Tag: video

Is It Me Or Is It YouTube?

Yesterday, a friend of ours e-mailed a link to a video of her new kitchen. I decided to send her back a video of our own kitchen. So I shot a quick video, uploaded it to YouTube, and sent out the link.

Then the weird thing happened. About 30 minutes after I uploaded the video, it disappeared off my YouTube account. Poof. Gone. No notice, no nothing. I have no idea why. The video is about 45 seconds of me talking as I walk through my kitchen; I didn’t add any music or graphics or do any editing at all, so there’s no possible copyright issues.

I don’t upload stuff to YouTube very often so maybe this is normal and I just don’t know it. Or maybe I’m the victim of some unfortunate glitch. Either way, it’s a little annoying.

At any rate, I signed up for a Vimeo account and re-uploaded the video there. If you’re really curious, you can see it (but I warn you, it’s kind of boring):

UPDATE 8:30PM: And now it’s back on YouTube. Go figure.

The Role of Video

One thing I have been pondering lately is whether I should be doing something more than just blogging. There’s podcasting, and video blogging, and I haven’t tried those at all (with the exception of one very short video clip I did of Scott making ravioli). I’m not on Utterz or Seesmic or any of the other “cool” new content creation sites. I’m just a blogger. Sometimes I worry a little — am I getting left behind? Am I turning into some dinosaur of the Internet because I’m still just typing away?

But there’s a reason why I don’t do that stuff, and it’s not for lack of time, software, or equipment. It’s because they do not add any value to what I’m doing here.

My long-ago college major was in Drama. One of the things you learn when you study theater is that everything you do on stage should serve the purpose of the production. If you do it, say it, wear it, or hang it on the wall of the set — it all needs to be there to augment the essence of what you’re trying to communicate. That essence will change, of course. Your vision for presenting Phantom of the Opera is going to be different than your vision for Othello. But no matter what you’re doing, you need to constantly ask yourself, “Is this serving the goal I am trying to achieve?” And if the answer is “no” then DON’T DO IT.

As John Whiteside points out today,

Video has its place. Video can show you things that would be hard to follow in a written description; the video that Apple put on its site as a promo for the iPhone is a great example (it convinced me to buy one because it made it obvious how many features worked, and it served as a quick start guide when I got the phone home). I’m not saying video is bad.

I’m just suggesting that if you can’t figure out why you shouldn’t be using a simpler, lower-bandwidth, more flexible, and more user-controlled medium for your message, then you shouldn’t be making a video.

I couldn’t agree more.

People have a complete right to be self-indulgent, and to experiment with new mediums of communication. It’s a great way to learn to use technology. The next stage is to learn how to use those tools to do something that people will actually get value out of watching. I hope we get there soon.