Thoughts on channel intros?

[WolfWraith]

Isn't YouTube doing away with intros at the end of the month?

Intros are done by the creators not by YouTube, you add them in while you're editing the actual video.

 

[Toridori]

Mine is no more than 5 or so seconds. I originally made one with music and it was over 10 seconds, but replaying it over and over made it feel more cheesy and distracting from the video. I'm happy with mine now, short and simple.

 

[Paulie Popcorn]

My bad. YouTube is going to discontinue the use of their Branding Intros in the InVideo thing. So you can't edit an intro into your video after you post it.

 

[WolfWraith]

My bad. YouTube is going to discontinue the use of their Branding Intros in the InVideo thing. So you can't edit an intro into your video after you post it.

Yeah, that's because hardly anyone ever used that feature to begin with lol 3 seconds max was too low and you were limited to applying it to all or only newer vids from the time you activated the intro. It was a fairly crummy feature all round.

 

[Okari]

I don't really like intro's... I mean aside from the "Hello everyone! I'm____" type deal but the full on 10 second clip I find it pointless. Some people put it for even longer and I usually just leave their videos if that's the case.

 

[Jaydee C]

I have to redo my intro for my channel relaunch. My original intro was 11 seconds long. BIG MISTAKE. This time around I'm going to have it between 3-5 seconds top, and I'm going to do the intro about 10 -15 seconds into the video.

 

[Mr Stephen]

Mine, I bought. It's 15 seconds long, which I know is far too long now but didn't at the time. Luckily, I'm pretty good with After Effects and can make changes myself. I do have a 4 second version which I need to make a few changes to and start using that instead.

Here's the format I want to use in then future:

* Little spoken intro/joke
* 4 second intro
* Main content
* 10 second outro (people don't need to watch that if they don't want)

 

[eproffer]

Yea, 35 seconds is a really long time to expect people to stay engaged. I keep my intros around 5 seconds, usually. I wouldn't go over 10 secs, you start to lose a lot of people there...

I totally agree, 35 is a long time to get to it. I just got back from SXSW. One of the forums (forgot which one) said we have to engage in like the first 10-15 seconds. If not, people will click away. So, if your intro takes up half that time, you must have something super compelling right off the top. It's making me re-think the way I edit my stories.

 

[SisandBroToyShow]

Intros for us were hard because we wanted something catchy and fun and still explain what we do. We tried 10 secs, 20 secs, and we just decided to put something non intrusive and something that just gets out of the way fast, but is still uniquely us. So we settled on 4 secs of bad singing and our logo.

However, I have seen some intros that were like 15 secs long and I've replayed them because they had a rockin' soundtrack and cool graphics! But I guess it all depends on what you think your audience can handle!

One more thing, yes we had intro fatigue! We always felt there is one more thing we want to change, but in the long run it's better to leave them wanting more!

 

[Niflick]

I used to have an intro like you but then I took an arrow to the subscribe button!

In all seriously, I used to have an intro and I was amazed at the graphics. Then I realized, I was forcing the viewer to watch 5-20 seconds of unnecessary footage. I think the best option is to have a standard greeting because it acts as an intro and does the same thing you want it to do. It embeds your greeting into the viewers mind just like a logo or branding does so whenever they hear it somewhere else, they think of you.

Additionally, you could start with the best 5 seconds of your video then cut and move on to your greeting. You need to grab their attention as fast as possible.