool. Like it's a super small, super lightweight, great, compact travel tripod. Like that's really awesome. And now, a number of years later, there've been different versions and different companies make them and stuff. At the time though I don't know if you remember this or if you saw videos at the time it was comical. How many videos were like. It was almost like the infomercial thing of like the black and white before, like where the person's fumbling with all the things in the kitchen, and then like after, and it's like in color and now they can put the lid on their Tupperware more easily.
Speaker 1:The thing with Peak Design which drove me crazy was like not that it's a bad tripod. I don't think that at all. I think it's very good tripod. I think it's very expensive, especially like the original version was like $500 or something for this very lightweight tripod, very lightweight being a good thing because it's supposed to be, but also a bad thing because it's not. You know, it's probably not going to be your main tripod if you have a lot of camera gear and stuff or you need to, you know, support a significant amount of weight.
Speaker 1:The thing that really drove me crazy was every review that I saw on it sort of followed, like followed the same formula, to the point where people were even saying the same thing about the box. Like wow, the box has like this cool matte finish and this texture. It's like maybe everybody came up with the same thought about the box, but it was really weird to hear people who don't normally talk about product packaging, talk about product packaging and it was very interesting because, you know, the tripod has little clips instead of twisty things on the legs, so you can unclip it and they all extend out and you can do it up really quickly. That's nice. It's faster than having to, like you know, do the twist locks on multiple tripod legs for sure. But it was literally like the way people were explaining like, oh my God, I've been struggling with my tripod. Like it takes me forever. Look how long it takes me to set up my tripod. It's like, dude, you are a professional videographer, photographer, content creator, whatever I know. You do not struggle to set up your travel tripod. It does not take that long. This new one might be a little quicker, it might be a little more easy, but it's not. It's not like oh my God, I can see clearly now the rain is gone, like hallelujah type situation. It's just like it's. It's kind of better, I guess. Definitely not hundreds of dollars better.
Speaker 1:The reason I got so upset about this was because this, at the time, that tripod was being pitched as like this is the travel tripod and I felt that it was being pitched to a lot of people who maybe had never bought a tripod, bought a travel tripod, didn't know. And now this is their first exposure to one and they think that in order to get something small and compact, they had to spend like $500 or $600 on this tripod. And they did not. And I was like here is a you know $150 tripod that is super reliable. It can still fold up. Very compact, not as much as that one, but still very compact. It's also because it's not trying to be as small as possible. It's actually got a lot more practical usability features.
Speaker 1:The, the peak design at least the first version made a lot of weird compromises with usability because it was trying to be as compact as possible. And you know, if you just sort of it's almost like how, like Apple made stuff so thin that it was like battery life was suffering and it's like just make the MacBooks fatter and put the ports back in them, like it's fine, they're still pretty darn thin. It's kind of like that. Like the tripod is still pretty small, uh's still easy to travel with. It's just not the same as that one. And so I the review there was literally like forget the peak design hype, this is a good travel tripod. It was kind of.
Speaker 1:You know, I did say negative things about the peak design, the way it was being approached, but it was mainly to focus on that. So something like that, where I actually thought someone was being I don't wanna say harmed, but like misled. That's a time where I would do like a negative review. If I just don't like something or I just don't think it's very good, I just generally don't want to waste my time with it, because reviews do take a ton of time and effort to make and that is just like. That is just sort of. I guess that's that's a reason too that they're also positive. It's not just like I don't want to spend my time with that thing, but the time it takes to learn something. It's. It's kind of like I keep mentioning the feel world because I just recorded that video this morning, but like that is a thing I had for six months before I made the video on it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you can get something and you know pretty quickly, understand that. You know what it is, what it does, how you feel about it and you can make a video about it. But sometimes you need to spend time with stuff, like a lot of time with things and the videos take a lot of time to make and you need something reliable. If this thing is like terrible and it's messing up your work, it's just. Why would you want to do that to yourself? Like, why would you want to torture yourself that way?
Speaker 1:And I think something else a reason that I have usually positive reviews is that when people come to product reviews, the number of times people watch them who already own the product would probably surprise you. I know I've done this, maybe you have too, but people sometimes look to confirm their decision to get something. They're not looking to find the answer and so you know, seeing like they've already bought it, maybe they can't return it. And now feeling bad about it isn't really going to be helpful. And so the last point is also, I I do positive reviews because I try to be aware of people who own the thing, like there might be a better version.
Speaker 1:Right, you get a microphone, you get a camera, you get whatever. There probably is a better version. But I'm trying to be aware that you know someone could have gotten their Blue Yeti for Christmas felt like they got their first professional microphone. That's not just their phone or whatever, but like it's a real mic, it's big, it's heavy, it sounds way better than everything. They real mic, it's big, it's heavy, it sounds way better than everything. They're excited about it. And now they're going to go online and find a bunch of videos where people talk about like, oh, this microphone is terrible and awful and they're going to feel dumb, they're going to feel like they don't have something that's good, or they spent maybe if it wasn't a gift, if they spent their money on something that's not good like trying to let people, and especially now cause everything is pretty good, right, like it's rare to find something that genuinely sucks. Most things are pretty good. So it's like I want people to feel good if they've already bought something and they already have that thing.
Speaker 1:And even if I don't like, even if I prefer something over someone else, I try to contextualize that and explain why I prefer that. Because I want the person who has the other thing to not feel like, oh, does my thing suck, or do you think I suck because I have this thing? No, I think it's awesome. I just I prefer this thing for these reasons. Those are kind of reasons why my, why my reviews tend to be, tend to be a little bit more positive. And again going back to the idea that, like, a review does not have to be negative. To be honest, sometimes being honest includes negative points. You know and I don't know that I've ever reviewed anything that is perfect but even sometimes I might find something like okay, here's something I don't like about this, something I don't like about this, but the retail price is insanely cheap. So, like, are those valid, you know, are those valid comments and that kind of stuff, like keeping everything in context, again, I think super, super important. So those are kind of some of my thoughts on product reviews and stuff.
Speaker 1:And then now we're going to jump in, as this chill music pops up here, to a new segment called Tube Talk baby. Well, tube Talk baby. That sounds interesting. Basically, let's talk about, like, content creator stuff. Right, let's talk about stuff that's happening in my world, maybe stuff that's a little more. You know, what we just talked about is content creator related, but this is a little more like, what am I doing, what am I working on, what's happening in my world in terms of YouTube and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:So I want to share a few things that I've been working on. What's cooking here? Um Different videos. The most recent video that I had come out at the time I'm recording this episode was my review on the Hollyland Lark M2, which I mentioned just a minute ago, which is that super small, super compact wireless mic system. I actually happen to have it right here. It's very inexpensive. I think the MSRP on this is like $179, but I've never seen it for that price and it goes on sale a lot.
Speaker 1:But you have these super tiny transmitters so tiny I just dropped the transmitter. The transmitters are literally like the size of a nickel, maybe, um, maybe even smaller than that. And you know they're. They're fatter than a nickel, but they're very, very small and they're super lightweight, which I love because you can put them on like a light t-shirt and they don't drag the shirt down. And they do also come with clips so they can be magnetically placed basically anywhere. They also come with a clip so you can do it on your collar like normal.
Speaker 1:Then you got a little receiver. It has a really cool way of being connected to your phone with a nice little receiver, usb-c receiver to be connected to a computer or USB-C phone as well. It's a lightning and USB-C receivers, which is very, very cool. I think this is an awesome setup. For a long time, this was the only ultra compact mic setup, so it's like super affordable. I think it sounds great, and it's something that I've seen people who have no background in audio be able to use and get great results with, so that made me really interested in it. But then Rode and DJI came out with their compact version of microphones recently as well, so in that video, I tried to explain, I tried to contextualize. You know, where does this fit in with those? How do you want to use them differently? How would you use them differently?
Speaker 1:The funny thing about that video, though, is I scheduled it for this past Thursday, the day that it came out. I made the video. I think I made it right before Christmas. I had the thing, I had the thing for about a month, you know, used it, tested it out, tried it, um, and I you know I just bought it off Amazon. It was on sale, so it's a good deal, and I I made the video, I think, right before Christmas, and then scheduled it to be, like the second week of the new year was when the video came out. So very random, right, this thing had been out for a long time that was the time I happened to decide to buy it spent several weeks using it. Then I happened to make the video. Then I happened to schedule video for several weeks later and it happened to come out literally at the same time that they announced the new version of this.
Speaker 1:So it's like so this is the kind of stuff that, like I can't like these types of situations I find myself in. I had a friend in college. I didn't really understand what he meant by this, but he was like you're just the biggest victim of circumstance I've ever met and to, like, a hilarious, curb your Enthusiasm degree. Maybe there's a connection there. Like. Here's a couple examples Just last weekend something that I'm paranoid about Our landscaper comes to take care of our yard every Saturday morning Once a week.
Speaker 1:Okay, we have dogs. Dogs use a part of the yard as their bathroom. I never want the landscaper to feel like it's their responsibility. They know that they're not responsible for cleaning any of that up or whatever. So I always like take care of the dog business. As my grandma used to say the dog dirt, take care of that. The dog bombs make sure all that stuff's cleaned up, usually like Saturday morning early before the gardener comes, I like clean all that up so it's not there, it doesn't have to deal with it. Like dogs get to use bathroom for max amount of time and then there's there's nothing there when he's there.
Speaker 1:Last weekend I forgot, like I just forgot to clean it up before the guy was coming and I went, like I went to the gym instead and I was like, oh my God, he's going to go over there. There's going to be all the things there. And I like I actually panicked. I was like, should I go home and clean it up? And then I realized like it's fine, he's been our gardener for many, many years. He does not think that he that I'm telling him you need to pick this up. And then I had the thought of like oh, he's going to think I'm like it's not going to be anything like that, which is true, it's totally true. So I went to the gym, did my workout. I happened to come home, basically like right as I saw his truck in front and he was already doing stuff. And then I went in and I was like, okay, I'm gonna have my little you know protein shake after the gym. And then I'm standing there right as he happens to make eye contact with me, standing kind of in the corner, like basically, like right where the dog stuff is. It's like it's not a big deal, like nothing happened. But the thing I was worried about oh no, garner's gonna gonna see this and, you know, judge me for it, which I know is a silly thing but the fact that, like the time we saw each other was I'm just standing there doing nothing, like in the kitchen, and he's standing there like in the exact spot where the problems were and we're making eye contact, like I couldn't have. If I had been 30 seconds earlier, 30 seconds later, it wouldn't have happened, but it had to happen that exact, that exact time. Another like sorry, just goofy examples.
Speaker 1:As you might know, I'm a fan of the Aquabats. They've been my favorite band forever. I think I've talked about this. But Parker Jacobs, who's, you know, done a lot of artwork for the Aquabats. He's, you know, he's related to the you know members of the band and has his own band and all kinds of stuff, and it's just an awesome person. I have a lot of artwork from him. He has a, a painting or a print from many, many years ago. It's called Uncomfortable Sidekick and it's just two bananas like sort of looking uncomfortable near each other. I actually have it on my wall back here, sort of up top here. It's just it's two bananas, it's like a stylized, almost like retro, mid-century looking cartoony thing of like these two bananas with faces and they're connected and one of them smiling and the other one looks uncomfortable, and I always liked this. I thought it was really fun. It's a cool design.
Speaker 1:Back in college, I worked at Trader Joe's making signs. I've talked about that before. We needed like some new produce signs or whatever, and a lot of stuff we would do was out of wood and I was like, oh, this is such a cool, bold design, like I literally needed to make a banana sign. So I made this big thing like cut out letters, have bananas, and I thought it would be really cool. So I made this painting like pretty big. I cut. I like made it look exactly like that, but I did it on wood. So I cut out the wood with like a jigsaw, so it was the right shape and it was very cool. And then I painted it color. It looks exactly right. I actually well, this is a story, so it looked really cool.
Speaker 1:I was like I had the thought of like I'm putting this up in a public thing, but like this isn't. I don't think Parker would care. I don't think like we kind of do light copyright infringement all the time. You know there's put DeLoreans on things that cost 88 cents or whatever you know like. I felt like it's fine, he'll never see it, he'll never notice this. We don't live in the same city, nothing whatever. So that was in maybe like 2007,.
Speaker 1:I made that sign In 2010,. I quit working at Trader Joe's and when the signs were done, they would just throw them away. So I would like keep a portfolio of my signs, and that banana sign was going to get thrown out at one point. So I was like, oh, I totally like want this. This was like a lot of work. It took a lot of time, it took a lot of effort. It came out great, and so I ended up.
Speaker 1:Then, in 2011, when I started teaching, I put that sign in my classroom. Like I just put it up. It was a wall decoration, it looked really cool, it was a fun thing for students to ask about. Then I could explain hey, here was a job. This was sort of a different type of job, bet, you didn't expect that that could be a job or anything. And then you know, and that was it. I, you know, went through however many classrooms. Then I switched schools, I switched school districts. I put that up there.
Speaker 1:Anyway, cut to 2017, 10 years after I even made the sign, I was in the situation where I was able to have Parker Jacobs come into my classroom and do a two-day workshop with my students. It was amazing. It's one of the coolest things I did in my entire teaching career. He gets there in the morning, I'm giving a tour of the classroom, like hey, this is the studio, this is all that kind of stuff. And literally I realize at the moment, oh my God, as he looks over and goes, like hey, that looks familiar, what are the odds? The thing I was worried about 10 years before would happen. I mean, obviously, like he was, he was super, he was like totally cool with it. I was like, oh, that's like awesome. Like he took my thing and made like a wood painting out of it, like that's very cool. And I explained the whole thing, but like it's just that thing of like what are the odds of this happening?
Speaker 1:All that to say, hollyland released the same released a new version of the Lark the same day that I released this, which I had no idea about. I don't know anything about Zero ideas, complete coincidence, complete victim of circumstance there, which then I got thrown into because I called my video why is this mic so popular? Because that was the question I had, like, why does everyone love this over other things, even like over, I would say it's, especially for beginners. Even more popular in the DJI, more popular on the road, why? And so that's why I asked that. And then people were asking the question oh, it's popular because the company paid you to promote it when it just came out. Well, it's popular because my feed is filled with, you know, release day videos of this thing. I'm like, oh no, I got thrown in this thing that I wasn't even aware of or a part of, so that was. That was just kind of funny.
Speaker 1:But what's kind of neat is I haven't used the new version, which is a little more compact, a little more sleek, and what they've done basically is the receivers, instead of just being like this little button that has a magnet on the back so you can put it everywhere. They wanted to make it even smaller. So you have the or the transmitters, I should say so. The transmitter's there and then it has a little clip, but the microphone is actually on the clip so you can put the bigger part of the transmitter like behind your collar and it's almost just like a little lavalier microphone, even smaller than a standard lavalier microphone, is what comes over know your collar or whatever, and I think that's cool and I really really hope that they continue to sell both of these, because I actually prefer this design significantly because it doesn't have a clip.
Speaker 1:It actually has the option you can magnetically. It comes with a magnetic clip you can put on the back. You can use it that way. But I love that I can take this and just like put it under a shirt, a lightweight shirt, anywhere, like right now I am attaching it to my shirt, if you're watching this if I can get the magnet to go the right way, and then it can just go anywhere.
Speaker 1:So if you, if you've ever tried to clip a lavalier microphone on someone that doesn't have, you know, buttons or collars or whatever, it can be kind of tricky to find where positioning them, and it's just not an issue with these microphones at all. The magnets on them are surprisingly strong, whereas when you have a clip now, you're limited. You have to only put this somewhere that it can be clipped, and a lot of times, too, that means it's going to be right up under somebody's neck, right on their collar, which does not especially in the hands of beginners does not always give you the best audio quality. So being able to put this anywhere and even be able to put it, you know, further down towards the middle of your chest and whatnot can I think that's a big reason why people have got such good audio quality with no experience with this system so that was just kind of funny but also why I actually still prefer at least from what I know what. I still prefer the original Lark M2 versus the M2S, and I hope they, because they are different enough. I hope they just keep both available and you can kind of choose which one you like and which one you want to use. That's, uh, that's at least what I'm hoping there. Uh, what else have we been working on? Oh, yeah, simple podcast setup. So this was kind of a fun one, actually. Uh, I'm going to reach back here into this drawer and pull out the road interview pro. Actually I'm going to. I bought a second road interview pro, so this microphone I did a video about this. I love these microphones. This is a video I've been working on that is going to come out. This should be the video that comes out right after you hear this episode. So this comes out on a Monday. The Thursday should be this.
Speaker 1:The Rode Interview Pro is awesome because it's a wireless mic setup. It can pair with the Rode casters. It can pair with the Rode Wireless Pros, rode Wireless Go 2 and 3s, like any of the new Rode Wireless things that have receivers. These can pair to that. But what's also cool is they just have built-in 32-bit float recording, so they're just basically audio recorders as well. You don't have to pair them to anything. They have this omnidirectional pickup pattern, which I love because basically it means you don't have to have good mic technique.
Speaker 1:The idea is you can put this in between you and somebody else and it can pick up both your voices without you having to go back and forth if you're interviewing someone. That's why it's called the Interview Pro, so it's just picking up all the sound and you just have to put it in the middle and it's good and it does actually work really well for that. But what that also means is, if you move it closer away means is, if you, you know, if you move it closer away, if you move it off axis or whatever, like, as long as it's generally near your face, it's going to pick up good sounding audio, and I love that. I love the sound quality of it and I love that it has virtually no handling noise. So you can move this around, you can toss it hand back and forth, you can give it to somebody who doesn't know how to use a microphone, and they're gonna be able to use it really well. It doesn't really have much of a plosive problem, but of course you can put windscreens on it if you need to. So it's just a really solid microphone, and the fact that it can record internally means you can just take two of these, sit down with someone, press record on each of them and now you have a perfect portable podcast setup. There's some plosives right there for you, and so I want to make a video about that and how to do that, how to edit the files together, how you might use it for an audio version of a podcast, how you might use it for a video version and some caveats, because if you are too close because they are omnidirectional, you can get some mic bleeds, sort of how to position them so you don't have that happen, and then how to deal with it if it does happen. Because I think that's just an awesome setup. Whether you're doing audio or video podcasting, I definitely want to take these places to not just interview someone but to actually you can sit down and record a good sounding podcast, basically anywhere with someone, and you can, because they're not connected to anything. There's no, you're not limited by any number of inputs. So I mean, these are $250 microphones I don't know what your budget is, but you could have essentially unlimited numbers of these and however many people are involved and that's. That's just kind of awesome. So it was really fun.
Speaker 1:Heather and I for New Year's we went up to kind of a nearby mountain town because our dogs, despite just pooping in the yard, they also hate fireworks, and so New Year's is usually like just chaos and just like trying to stop dogs from panicking all night long and it's exhausting. So we went up to like the small mountain town right in the cabin up there, where it was just quiet and peaceful and everyone got. We got to go on hikes and have fun and the dogs were just like sleeping super peacefully on New Year's Eve into the new year. It was like, wow, it's so cool. But anyway, while we were out there I was like, oh, it'd be really fun. Of course we can't just go and relax and do nothing. I should film part of a video out there. So Heather was my example in like a sample podcast set up up there which ended up being super fun and I'm excited to share that because I think that's going to be kind of a helpful setup. You can do that setup with anything that records audio a phone, any audio recorder. But I explained why I specifically like these microphones. I kind of gave you some of that info here, but why I specifically like the road interview pro for that portable podcast setup.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so my little presentation here got a little messed up in terms of spacing, but another video I'm working on is about podcast voice EQ. Working in the world of audio post-production is definitely not my total area of expertise and it can be a whole career field and take years to understand. But with podcast voice EQ what I wanted to do was the same way that this Hollyland system lets someone who's like never used a wireless mic setup get good audio pretty easily. I was like, okay, if you've recorded audio, what are just three steps you can do in any audio editing software to help your voice sound its best, like it doesn't matter what software you're using, it doesn't matter what equipment you're using. If you know nothing about audio and you put your tracks into any kind of software video editing, audio editing what are three things you can do to help it sound its best. And that's.
Speaker 1:That's a simple video that I'm working on to have come out. I did the podcast one and because I've been doing a lot of like mic and audio things I wanted to throw. I wanted to kind of like I like to balance it out with some video related things as well. So in between those, I'm gonna have the Feel World L4 switcher video come out, which I recorded this morning. The Feel World is super cool. I might as well just grab it because I can, and this is a video podcast.
Speaker 1:It's just a video switcher. It's an HDMI four input video switcher technically five, because you do have an SDI input, which is your fifth input. So it doesn't. It has a little bit of picture in picture, as a little bit of chroma keying does not have very it has. You can do an audio input, but it ain't great and you can do. You can't really do the scenes or anything like that. So it's not like a Rodecaster video. It Rodecaster video. It's not like a YoloBox.
Speaker 1:There's no internal recording, but if you're watching the video version of this you can see it has a giant touch display on there. It's a 10-inch touch screen in addition to physical buttons. So this is a little more expensive. A base model ATEM is like 300 bucks. This is $540. But it's pretty cool. And what's interesting about it to me is the company FeelWorld. This is their first video switcher, but they've been making video monitors for years and years and years and they're like they're actually used in a lot of high-end settings, like they have a good reputation for making good monitors with a lot of features at decent prices. And what's really cool about this is seeing how they've even though they're new to video switching and some of that is pretty simple and pretty rudimentary seeing how they've incorporated that into what is basically like a really high quality display and all of the sort of the quality of life upgrades that come with that is really, really fun.
Speaker 1:So I recorded a video with that where I had three cameras going into it. I was doing different resolutions, you know some are 1080, some are 4K, and I even had my projector handy cam running into it because they it does a great job at just taking pretty much anything up to 4k 30 that you throw at it and making it work. Even though it's only a 1080 switcher, it can take 4k sources, um, so it's, it's pretty awesome. That was like uh, then that video I need to edit out some you know mistakes and some like repetition and stuff, but the whole video is basically I had the switcher running into Ecamm and everything is just done there, so I'm not filming extra B-roll Like everything you're seeing. Every frame of the video is done through the L4, which is the same thing I try to do with my initial RODECaster video. I like it. If I'm talking about those things, you're seeing it the whole time. So that's the. Those are the things that I've been working on, which is pretty fun. I also have some other video switchers, like the Ulanzi DDO2 that I'm gonna do a video on as well. So I'm going to kind of keep this setup going so I can do a similar video there.
Speaker 1:Another thing in terms of TubeTalk, which I mentioned last week a bit, but I wanted to kind of like I've been getting asked this and I forget, like where I do and don't talk about it. But big thing here channel support. So, in terms of me as a content creator, patreon is now Patreon, which I've mentioned, you know, a couple times and a little bit last week. But Patreon, yeah, I officially like there's still a thing there. You can join it, but you get absolutely nothing. It's just it's a nice way to support if you want, but there are zero perks. I do not check anything over there.
Speaker 1:And patreon, really, since they rebranded, maybe about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, they've been tricky like you can no longer do, not that. I did this, but a lot of people did this. You could do pledges by project. So instead of like a monthly support, it would be like every time you finish things, people would get you know that's what. Then people would be charged. So that's no, like no longer an option.
Speaker 1:Things got really weird with the app, kind of through the Apple app store there and then just some of their stuff, that they're like their interfaces and the way that they just got like more confusing and more frustrating. And even though I wanted to grow my Patreon because it was the off platform, it wasn't connected to a YouTube AdSense account, so it felt a little more stable and a little more secure. That was getting a little more frustrating and I was getting really hard to get people to sign up for it. So I appreciate everyone who did and that does mean a lot to me, and even everyone who still is, because some people are like I just like Patreon, I want to support you, so I'm going to do that over there. The thing about that is like it, it kind of capped out. I just like could not get it to grow and it was. It was like I the thing of like juice isn't worth the squeeze. So everything has been moved over to YouTube now for a while, but now officially, as of the start of this year, that is the only thing that I'm checking for channel support and channel membership and that has been pretty awesome so far. So like it seems like people are. It seems easier for people to sign up, at least for me, for what I do, it seems easier to grow YouTube channel memberships.
Speaker 1:It was a little bit scary because I changed some tiers which meant I had to like essentially kick people out and cancel their membership. So I not only like shut down Patreon we're not shut it down but a bunch of people left Patreon because I told them what was happening and you should leave Patreon if you want any kind of perk, or people moved over to YouTube. But then, because I switched YouTube tiers, I basically like canceled half or more of my YouTube members and they either have to rejoin or join as new members, because on YouTube when you close out a tier, it just cancels everybody and then you can start a new one. So that was a little scary because everything just dipped Not that it was like huge, but what was there dipped really low and now it's been building back up and it's been really really fun.
Speaker 1:I got to say like having access, having the ability to just fully use all of the integrated YouTube features. You know things like live stream, members, posts, early video releases, all that stuff. Like it's been great. Um, members only live streams. It's just so much fun. So I I'm actually loving that quite a bit. Uh, what I really want to do.
Speaker 1:My next step with that is to kind of keep going like, have as much fun with it as possible and see where it goes. You know, after like the first quarter of this year, so after March, kind of see, like you know, does it seem to be growing, do people seem to like it, do I like it? And and kind of go from there. So that's our tube talk segment. And now we can do a segment that I did not have time for last week because we were doing so many other things, or maybe I did, I don't remember, but I'm doing now. I mentioned we're gonna do it. Somebody asked about it. We're gonna do the gear spotlight. Can't remember if I did this last week or not.
Speaker 1:This is the thinking music gear spotlight, though I want to not just tell you like what I'm using. You know I'm using this microphone, I'm using the roadcaster, whatever, but I want to highlight like a piece of gear each week, or at least most weeks, that I want to share with you. And this this week, gear spotlight. I want to shine that spotlight on Ecamm Live, because that is what I'm using mainly to make this podcast and I think, if I push, oh, I think what I have to do. Actually, I have to drag this screen to this other monitor here and then I should be able to push this button and there you go.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're watching the video version, you should be able to see my Ecamm setup. I can kind of get rid of some of these other non-podcast related things, so you can sort of see my whole setup here. If you don't know about Ecamm Live, it's wonderful. There's a link in the description that has an affiliate thing and I got to say like Ecamm's affiliate program is actually one of the most helpful ones around. So if you do want to use Ecamm Live and use that link, it genuinely helps a ton. But if you don't want to use Ecamm Live, do not feel obligated. A lot of things Ecamm does are possible to do in OBS as well. Obs is totally free.
Speaker 1:But I've been using Ecamm for at least five years now, not more. I'm a paid customer. I love Ecamm. You can kind of see everything sort of modular here, so you can the number of updates, I swear at least once or twice a week it feels like when I open up Ecamm it's like, hey, a new update. You know, do you want to update here? So basically this window is keynote. So this is my keynote presenter things and then I have if you're seeing the video version, you see my whole desktop here and then I have this window. Here is my keynote presentation, like what's live, but everything else is Ecamm live. So this is my monitor window, which I usually have over on the prompter. I've got overlays which I'm not really using a lot here, but this would be like during live streams, where you know comments and things would pop up. I've got my audio mixer where you can mix in different stuff. Currently I have the Rodecaster selected.
Speaker 1:We've got scenes, so I don't have a ton of scenes in this show, I have just a plain black scene. I've got the intro, my main camera angle, a scene that lets me share a web browser, the keynote and then the outro. But I also think what's really cool is you can go to profile and you have all these different profiles. So for different shows, different projects, different types of streams, you can just have different profiles and all of this will change. You can organize these into folders. We've got camera effects and stuff, so you can kind of see like I've changed the color and changed the way some things look in here, which is very, very cool. I could even you know I can, no, I can't, my scene is locked but I can do some basic, some basic adjustments there. I got my zoom in crop so you know even the shot right here, um, my camera, my 24 millimeter lens, is this wide, but that shot just didn't look framed right, so I cropped in a little bit so you can frame and reframe things, um, in ways that are really really cool and everything's very modular.
Speaker 1:So, especially if you're using a multi, multi monitor setup, the fact you can push things over to different screens is really really nice. You have tons of settings options with Ecamm so you can go through and like really kind of dial in all kinds of stuff. You can stream to multiple destinations if you want to. There's integrated zoom stuff now, which I really wish they had had when I was teaching online, because now you can. Essentially, they've always had an interview mode where you can have people come in as guests, which is gonna give you the highest quality. But Zoom also now has native Zoom integration so you can even bring Zoom participants in on screen as a guest and pop up Zoom comments and all kinds of cool stuff like that Recording. You can record individual tracks for both audio and video, so you can record isolated files and it will just put a folder on your desktop with everything in there at the end. So it is incredibly powerful software and for how powerful it is, how user-friendly they've made it Even having this demo mode like this is a built-in feature.
Speaker 1:The fact I can just share the thing, probably because they know people like if you like ecamm, you want to talk about it, you want to show, show it to people. This is a way to show it to people. Um, but even doing that is like it's super cool. I'm recording right now, so I can't change this, but you can also, you know, you can set it to just be a virtual camera. You can set it to just record. You can set it to just record. You can set it to just stream. You can stream and record, stream and record to multiple sources. It is just wildly useful and powerful software and I absolutely love Ecamm Live and I mentioned this last week when I wanted to do the video version of this, because the RODECaster video can do most of what I pretty much everything I need.
Speaker 1:I can build different scenes, I can bring in different sources I can overlay graphics and stuff. That's initially what I was going to use to do the video version of the podcast. But the thing with Ecamm is it just let me kind of like it, just sort of let me elevate the graphics and the visuals a little more than I could with the RODECaster video, and then I have my stream deck here that I'm switching between scenes and stuff with down there. So Ecamm was something I did not plan to use for the video version of this podcast, as much as I love it and have been using it. But it was like I kind of realized as much as the Rodecaster video is capable of doing what I needed and I wanted to use that, I was almost being stubborn by like no, that's the only thing I want to use for this. And it's like if I step back and I look at not only what makes things look their best right now but makes the workflow easy and is probably adaptable to the future If I want to bring in guests to do stuff like that, like just incorporating Ecamm, so I have the Rodecaster video and Ecamm Live together, buddies forever. That's what I have been, that's what I've been using there. So that is my gear spotlight for this week.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing, the next thing that we the last and final thing to talk about. I'm going to go into some listener messages this week, which actually there weren't a ton of listener messages. I think I have a jingle too for this, or do I not? I guess I don't have a listener messages jingle, I meant to. Oh well, listener messages, I don't have a ton, but what's really really cool? So, if you want to leave messages, you can send an email to tom at enthusiasmprojectcom. You can go to hi, my name is tomcom, and then there's the link to record your voice if you want to do that. And you can also do Buzzsprout fan mail, which is really cool. So, right in the top of the show notes of the audio versions, there's a thing that says send a message to the show, and it's just, basically, you send a text message to the show. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:But also something very new, something we couldn't do before YouTube comments. Because there's a video version, people can leave comments. I don't know if you've heard about this, but YouTube has a comment section. You should always check the comment section of every video, because it's never negative. Fortunately, mine are. I have really awesome people who leave really awesome comments, so I wanted to highlight a few from last week's episode. The first one is from Ono Coffee.
Speaker 1:Oh no, in the podcast you said that you had four subscribers. Yes, when I started this, the channel was at four subscribers. He was looking at it three days later and he's the 69th subscriber. So silver play button on its way. I think we're up to the seventies or something. Yeah, it's, it's getting there, almost getting to that like custom URL thing at a hundred subscribers. That's always the fun thing about a hundred subscribers. And Ono was someone who says I know I've been a proponent of you moving this podcast to a video format and now that I've scrolled through it I can see why you've been reticent to do it. All the screen elements and B-roll I get it, but it looks great. So that was the thing that we talked about.
Speaker 1:That I talked about last week was I didn't just want to do a video version, I didn't just want it to be a talking head. There's nothing wrong with that. I've done experimental versions of episodes like that in the past, where it's just I'll just turn the camera on and talk. But it's like if I'm going to make thumbnails, I'm going to upload video files, I'm going to do all that. I wanted there to be more of a reason for it to be. I'm going to turn on all these lights and do my hair and all the things, like. I want there to be a reason for that, rather than just me sitting unmoving, I guess you know, and being able to use all the benefits of YouTube. And so that was why it took so long and that's why I, you know, put all my whole workflow together. But it's funny because Ono says I have to admit I probably won't watch the video version much, but only because I do all my podcasts listening in the car while commuting. It looks great. I think it will do well, and that's a big thing too to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:When you're doing a video podcast, which I'm fully aware of, you add in all the visual elements, you add those things. Very few people are sitting there with their eyeballs glued to the screen for an hour or more. They're probably listening in the background, maybe their screen's not even on their eyeballs aren't even on their screen, or they're in the car and they're. You know it's. Even if they're using the YouTube version, they're not actually watching things, or they're just glancing back at the screen every 30 seconds or minute or two or something you know, or if I say like hey, I'm holding up something and it's cool, you should check it out, then they'll look over and see it, but otherwise it's kind of background noise with like a video video element if someone looks at it. So that is probably how most people consume video podcasts. I think that's important to keep in mind when you're putting the workflow together, so that way you're not burning a bunch of calories on something that literally no one will ever notice because they're not watching the thing the whole time.
Speaker 1:Next comments from Gil said love the episode. I literally cried laughing at 59.55. It was unexpected and funny. That was the question about the website URL and like what does it mean and how do you pronounce it, which was one of my favorite questions. Great to have you back, but mostly hearing all the listeners and hearing their voices. This, a great community, can't wait for the next episode.
Speaker 1:Ironically, I don't have any voice messages for this episode, but I did want to emphasize how cool that is is to be able to to do that and, of course, even though the speak pipe link is only for audio. You can always email me a video clip if you want and I can incorporate that because there's a video version so we could see and hear you if you want, which would be kind of cool. And a lot of people last week right before last week, had said like, yeah, bringing in others doing interviews and stuff, even if it's not an official interview, having a video clip of someone you know try to keep them. Don't send me like a 10 minute clip or anything, but you know, keep it like a minute, a minute and a half max, and then it'd be fun to incorporate that into the show. I think that'd be pretty awesome. And last comment for this week from Internet Doggo who oops, I clicked the wrong thing. There is an account called Internet Doggo that pops up on channels and live streams and I got to say I love them so much. It just brings me so much joy to see that name and that channel profile Plus. They're just a genuinely kind, awesome person. It's just, it's one of those things. It's just a day brightener, right?
Speaker 1:Any chance you can make a separate podcast on Spotify for the video version? This was an interesting question because Spotify has video and my initial answer was no, because I honestly don't 100% know how that works. I do all of my regular podcast hosting with Buzzsprout and I don't know, like, if I have to get a Spotify account and then I don't know if that would mess up the RSS feed, or now I have to upload to Buzzsprout and YouTube and Spotify. It's just the workflow seemed a little bit clunky, so it's not something that I'm interested in doing right now. I kind of want to go with the video version. I really want to embrace YouTube, because that is my main thing, although brace YouTube, because that is that is my main thing, although, like I don't want, you know, I don't want to never say never, because it's something I also don't know much about. So maybe I'd be interested to even hear some feedback or some thoughts about that, how it works. If I have, you know, especially like imagine a season or two from now I have many, many episodes of video versions of podcasts, would it make sense then to just like, why not also put those on Spotify? I don't know if people obviously people are listening to or watching video podcasts on Spotify, so that's something that actually maybe even need a little more help and a little more feedback with. But that kind of brings us to the end of episode number two over here. Hope you enjoyed it Again. If you have any thoughts, any feedback, feel free to send those my way, whether it's through an email, through the speak pipe link, through fan mail, carrier, pigeon smoke signal, whatever.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate all the kindness, all the support. I really just I know I say that a lot, but I am so proud of proud's not even the right word because it's not about me, but it's like I. It makes me proud to think of all the awesome people that come together around like this podcast and around the YouTube channel, and even as the person like, yeah, I made the podcast, I made the YouTube channel. That doesn't really matter if nobody's also there, right, it's like I'm hosting a party, but if no one shows up, does it really matter that you're hosting the party? Like the guests kind of make the party, and the same is true here. So I just hope you know how much I appreciate that. Hope you enjoyed this, whether you listen to it, whether you watch it. Hope you have a safe, happy, healthy, fun rest of your week and I'll see you next time.
