Saturday, March 20, 2021

New Channels, Comments, and Video Quality (2021)

 You can read what I have recently said back in January as the background for this. That link is here.

1)The Two New Channels

I have added two new channels in addition to YouTube that I will be uploading my videos at. One is Odysee and the other is BitChute. We will see how this goes. Keep in mind my main reason in doing this is not to create a new following of hundreds of people. I do not care if hundreds of people or two people watch my videos. It is more of way of trying to keep some of the big tech companies in check.

With Odysee I was able to transfer most of my videos to that account from YouTube. Not that I think a lot of those old videos from the early days of ten years ago are really that great, but there is some history to them that I think is still important. I have more to say about this in #3 "Video Quality" below. 

With BitChute I will just be uploading new videos there.

YouTube is still the main platform people use, and I will continue to use it. I am not sure people are using much of the alt-tech platforms unless they are really hard core into them, but we have to give them some time. In any case, you have these other two options to view my content if you like.

2)About Comments

What I am doing on this blog is keeping the latest blog entries open for comments. Usually, the most recent. If you want to say anything just do it in the most recent blog entry. You are always welcome to e-mail me as well.

In the past I had everything completely open to comments. Years before this blog I was a moderator on a forum, and I kind of know what to expect as far as the range of comments typically go: from serious, to silly, to trolling, to completely irrelevant, etc. What happened is I started to get hit all over the blog with all types of spamming and advertisement type of comments. Also, the "Hit and Run" type of commentor where the whole point of them commenting is to post a link and you never hear from them again. This was a weakness of Blogger at the time, and the reality was I was not seeing these comments because I was not searching around for them.

As far as YouTube goes I would rather people come here, and if someone really wants to say something then comment on this blog. These days I rarely read comments on YouTube videos I watch from other channels; over the past ten years I might have commented a handful of times. I had comments open on YouTube for a bunch of videos way back. I had some nonsense I put up with. One of which is some people felt that they wanted everyone to know about there book length comment experiences of something that were triggered by watching a video I did. It is kind of like, "Can't you just create your own blog or videos for that? I just felt like someone was doing graffiti on something I worked hard on. 

3)Quality on the Old Videos

A lot has happened in the past ten years or so. Technology has gotten better. My editing skills are a lot different than they were back then too. If you can watch my old videos and get something out of them then you are blessed! I have a hard time watching my old videos because of the technology and the way I did them. I did things back then I would never do these days. For example, stabilization technology started to get much better after 2012. That was something that I wish I had back then because no matter how stable I was with a camcorder there would be some shaking.

I do think with all their weaknesses those old videos are still important to have around. For example, the one I did in Big Bear is important because the bridge by the dam is no longer there. Another was the one I did with Blackstar Canyon where for the time on Youtube it was the first one to show that area as a hike to the historic Indian Village area.

So, there is a lot background context that goes with those videos. Some person randomly clicking through videos will not understand this. That is the type of audience I really do not want, but it is the price I pay for having my content public like that. Chances are if you read the blog you have a little more patience to understand this.

With that said, there are some locations I intend to do an updated video with at some point. I remember making some videos with some good ideas, but the technology just was not there to be as good as what was in my head. They were good for the time, but could have been better. We shall how it goes with this. This would be something I do in the long term over the next few years.