Newbie video - feedback on editing welcome

Hey, I made my first YouTube video using shotcut a few days ago [link below]. Though I spent a LOT of time on the editing side, there is still much to be desired. Would appreciate any feedback on:

  • Lighting
  • Sound
  • Subtitles
  • Anything else that stands out to the more experienced users here.

Thanks!

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Congratulations! This is one of the most astonishing and impressing videos i’ve seen concerning foreign language speaking! If you can really speak all of these 10 languages fluently, its really hard to say which one is your mother tongue :slight_smile: I can definetly say that german is not your mother language (i am :-)), and i am pretty sure your are not chinese or japonaise. It could be portuguese, maybe french or even hebrew?
Some of these languages i consider very tough to learn. You should definetly try thai language! If you only make a little mistake in the pronounciation or the tone it could mean something completely different leading to lot of fun if you speak to thai people! I tried to learn it for fun and i could ask for the hair dresser or order a beer :slight_smile: - and it worked fine. I even could joke at the hairdresser but when they start to talk quickly you hardly understand anything!

To come to your topic i hardly can find anything to improve! I just wondered what the picture in the bottom left corner wants to say to me? :slight_smile: From me a clear 5 star rating! *****

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I can definetly say that french is not your mother language :wink:

Pour en revenir à votre vidéo, je n’ai rien à redire si ce n’est peut-être que personnellement j’aurai mis les sous-titres sur bandeau à 30 ou 50% d’opacité pour améliorer la visibilité des lettres blanches sur le fond clair.
Je mets la traduction en anglais pour les autres lecteurs, je suis persuadé que votre niveau vous permet de comprendre la version originale.
Bravo.

Coming back to your video, I have nothing to complain about except that I personally would have put the subtitles on a 30 or 50% opacity banner to improve the visibility of the white letters on the light background.
I put the translation in English for other readers, I am sure that your level allows you to understand the original version.
Congratulations.

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Thanks so much! Will take into consideration, and also encouraging to know that it doesn’t look bad for more experienced eyes than mine.

Eh oui bien sûr je ne suis pas français :slight_smile:

Really appreciate the supportive comment, both on content (which I didn’t expect!) and on the editing side. Thanks!

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Other people have already commented on how fun your topic is (the most important part!), and I’ll add that I’m very impressed with the audio quality you achieved in that room. So I’ll add a couple of technical thoughts instead of content thoughts:

  • Contrast: There isn’t much of a visual cue that says “focus on my face” because your skin and the wall color are both on the lighter side, which means no contrast. A background that’s more opposite of your skin tone will create more contrast and clear focus. One way to achieve this is simply a different wall color. The other way is through lighting, which leads to…

  • Lighting: One way to achieve contrast is to put more distance between yourself and the background wall, then light yourself with a dedicated lamp or spotlight from the side rather than use overhead lighting. Three things will happen. First, eliminating overhead lighting will also eliminate the raccoon-eye shadows in your eye sockets. Second, a dedicated light that’s close to you will make you significantly brighter than the background wall, creating contrast even if the wall itself is white. The wall will still appear darker than you because it isn’t receiving as much light as you. Third, lighting from a slight side angle will create a side-to-side shadow gradient over your face, which gives us a sense of 3D form and depth that doesn’t happen when the entire face is washed out to the same level of brightness by straight-on lighting.

  • Zoom in more: If we made the entire frame red, then drew a green circle over your face, the green circle would only fill up 8% of the frame. If the face is the most important element, why is it given such a low percentage of the frame? This is the Occam’s Razor approach to composition… the important things should be given a higher percentage of the frame. It’s hard to hold viewer attention when literally 92% of the frame has nothing of interest to them. I realize you need some buffer for overlay graphics (which could all be done on a single side rather than both), and it’s true that nobody wants Nasal Cam to fill 100% of the screen. But in your case, I think a significant amount of zoom to make your face larger would go a long way, especially for cell phone viewers. If the phone is held in portrait mode and your video is shrunk to the top half of the screen, your face will be shrunk to around one centimeter wide with tons of buffer on the sides doing nothing. That’s too small of a face to hold viewer attention.

That’s all that stood out to me. None of those things prevented me from enjoying the video, so they aren’t complaints. They’re just ideas to hopefully make a good thing even better.

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Great tips, thanks! I took notes and will def use some of these techniques in future videos.

From a content perspective, the video is great! Talking head videos are always one of the hardest videos to make because it’s just one person talking into the camera. The trick is to avoid for it to be monotonous and keep the audience’s attention. So after a few minutes, it’s important to have a visual change of pace. Many bloggers solve this by changing the magnification, so that it’s zoomed in more. You can also film the different languages in different rooms or sometimes outside. A change of camera angle every 2 minutes is another. You can also change the background. Anything to visually to keep an audience’s attention especially in this age’s low attention span.

You have lots of opportunities to change the pace visually when you switch languages. Change shirts, hats, lighting, rooms. The possibilities are endless.

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