So I designed (with AI help) a logo...

[Kasey Chang]

Looks like I need to generate a lot more shorts to drive traffic to my long content. I just, for the funsies, made 4 short videos by taking some scenes from my long videos. The explosions and whatnot are getting more views in the few minutes they were up than I've gotten from my long videos in weeks.

EDIT: Holy ****, the 15 second short of an escort getting hit by a torpedo has racked up 284 455 685 views in like 30 minutes. That's more than any of my long videos.

[Hrothgar]

Yes, Youtube is always trying to shove short videos in my face. I guess that's what prime demographic likes. You do have some pretty involved games. You might have success with some "Intro to" and "Why I like" short videos for each of your main games.

[Kasey Chang]

The sucky part is right now, Youtube's interface only allow Android users to create 15 second shorts even though technically the max length of short is 60 seconds. There's no official way so far to create shorts from the regular browser interface. Can't upload them to short or whatever. You can only clip it from your long videos.

EDIT: Well, it's fun while it lasted. During that 1 hour last night, 4 shorts racked up 1000 views. That's more than the whole channel's worth for about a month.

[Blackhawk]

That's awesome (for you) and sad (for humanity.)

[Hrothgar]

The sucky part is right now, Youtube's interface only allow Android users to create 15 second shorts even though technically the max length of short is 60 seconds.

Google claims you can just tap on the 15s at the upper right corner to select a longer time. It does seem like most creators use shorts to drive viewers to their channel. Good luck.

[Kasey Chang]

Okay me bad, but it STILL doesn't let you edit content, like pick 2-3 segments together to make a 1 minute short. This is nothing more than a fancy "clip" function. And submarine combat doesn't lend itself to that sort of clipping. You shoot, and 10 minutes later the torpedoes arrive.

To make this work, I have to create summarized versions of my regular playthrough, THEN try to clip it.

[Blackhawk]

They're going after the TikTok crowd making funny faces at the camera, not the meaningful content crowd.

[Kasey Chang]

Here's an Invoke.ai installer that gives you Stable Diffusion power AT HOME, provided you have an RTX video card. Download is... 17 GB. Yikes. I'll give it a try, no idea how it will work...

[Kasey Chang]

The AI at home thing (invoke.ai) is not worth trying, at least not without better hardware. My hardware, which isn't exactly a slouch, takes 8 minutes to generate a 512x512 picture. That's WAY TOO LONG to be useful. During that time both CPU and GPU are like 100% pegged.

[Kasey Chang]

Okay, my attempt to optimize my channel with revamping some of my old content with newer thumbnails

Style 1: Bokeh/blurred background, no "tips and tactics"




Style 2: no blurred background, "tips and tactics" in color gradient

[Unagi]

“Tips and Tactics” is basically impossible to read there.

You should stick to 1 color for the text (white is good), so the eye knows what to read vs what is picture

[Victoria Raverna]

If anyone was stopped from trying Invoke ai because it took Kasey 8 minutes to generate 512x512 image, your experience might not be the same. On my PC, it took less than a minute, far less than a minute. My PC is not a high end gaming PC (i5-9400 and 3060 Ti).

[Blackhawk]

Okay, my attempt to optimize my channel with revamping some of my old content with newer thumbnails

Style 1: Bokeh/blurred background, no "tips and tactics"




Style 2: no blurred background, "tips and tactics" in color gradient

The blurred background is easier to read, no question. But the non-blurred background might attract more viewers (them seeing the game they're interested in attracts viewers.)

And yeah, don't get too fancy with the text. You've already got multiple fonts in play, adding multiple colors just creates confusion.

[Kasey Chang]

Got it, I ended up with this one:

[Kasey Chang]

So far, I've revamped my second most popular content... It seems people are starting to notice my earlier videos about Genesis Alpha one, as the game apparently has reached clearance price level and is popular again? I've spent the last couple hours rewriting the retagging and re-thumbnail-ing the dozen videos in the Genesis Alpha One 2nd playthrough. They seem to be generating some views from the shorts.

I generated about a dozen shorts based on some of the more intense combat segments from Genesis Alpha One, and they seems to be doing decent, a couple hundred views each for the more popular ones within the last couple hours, very little for the rest. But as they are essentially clips, they should link to my main content, which is a bit long (some are long than 2 hours).

Guess I should do more of this with my Cold Waters content.

[Kasey Chang]

The more I looked at other people's thumbnails, the less I like my own. I think it needs to be *slightly* more click-baity.



The reasons so far:

The words have to grab people's attention, if they are there. There is a lot of "This Changes Everything", basically a "call to action". The rabbithole of these Youtube videos is extremely deep, and ultimately it's to sell you ****. Some of the more successful thumbnails in similar niche has minimal branding on the thumbnail, and minimal text. I think I need to go that way as well. So I've made my own branding smaller, pushed it into upper left corner, and enlarged logo, tips and tactics, and eliminated the verbiage with the episode title. It's just a number but "#1 of 12" promises there are more to come.

[TheMix]

That is ... not good. The "Tips and Tactics" is actually somewhat uncomfortable to look at. I wouldn't click on that.

[Kasey Chang]

Before this series debuts in a couple days, I'm changing all the thumbnails:

Before



vs after

[TheMix]

That one is definitely better.

[Blackhawk]

That is ... not good. The "Tips and Tactics" is actually somewhat uncomfortable to look at. I wouldn't click on that.

I would agree.

A thumbnail is an elevator pitch. A viewer needs to glance at it, get the relevant information, and want more. If they have to work to get information from it beyond that glance, they keep scrolling. At thumbnail scale, "Tips and Tactics" is almost unreadable, blends with the background, and obscures the parts that were readable before.

[Blackhawk]

Searched for "Tips and tricks", bringing up some random results with lots of hits.



Big word "Tactics" and the logo tells me what I'm looking at - but it is in the corner, out of the way. That draws me in and makes me curious. The rest is in a high-contrast background that doesn't obscure the screenshot, itself chosen to represent what the video is about at a glance. All words are black, white or yellow.



Bright colors, and the words have so much drop shadow that they are almost in a separate box for contrast. It does not obscure the screenshot. That said, I haven't the faintest idea what it is giving tips for (presumably that is what the title right next to the thumbnail is for.) Black and white, there is a gradiant in the "100 Tips", but it is very subtle, not jarring, and it is spread out over a much larger letter.



I dislike the meme screenshot (almost as much as I hate the trend of "creator's face showing shock" in thumbnails), but it is very readable. Dark background, white text.



The screenshot, again, is the focus, and is not obscured. Red and white text.



I really like logos in thumbnails (but they shouldn't dominate it.) Here, both the logo and text are placed in a way that still lets you see the screenshot it's made from. White and yellow text on black background.

Some suggestions:

1. Try choosing screenshots with high contrast (this is yellowish brown against brownish yellow.) Pick screenshots where the subject of interest is offset slightly to one side (read up on the Rule of Thirds if you aren't familiar with it, which increases interest and gives you space for text without hiding the game itself.)

2. Try shrinking the logo and putting it where your head is, and your head right under it. The game's logo, if included, should be informational, not the focus (and in this one, the logo is very much the focus.) In the corner is a great place for it.

3. "Tips and Tactics" are what people are looking for. It should stand out more. In your example, it has a harsh gradient and is yellow (against yellow.) If you're going to use a gradient, either make it very subtle, or put it in its own 'box' (like #s 1 and 5 above), and yellow to hot pink is too much.

4. "#1 of 12" has the largest font on the image, and it's the least important information. If you want it in the thumbnail, shrink it and shunt it out of the way, or move it to the title text.

[Kasey Chang]

That is ... not good. The "Tips and Tactics" is actually somewhat uncomfortable to look at. I wouldn't click on that.

Good thing I've only done it to 1 out of 12 episodes so far. I'm trying to think of some way to fit that in "comfortably".

The problem is this is not strictly a tips and tactics video. It's more of a playthrough where I talk a lot about tips and
tactics. Let me think about that.

I know: "Veteran Playthrough"

[Blackhawk]

I looked at some screenshots, and it isn't the most colorful game out there, making it hard to find good examples. But here are some I found fairly quickly, looked at as if I were making a thumbnail:



It's a dark image, but the bright machine (about 1/3 in from the side, not centered) plus the white gun create contrast with the darkness. Most of the left side and bottom don't have anything but darkness, giving you space for text.



Dark gun, dark background, and incredibly busy. I have no idea what I'm looking at.



The whole thing is bright, and the focus is all over the place - I'm not sure which of the figures to look at - and none of it really stands out. Plus, there isn't any 'free space' that's good for titles.



Not great at first glance... but tweak the contrast and mirror that sucker...



That's a really rough and quick tweak, but you get the idea.

[TheMix]

That is ... not good. The "Tips and Tactics" is actually somewhat uncomfortable to look at. I wouldn't click on that.

Good thing I've only done it to 1 out of 12 episodes so far. I'm trying to think of some way to fit that in "comfortably".

The problem is this is not strictly a tips and tactics video. It's more of a playthrough where I talk a lot about tips and
tactics. Let me think about that.

I know: "Veteran Playthrough"

That's not bad.

It even looks like you could switch your picture to the left and the game name to the right, and not obscure the ship(?) in the picture. But then the game name wouldn't be over the content description... which may matter.

[Kasey Chang]

I realized I'm kinda doing it wrong. I should be creating short videos as tips, rather than trying to make people watch the long videos.

And I realized I can be using my longplay videos as a backdrop, while using a green back ground to overlay my content on top.

This is the result, and it's a lot slicker than I expected. Whether it will catch eyeballs... is another matter.

[Kasey Chang]

Gah, only after uploading the video did I realize the "end screen" design is not fitting with my own end screen at the end. Had to make some adjustments. Does youtube care if you uploaded two of the same videos? Hmmm... probably not.

I am liking this CapCut. It has a lot of these built-in text effects you can just drag and drop and customize. That "thanks for watching" at the every end and the like/subscribe buttons are theirs.

The kinetic text slide thing in the middle is from VideoFXMaker, something I paid for years ago and barely used, guess it's getting a workout. I intentionally set a green background to all the slides in it, basically making it an overlay for my longplay video.

Capcut is also a bit easier to use than Shotcut in some instances. It has also built-in a ton of music samples (meme segments, commercial "muzak") you can add and I used that fully here. That's not in Shotcut. There's also built-in stickers (simple static overlays).

I then added my own voiceover and I like this interface better than Shotcut's.

Combining the two sets of footage together, however, seems to be my crowning achievement today. (pats self in back)

[Kasey Chang]

Question... Which thumbnail is better:

Less Verbiage



or More verbiage?



-----

And what about these? After looking at them from a far, it seems the logos are a bit TOO bright, and the watery background a bit too dark. A bit too MUCH contrast. But I'm going for readability.