RE: LONG VIDEOS. Not to beat a dead horse....but

[Scubadiver1944]

Dear Scubadiver1944:
Thanks so much for your comments. Of course, you are right on! I am glad to report that I do not lose sleep unless I know I have to get up before dawn for another try at the sunrise because I goofed something up yesterday morning before dawn. It is a hobby, but it is also a passion and we all love it and want to share it. I am a simple person, not wanting huge numbers of hits, likes, etc. I target where I post these videos, and this forum is only one of my sites. Mostly, I have accumulated a photography list of about 70 friends and people whom I have met in my travels and I promised to send them my photography and they all really enjoy getting it. I also post to the LRTimelapse Forum showroom because these people are really expert and appreciate seeing the works of others. This Mavic Pilots Forum is sort of a mix of aficionados, and tyros, e.g.: rank beginners who are just starting out learning their drone, or Photoshop, or video editing. I take the good with the bad.

My whole reason d'être (reason to be) for this thread is to stress to these newcomers to make their films short, succinct, and as excellent in quality as possible. We are all here on this forum to help each other and I'll continue to try to do my part.

Ikopta, a YouTuber here in the UK, a professional specialising in drone matters and a member of this forum, has a weekly question & answer section on his site in which he invites flyers requesting advice on drone matters to provide him (and his viewers) with sample footage if they also post on YouTube. I've noticed he advises keeping the lengths of them to 90 seconds or slightly less, owing to the poor attention span of many folks these days. BTW, should you have a mind to, there's some decent aerial drone footage of aforementioned Misool Eco Resort on YouTube lasting just over 3 minutes. When you have stunning views like that, who cares how long the clips last!

 

[Dale D]

Ikopta, a YouTuber here in the UK, a professional specialising in drone matters and a member of this forum, has a weekly question & answer section on his site in which he invites flyers requesting advice on drone matters to provide him (and his viewers) with sample footage if they also post on YouTube. I've noticed he advises keeping the lengths of them to 90 seconds or slightly less, owing to the poor attention span of many folks these days. BTW, should you have a mind to, there's some decent aerial drone footage of aforementioned Misool Eco Resort on YouTube lasting just over 3 minutes. When you have stunning views like that, who cares how long the clips last! The music was also a catchy tune -?ukelele??music.

I juste looked up the You Tube video of the Misool Eco Resort in Indonesia...absolutely stunning, from beginning to end. The intro drone views were masterful, capturing the overview, then flying under the bridge and viewing the underwater shark. The underwater videos were spectacular. Could easily watch those all day long. My wife and I would love to go there. We did a trip to Bali, and Java (Yogyakarta bhuddist temples) many years ago.

 

[Dale D]

Dear Forum friends who follow me:

I have taken all of your advise into consideration and spent another hour today revising my Sunrise video. I have shortened the body of the video from 3 1/2 minutes and 30 seconds of end titles to 2 1/2 minutes for the body of the video, and 30 seconds end titles. Thus, the main video has been shortened 1 minute. Give it a look. Full screen, sound as usual.

 

[Scubadiver1944]

I juste looked up the You Tube video of the Misool Eco Resort in Indonesia...absolutely stunning, from beginning to end. The intro drone views were masterful, capturing the overview, then flying under the bridge and viewing the underwater shark. The underwater videos were spectacular. Could easily watch those all day long. My wife and I would love to go there. We did a trip to Bali, and Java (Yogyakarta bhuddist temples) many years ago.

Dale, further to my last post I coincidentally received an email today from Ikopta, whose YouTube channel I subscribe to, with the title "What's the best way to video sunrise/sunset with a drone?//#134". You might like to check it out for his take on the subject. The shaving of your clip is a big improvement BTW, very nice.
On the issue of Misool eco resort, should you or anybody else be interested in visiting that location, after the threat from covid-19 is greatly reduced, then I have some knowledge of the area having visited Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia several times. Who knows, maybe even a small group might be interested in a visit as I've already corresponded with them (I dived with the owner in 2003) and they were receptive for guests who wanted to capture their vistas on drone. One doesn't have to be a scuba diver as one can snorkel over their beautiful reefs just as well or just chill out & sip a martini or whatever one's favourite tipple might be!

 

[Dale D]

Dale, further to my last post I coincidentally received an email today from Ikopta, whose YouTube channel I subscribe to, with the title "What's the best way to video sunrise/sunset with a drone?//#134". You might like to check it out for his take on the subject. The shaving of your clip is a big improvement BTW, very nice.
On the issue of Misool eco resort, should you or anybody else be interested in visiting that location, after the threat from covid-19 is greatly reduced, then I have some knowledge of the area having visited Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia several times. Who knows, maybe even a small group might be interested in a visit as I've already corresponded with them (I dived with the owner in 2003) and they were receptive for guests who wanted to capture their vistas on drone. One doesn't have to be a scuba diver as one can snorkel over their beautiful reefs just as well or just chill out & sip a martini or whatever one's favourite tipple might be!

Thanks for re-watching the film. I liked the shorter version too.

Well I just spent 15 minutes watching that sunset/sunrise video. Unfortunately, I knew everything he said already.

Your invitation to Indonesia seems very tantalizing but I think it is not in the cards for my wife and I. Although I was once a PADI certified diver, I am now going to be 82 (September) . We already have several big trips planned if the quarantine is lifted (Montana fishing) + (Persian Gulf- Doha,Muscat,Oman; Dubai, and Abu Dhabi in December). All of these countries are still shut down for tourism according to the latest inquiry. The penalty for flying a drone in Oman is a year in jail and $30,000, so I won't be bringing the Mavic 2P.

 

[mfc]

I just find videos uncompelling viewing. The information bit rate is always too slow, especially if someone is talking. Well-written text with the occasional still photo is rapidly absorbed and doesn't waste the viewer's time.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Dear Forum friends who follow me:

I have taken all of your advise into consideration and spent another hour today revising my Sunrise video. I have shortened the body of the video from 3 1/2 minutes and 30 seconds of end titles to 2 1/2 minutes for the body of the video, and 30 seconds end titles. Thus, the main video has been shortened 1 minute. Give it a look. Full screen, sound as usual.

Dale these were fantastic, i Could keep watching hyper Lapse all day .

You need to remember we make these videos for our own viewing pleasure and we share them to inspire , show new ideas, and the mastery of the craft.

Shortening a video is not the answer , as much as keeping the video compelling by moving to new scenes which requires some fancy editing to achieve, most people want to learn, be challenged, and duplicate your work into theres , as long as you have that , you have good content. and this is fantastic stuff.

My only pet peeve is when you mix with the video with pictures and of course im not a fan of the format you posted being that it is a box when many now have a widescreen monitor.

Its better to post your video as long as you can watch it yourself and let others stop when they want to.

 

[theDRONEranger]

Analogy:

Differing persons with differing tastes, even within the same arena.
In a major city, 100 restaurants will receive top billing. All will do wonderful business at start. Soon there will be only a handful remaining. All patrons wish to sample the goods at first, but do they always satisfied? No!

point is: viewers are all there for various reasons. Many are for the same, but many differing.

Not every chef’s stock can make a delicious soup! But never stop cooking!

 

[Dale D]

I just find videos uncompelling viewing. The information bit rate is always too slow, especially if someone is talking. Well-written text with the occasional still photo is rapidly absorbed and doesn't waste the viewer's time.

Your comments are the reason we have these forums. Videos are not everyone's cup of tea, even if they are well done. To each his own, I say.

So can I assume that you belong to this forum and do not use the video capabilities of your drone? Do you only use the drone for still images? Or if you do use the video capabilities of your drone, what do you plan to do with the video once it is filmed?

 

[Dale D]

Here is the video I just mentioned- hope you enjoy it. Comments always welcomed. Be sure to go to full screen and sound on.

I am re-posting the new video which has been re-edited to shorten it by one minute to 2 1/2 minutes... the rest is end title.

 

[burkesdale]

Id say longer the better. nothing worse than a short 2 minute video, its like whats the point.
Short attention span = there's the problem lmao

 

[Dale D]

Id say longer the better. nothing worse than a short 2 minute video, its like whats the point.
Short attention span = there's the problem lmao

I really have to laugh. Can I put this post up against the ones who told me the original video was too long?

 

[JanB]

I am re-posting the new video which has been re-edited to shorten it by one minute to 2 1/2 minutes... the rest is end title.

Hi Dale,
I like your clip. And I respect the work you did put in. I only think we don't produce our clips for the mass but before all for ourselfs to have a viewable again memory. I am not a professional nor you are. So don't be disappointed that only few want to see your clips. We both (yes, me too) aren't accepting the time so quickly changing... My clips are before all only my personel memories which I share with pleasure with everyone who likes what I produce. That's the same when I start watching clips in YT: Sometimes I stop after a few seconds sometimes I watch the whole clip depending on my interest. Continue to produce your clips, it is you who has to like them most...

 

[Dale D]

Hi Dale,
I like your clip. And I respect the work you did put in. I only think we don't produce our clips for the mass but before all for ourselfs to have a viewable again memory. I am not a professional nor you are. So don't be disappointed that only few want to see your clips. We both (yes, me too) aren't accepting the time so quickly changing... My clips are before all only my personel memories which I share with pleasure with everyone who likes what I produce. That's the same when I start watching clips in YT: Sometimes I stop after a few seconds sometimes I watch the whole clip depending on my interest. Continue to produce your clips, it is you who has to like them most...

Hello JanB!

Thank you for the comments. I am glad you enjoyed the sunrise video. You are both right and not so right! On the one hand I agree that we don't produce videos for the masses but for ourselves as personal memories of our life's experiences. Unfortunately, on a forum such as this, I have learned that Mavic Pilot viewers are really not interested in our life's experiences in a long format! They want to view a few minutes and go on to the next video or comment. That is the age in which we live. No one has time to watch longer videos.

For those longer, and more personal documentation videos such as a memorable vacation, I do not post these on this forum. I post my memorable trips on Vimeo and send the link to friends who personally want to see them. Thus, for example, my much longer videos of Greece, Iceland, Democratic Republic of the Congo with gorillas, and most recently, Zambia and Madagascar are posted on my Vimeo site;

Dale Davis

Please let me make a few comments on the video you submitted. The 5:44 minutes of video did not seem to have a story. The path of the drone and the scenes seemed to be randomly chosen, and changed as you viewed your screen. You started out with a really nice view of the sunset or sunrise, then did a 180 degree view of the port city, and did many, many aimless yaw adjustments and gimbal adjustments which could have been edited out. Finally, you noticed the ship leaving port and followed that for a while, and then went back to the sun. The Beethoven was totally inappropriate music for this film. I would have started out filming the harbor with a slow pan, cut out all of the useless yaw adjustments, and finally finished with the cargo ship leaving port, and finally on the most dramatic view of the sun. The very scenic blue bridges appeared several times. I was very thankful you changed you mind at the last moment and did not cross over the highway! If you filmed and edited as I suggested, your video could have been doubly interesting and half as short without losing anything and telling a better story.

Thank you for reading this.

Dale

 

[JanB]

Hello JanB!

Thank you for the comments. I am glad you enjoyed the sunrise video. You are both right and not so right! On the one hand I agree that we don't produce videos for the masses but for ourselves as personal memories of our life's experiences. Unfortunately, on a forum such as this, I have learned that Mavic Pilot viewers are really not interested in our life's experiences in a long format! They want to view a few minutes and go on to the next video or comment. That is the age in which we live. No one has time to watch longer videos.

For those longer, and more personal documentation videos such as a memorable vacation, I do not post these on this forum. I post my memorable trips on Vimeo and send the link to friends who personally want to see them. Thus, for example, my much longer videos of Greece, Iceland, Democratic Republic of the Congo with gorillas, and most recently, Zambia and Madagascar are posted on my Vimeo site;

Dale Davis

Please let me make a few comments on the video you submitted. The 5:44 minutes of video did not seem to have a story. The path of the drone and the scenes seemed to be randomly chosen, and changed as you viewed your screen. You started out with a really nice view of the sunset or sunrise, then did a 180 degree view of the port city, and did many, many aimless yaw adjustments and gimbal adjustments which could have been edited out. Finally, you noticed the ship leaving port and followed that for a while, and then went back to the sun. The Beethoven was totally inappropriate music for this film. I would have started out filming the harbor with a slow pan, cut out all of the useless yaw adjustments, and finally finished with the cargo ship leaving port, and finally on the most dramatic view of the sun. The very scenic blue bridges appeared several times. I was very thankful you changed you mind at the last moment and did not cross over the highway! If you filmed and edited as I suggested, your video could have been doubly interesting and half as short without losing anything and telling a better story.

Thank you for reading this.

Dale

Hi Dale,
Look at the title of the clip: God morning Sokcho! The story is quite simple the early awakening, starting with the boats at the beginning, the few people around and few cars, still the moon in the sky, the red coloured mountains and city. With clips it is like with jokes: Some are understanding the meaning some are not. And Beethoven -as you should know or maybe not- called this part of his symphony the joy after a storm - well, you could interprete the storm as the passed night and the morning as the joy of the coming day... I am a little bit disappointed about your missinterpretation. But, as I wrote, 1. normally I should not explain my personel work to others, 2. never explain jokes is valid here, too.
Sorry to ask you: What has the riding on the road to do with the sunrise?

 

[Dale D]

Hi Dale,
Look at the title of the clip: God morning Sokcho! The story is quite simple the early awakening, starting with the boats at the beginning, the few people around and few cars, still the moon in the sky, the red coloured mountains and city. With clips it is like with jokes: Some are understanding the meaning some are not. And Beethoven -as you should know or maybe not- called this part of his symphony the joy after a storm - well, you could interprete the storm as the passed night and the morning as the joy of the coming day... I am a little bit disappointed about your missinterpretation. But, as I wrote, 1. normally I should not explain my personel work to others, 2. never explain jokes is valid here, too.

Sorry if I offended.

 

[JanB]

Sorry if I offended.

No, you didn't.

 

[PanthersDen]

I just finished reading through all 3 pages of comments and I must say, this is all really good information/suggestions people have made. I recently started video editing footage I took in Philippines last summer and I too notice that viewership tends to last 1:30 to 3 minutes in the analytics.

Currently my video edits and posting tend to be more for me and my memories than for viewership. Although, as my editing skills (hopefully) improve, I'll need to learn to cut recordings much shorter to see how viewership analytics change. I'll be keeping all the suggestions people have made here (even if they were directed to Dale) to heart and think about them the next time I post process one of my drone videos, which I will be working on more today.

I can already think of a lot of changes I can make to my edits and still keep the "memory" factor there but remove things that are distracting or unnecessary, which will in turn greatly shorten the video length and I can even split some long videos up into multiple posts. Now I'm tempted to go back and remove (or unlist) a lot of my video's and re-edit them ... I'm starting to get excited to see what I can come up with... hehe.

It's nice and very helpful reading suggestions made by the more experienced crowd out there.

 

[BigBoozer]

My videos today are an evolution of a lifetime of photography starting in my 20's and now I am 81.

Dear Dale, I'm 10 years younger than you, but I have absolutely the same photoamateur's history behind me. I killed most of my past friends showing them tons of slides, and yes, also playing two Carousels at the same time. Spent a fortune in gear and slides, when every "click" was worth a Dollar.
This approach, this background kill our videoclips, in this geologic age. We spend days or weeks for the shooting and countless hours for editing some minutes of video, and these morons watch our masterpieces for seconds, and fly away. I take it as a point of honor to view everything I start from end to end, then I judge if I liked it or not. Most of the times it's "not" but I'll give them a try, at least.
I posted nearly 110 videos on my YouTube channel, and only my family will watch every video till the end. (Not all. I mean not each member of the family. And not every video as well...) The average viewer of my clips stays there 2'30". Period. Take it as a fact, setting up a projection evening for friends with two carousels and 600 slides was a task, your beer and cakes were good and they owed you some attention in change. Free stuff as that available on today's social media gives you what you paid for showing it. Zippo. Nada. Niente.
Technically speaking, I learned a lot reading all the comments to your thread. Yes, your video was good quality without a story. Several repeated scenes. But you loved them, right? They meant something to you. They gave you good vibes. Then - enjoy your masterpieces, and the hell with the rest. You have lived a satisfactory life until now, shot tons of nice images. Most of those who view your videos for twenty seconds could not draw a circle using a glass, not mentioning shooting a correct photo using the M function of their multizillion dollar DSLR or IPhone. Do you really live to collect "Likes" at your age? I don't. Be happy, and sometimes review your videos after a few months. You'll be proud of yourself. The rest is irrelevant.

 

[Dale D]

Dear Dale, I'm 10 years younger than you, but I have absolutely the same photoamateur's history behind me. I killed most of my past friends showing them tons of slides, and yes, also playing two Carousels at the same time. Spent a fortune in gear and slides, when every "click" was worth a Dollar.
This approach, this background kill our videoclips, in this geologic age. We spend days or weeks for the shooting and countless hours for editing some minutes of video, and these morons watch our masterpieces for seconds, and fly away. I take it as a point of honor to view everything I start from end to end, then I judge if I liked it or not. Most of the times it's "not" but I'll give them a try, at least.
I posted nearly 110 videos on my YouTube channel, and only my family will watch every video till the end. (Not all. I mean not each member of the family. And not every video as well...) The average viewer of my clips stays there 2'30". Period. Take it as a fact, setting up a projection evening for friends with two carousels and 600 slides was a task, your beer and cakes were good and they owed you some attention in change. Free stuff as that available on today's social media gives you what you paid for showing it. Zippo. Nada. Niente.
Technically speaking, I learned a lot reading all the comments to your thread. Yes, your video was good quality without a story. Several repeated scenes. But you loved them, right? They meant something to you. They gave you good vibes. Then - enjoy your masterpieces, and the hell with the rest. You have lived a satisfactory life until now, shot tons of nice images. Most of those who view your videos for twenty seconds could not draw a circle using a glass, not mentioning shooting a correct photo using the M function of their multizillion dollar DSLR or IPhone. Do you really live to collect "Likes" at your age? I don't. Be happy, and sometimes review your videos after a few months. You'll be proud of yourself. The rest is irrelevant.

Hey Big Boozer:

I really like what you wrote!!!Yes..I'll be 82 in September, and going strong so far. After a lifetime of slide shows, three projector slide shows (with three screens of course), and synchronized sound track on tape, we have seen it all. I fought digital, then fell in love with it. So now, as I mentioned, I have reduced my photography to short videos for forums ( Mavic Pilots, LRTimelapse), and longer videos for producing a REAL show of my travels. My longer videos are certainly shorter than in days of yore. Nobody (even my professional film editor daughter) will not look at longer videos anymore. Hollywood has gone to 3 hour movies but we are forced to go to 3 minute movies. As Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond) said, "I AM big...It's the picture that got smaller!"

. watch towards the end for the famous line.

If you would like to see some of my longer videos (Greece,Democratic Republic of Congo-gorillas, Iceland). Dale Davis and scroll to "more" to find them. Enjoy.