Allow me to gaze upon your channel...

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@Pat Simmons

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm using the complete Adobe Creative Cloud Master Collection for everything I do on the channel - Illustrator for the logos/text, Photoshop for the thumbnails, After Effects for the motion graphics, Audition for the audio recordings and Premiere for general editing and rendering. I use the other programs for other applications outside of YouTube videos but overall I tend to use most of the programs in the package. The problem of course is that it's incredibly expensive - $600AU per year or about $50AU per month if I were to choose that plan. While it is expensive, it's still far cheaper than it used to be. Adobe used to charge $1000+ for a single program and when you factored in the annual upgrades, the cost skyrocketed even with the discount. While $600AU per year is expensive I know how much it used to cost so I'm more than happy to bite the bullet. I do know that Adobe allows trials for their programs so you may want to consider giving it a try to see if it works for you.

That's not saying that free programs can't be good. Audacity is a decent substitute for Audition and Gimp is a good substitute for Photoshop. To me, I've always used Adobe products during my entire educational life so I'm used to the workflow and the features it offers. At the end of the day, use what is most comfortable for you. It's not so much the programs but how you use them that determines the quality of what you do.
 
@ChrisLegend

It'll be an honour to gaze upon your channel.

First impressions - everything you have on your channel is spot on. Your channel art is great, thumbnails are well designed and consistent and considering the channel is about you, having your face in your thumbnails is a great substitute for a logo. The videos themselves are well edited and entertaining to watch.

For your 'Social Experiment' videos where you're doing everything by yourself (without a crew like in your 'What Do Hot Australian Girls Like Sexually In Guys?' video) consider investing in a stabilising rig for your phone. The same rules and principles that apply to film cameras also apply with phone cameras - the further you keep your hands away from the body of the camera, the more stable and less shaky your shot will be.

Other than that, there really isn't anything else I can advise you on. For 4 months worth of work you're already close to cracking the 200 subscriber mark and your view count is solid. You've got a formula for your videos that is clearly working. All you have to do now is keep a regular upload schedule. Excellent work, my friend, and best of luck to you and your channel. I know it'll succeed in the future.
 
Klink said:
@ChrisLegend

It'll be an honour to gaze upon your channel.

First impressions - everything you have on your channel is spot on. Your channel art is great, thumbnails are well designed and consistent and considering the channel is about you, having your face in your thumbnails is a great substitute for a logo. The videos themselves are well edited and entertaining to watch.

For your 'Social Experiment' videos where you're doing everything by yourself (without a crew like in your 'What Do Hot Australian Girls Like Sexually In Guys?' video) consider investing in a stabilising rig for your phone. The same rules and principles that apply to film cameras also apply with phone cameras - the further you keep your hands away from the body of the camera, the more stable and less shaky your shot will be.

Other than that, there really isn't anything else I can advise you on. For 4 months worth of work you're already close to cracking the 200 subscriber mark and your view count is solid. You've got a formula for your videos that is clearly working. All you have to do now is keep a regular upload schedule. Excellent work, my friend, and best of luck to you and your channel. I know it'll succeed in the future.
Click to expand...

Klink you are da real MVP. Massive props and thanks for giving such an in-depth review and evaluation of what my channel has to offer. Your comments are really motivating and inspire me to strive even harder and keep on expanding! That is a really good point actually, a shakey camera is what really kills it for me personally and I am sure others would be in the same boat. If I decide to keep on going with these interviews (which looks like I should well damn be) then it will be a worthy investment. Massive thanks again man for the awesome advice and words :)
 
Hey Klink! Do you reckon you could give my channel a suss! It would be greatly appreciated. You've been giving some excellent advice.
 
@TheSoloSection

G'Day to you. First of all excellent work to everyone on the covers. They sound absolutely fantastic and it shows that all of you have some incredible musical ability. You're also using some pretty top notch gear; I couldn't help but notice you're using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. I'm currently using it for my voice overs on my personal setup. It's a great piece of gear. Then of course there are the microphones and the cameras which are all extremely high quality. You either have some good mates to borrow gear off of or you've spent a craptonne of money. All I know is it shows you're all taking this seriously.

Let's start with the cameras; for your future videos make sure your cameras aren't set to auto focus. I've noticed there are a few times, especially in your earlier videos, where the camera is changing its focus for brief periods of time; it's subtle but still distracting to look at. Set your camera to manual focus, choose a nice focal length and leave it as is. Even if Brooke or yourself move closer or further from the camera, it'll still look fantastic.

There's one other point I wanted to make from a visual perspective; the videos aren't filling the entire 16:9 YouTube frame. I can see about 5 pixels on either side of complete black. It's minimal letterboxing but still noticeable. If you can fill the entire frame, do so, unless of course you're using the letterboxing to frame your shots and draw a viewers eye to a particular region of the screen.

On to branding. Your thumbnails are simple screenshots from the videos themselves with no way of knowing the videos belong to 'TheSoloSelection.' This also applies to your channel header and avatar. Having photos of your performances is great but you should really consider creating a logo that you can apply into one of the corners of your thumbnails. Something to unify your brand, if you will.

Audio wise, there really isn't much I can mention. You've got great gear and your audio mixing is spot on. What you should be thinking about for your future videos and to the future of your channel is how you'd want to proceed - do you want to stick with the living room experience or do you want to record in a studio? I'll provide a few examples, starting with a studio recording:


Followed by the living room experience:

Now a bit of an in-between:

No doubt you can hear the difference in quality; each room has its own acoustic treatment and thus a different sound, mood and quality to it. The environment you record in has a massive impact in how your recordings turn out. For the examples I've provided, Boyce Avenue obviously record in a studio and you can tell because of the clean and pure sound. With Morgan James, it's a pure living room experience in that the room they're recording in gives a much warmer and comfy sound. For Postmodern Jukebox, it's actually more of a living room experience than a studio one; it may not look it in the video I linked but if you were to watch their earlier stuff, you can see how Scott Bradlee transformed his living room into what it is now.

What you should also take away from the examples is how they're recorded. Boyce Avenue and Morgan James have a camera crew that are able to do a lot more visually with their shots, while Postmodern Jukebox make do with just a single camera setup. Think of this as part of your branding - what is it that you want to show your viewers? What do you want your viewers to take away from your channel? What is the impression they should have?

This reply has gone on long enough. Sorry about that. :P Good luck to everyone involved in your channel. I can see some serious potential for everyone and I hope you all find success.


@isaacdmann

I love the design of your channel header and you should find a way to incorporate the font/typeface, the colours and even the white frame/border into your thumbnails. It'll give your channel a nice clean, professional and cohesive design as opposed to slapping on a few emojis.

In your first video, it started off completely out of focus which I'm glad was fixed further on. You should really consider investing in a stabilising rig for your camera/phone as the footage for your first video is shaky as all hell. Since you're recording audio from your camera/phone, it peaks often and is incredibly distorted.

For the second video the light is reflecting off all the white in your room causing a completely over-exposed image. Doing any kind of colour grading or correction on it would be impossible as your camera simply didn't pick up any data in those areas at all. The same also applies to having an under-exposed image (too dark). The same issue also exists for your third video.

Overall, you should consider saving up and investing in a shotgun microphone for your camera or a lavalier/lapel microphone you can wear to get a much cleaner sound for your vocals. For visuals in your future videos, be mindful of the environment you're recording in and try to set the apature, iso or apply ND filters as needed. If your camera doesn't have any of those settings, you may want to consider investing in a higher quality DSLR camera or a proper film camera, however those are worth thousands and might not be beneficial to you right now. It's definitely something to consider in the future though.

It's a decent start to your channel. Keep a regular upload schedule, work on the issues I've pointed out and your channel will definitely grow.
 
Klink said:
@TheSoloSection

G'Day to you. First of all excellent work to everyone on the covers. They sound absolutely fantastic and it shows that all of you have some incredible musical ability. You're also using some pretty top notch gear; I couldn't help but notice you're using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. I'm currently using it for my voice overs on my personal setup. It's a great piece of gear. Then of course there are the microphones and the cameras which are all extremely high quality. You either have some good mates to borrow gear off of or you've spent a craptonne of money. All I know is it shows you're all taking this seriously.

Let's start with the cameras; for your future videos make sure your cameras aren't set to auto focus. I've noticed there are a few times, especially in your earlier videos, where the camera is changing its focus for brief periods of time; it's subtle but still distracting to look at. Set your camera to manual focus, choose a nice focal length and leave it as is. Even if Brooke or yourself move closer or further from the camera, it'll still look fantastic.

There's one other point I wanted to make from a visual perspective; the videos aren't filling the entire 16:9 YouTube frame. I can see about 5 pixels on either side of complete black. It's minimal letterboxing but still noticeable. If you can fill the entire frame, do so, unless of course you're using the letterboxing to frame your shots and draw a viewers eye to a particular region of the screen.

On to branding. Your thumbnails are simple screenshots from the videos themselves with no way of knowing the videos belong to 'TheSoloSelection.' This also applies to your channel header and avatar. Having photos of your performances is great but you should really consider creating a logo that you can apply into one of the corners of your thumbnails. Something to unify your brand, if you will.

Audio wise, there really isn't much I can mention. You've got great gear and your audio mixing is spot on. What you should be thinking about for your future videos and to the future of your channel is how you'd want to proceed - do you want to stick with the living room experience or do you want to record in a studio? I'll provide a few examples, starting with a studio recording:


Followed by the living room experience:

Now a bit of an in-between:

No doubt you can hear the difference in quality; each room has its own acoustic treatment and thus a different sound, mood and quality to it. The environment you record in has a massive impact in how your recordings turn out. For the examples I've provided, Boyce Avenue obviously record in a studio and you can tell because of the clean and pure sound. With Morgan James, it's a pure living room experience in that the room they're recording in gives a much warmer and comfy sound. For Postmodern Jukebox, it's actually more of a living room experience than a studio one; it may not look it in the video I linked but if you were to watch their earlier stuff, you can see how Scott Bradlee transformed his living room into what it is now.

What you should also take away from the examples is how they're recorded. Boyce Avenue and Morgan James have a camera crew that are able to do a lot more visually with their shots, while Postmodern Jukebox make do with just a single camera setup. Think of this as part of your branding - what is it that you want to show your viewers? What do you want your viewers to take away from your channel? What is the impression they should have?

This reply has gone on long enough. Sorry about that. :p Good luck to everyone involved in your channel. I can see some serious potential for everyone and I hope you all find success.


@isaacdmann

I love the design of your channel header and you should find a way to incorporate the font/typeface, the colours and even the white frame/border into your thumbnails. It'll give your channel a nice clean, professional and cohesive design as opposed to slapping on a few emojis.

In your first video, it started off completely out of focus which I'm glad was fixed further on. You should really consider investing in a stabilising rig for your camera/phone as the footage for your first video is shaky as all hell. Since you're recording audio from your camera/phone, it peaks often and is incredibly distorted.

For the second video the light is reflecting off all the white in your room causing a completely over-exposed image. Doing any kind of colour grading or correction on it would be impossible as your camera simply didn't pick up any data in those areas at all. The same also applies to having an under-exposed image (too dark). The same issue also exists for your third video.

Overall, you should consider saving up and investing in a shotgun microphone for your camera or a lavalier/lapel microphone you can wear to get a much cleaner sound for your vocals. For visuals in your future videos, be mindful of the environment you're recording in and try to set the apature, iso or apply ND filters as needed. If your camera doesn't have any of those settings, you may want to consider investing in a higher quality DSLR camera or a proper film camera, however those are worth thousands and might not be beneficial to you right now. It's definitely something to consider in the future though.

It's a decent start to your channel. Keep a regular upload schedule, work on the issues I've pointed out and your channel will definitely grow.
Click to expand...


thank you very much for the feedback, it helps so much, i was sort of aware of the some of the problems such as lighting which ive sorted for my next video i hope, as for the focus and stabbiling ring, ive been looking into them and my dad is going to try and find the best one for me:) again thank you so so much, your review and feedback really covers everything i wanted to know :P
 
Klink said:
@TheSoloSection

G'Day to you. First of all excellent work to everyone on the covers. They sound absolutely fantastic and it shows that all of you have some incredible musical ability. You're also using some pretty top notch gear; I couldn't help but notice you're using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. I'm currently using it for my voice overs on my personal setup. It's a great piece of gear. Then of course there are the microphones and the cameras which are all extremely high quality. You either have some good mates to borrow gear off of or you've spent a craptonne of money. All I know is it shows you're all taking this seriously.

Let's start with the cameras; for your future videos make sure your cameras aren't set to auto focus. I've noticed there are a few times, especially in your earlier videos, where the camera is changing its focus for brief periods of time; it's subtle but still distracting to look at. Set your camera to manual focus, choose a nice focal length and leave it as is. Even if Brooke or yourself move closer or further from the camera, it'll still look fantastic.

There's one other point I wanted to make from a visual perspective; the videos aren't filling the entire 16:9 YouTube frame. I can see about 5 pixels on either side of complete black. It's minimal letterboxing but still noticeable. If you can fill the entire frame, do so, unless of course you're using the letterboxing to frame your shots and draw a viewers eye to a particular region of the screen.

On to branding. Your thumbnails are simple screenshots from the videos themselves with no way of knowing the videos belong to 'TheSoloSelection.' This also applies to your channel header and avatar. Having photos of your performances is great but you should really consider creating a logo that you can apply into one of the corners of your thumbnails. Something to unify your brand, if you will.

Audio wise, there really isn't much I can mention. You've got great gear and your audio mixing is spot on. What you should be thinking about for your future videos and to the future of your channel is how you'd want to proceed - do you want to stick with the living room experience or do you want to record in a studio? I'll provide a few examples, starting with a studio recording:

No doubt you can hear the difference in quality; each room has its own acoustic treatment and thus a different sound, mood and quality to it. The environment you record in has a massive impact in how your recordings turn out. For the examples I've provided, Boyce Avenue obviously record in a studio and you can tell because of the clean and pure sound. With Morgan James, it's a pure living room experience in that the room they're recording in gives a much warmer and comfy sound. For Postmodern Jukebox, it's actually more of a living room experience than a studio one; it may not look it in the video I linked but if you were to watch their earlier stuff, you can see how Scott Bradlee transformed his living room into what it is now.

What you should also take away from the examples is how they're recorded. Boyce Avenue and Morgan James have a camera crew that are able to do a lot more visually with their shots, while Postmodern Jukebox make do with just a single camera setup. Think of this as part of your branding - what is it that you want to show your viewers? What do you want your viewers to take away from your channel? What is the impression they should have?

This reply has gone on long enough. Sorry about that. :p Good luck to everyone involved in your channel. I can see some serious potential for everyone and I hope you all find success.
Click to expand...
Klink, thank you kindly for your review! It's always nice to hear from someone who really knows what they're talking about. I definitely appreciate your kind words about our musicianship. We try to put a lot of effort into all our covers to make them as flawless as possible, but this is difficult without the perfect editing software and of course, the factor of time when it actually comes to recording.

As for the gear, I wanted to make sure I could make high-quality videos for the channel well before I started, so I purchased the focusrite scarlett 2i2 interface (good eye) and the microphone about 2-3 years ago at really affordable prices on a decent website. Of course, the next step was the microphone stand, the cord, the headphones, and the speakers all of which I saved up for during the next year. The camera was a lucky find, as my family are pretty keen on taking decent photos, we have two nice Canons sitting around the house.

In terms of branding, I'll be sure to get on that once I have time! It's a great tip I've heard from you and another reviewer.

In terms of sound quality, I do really want to get more of a boyce avenue, studio feel to it. My bedroom has much better noise cancellation, but is a lot smaller. I think if we were to do what BA does, I need a better video editing software to complement the fact that we're just lipsyncing over a pre-recorded file. This will also impact on time-management as the recording process will increase in longevity twofold. I'll be sure to do this though once I get the hang of adding multiple instruments into the render and as mentioned before, getting better software.

Once again, thank you so much for your review! It's been really helpful. I'll be sure to suss out your videos soon, too :)
 
@TheSoloSection

For editing software, download the trial for Adobe Premiere CC and give it a go. That, or give Sony Vegas a shot. Both are top notch editing programs and are significantly better than Windows Movie Maker. As I've mentioned previously, any product from Adobe isn't cheap so it's important you try it out first to see if it's the right fit for you before making any kind of financial commitment.

It's a point I forgot to make in my original review for your channel; at the moment the way the song titles appear on screen is a very cheap, basic fade in with an Arial typeface. The text/font/typeface ties into the idea of branding - choose a font/typeface that is reflective of your brand.

As I mentioned before, you're all on the right track, so keep it up!
 
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