Your Own Videos

Not counting the digital cameras like the point-and-shoot and the DSLR, most phones have cameras and those cameras have video functions so I'm sure all of us here have our own video footages. What have you been doing with the video footages you have taken? Are you archiving it properly?

I came to think that we have a lot of videos lately and have not been compiling them anymore. Maybe the tech in the house, that's my husband, is busy or have lost motivation. He used to cut and compose a video from those personal videos and put them in CD or DVD then play it on the TV when we have gatherings. It's one good way of initiating a conversation - show some videos to the house guests.

 

@Yvonne Smith most of our videos were taken in our home. When there are no people around, we take videos of our pets. In fact, we had lots of videos of our pets that we had made into a short movie. We were able to extract a story from some footages so we uploaded it to youtube. From what I remember, that video has thousands of views.

Our videos are mostly about gatherings like celebrations or events. Of course, all our travels lately are covered by video and photos. But it seems that we have no time lately so we cannot compile the videos. But it is in the archive and well kept.

 

Although I have a proper video camera, I very rarely use it, and I don't often use the video feature in my phone or camera either. I've always been part of a small family and shooting movies or video was just something we never did except when I was a small child. One of the rare videos I shot a few years ago was the activity of a family of birds that lived in our garden. It doesn't get a lot of views though.

 

If you expect people to just drop by and watch your video on youtube, you will be disappointed. You have to promote it first to your circle. My husband recently uploaded an mtv that he made using his original composition. He had promoted it on his social media accounts and was expecting to get viral among friends. Well, as of the latest count it has only 57 views. Think of the hardship in creating that video - recording the song, shooting scenes, using costumes and props, and editing of the video with subtitles.

 

@Corie Henson - I've tried promoting that video on social media and at one or two other sites, but I don't have a big social media following, so it hasn't helped much. Strangely an earlier video of much worse quality but similar subject matter has received over ten times as many views. Unfortunately I can't put AdSense on the earlier one because I used one of YouTube's music tracks on it.

 

My phone does take videos, in fact I made a video of my mother's 90th birthday party a few weeks back. I have made a few videos of events like parties for the grands kids, but they are still on the camera, I will have to look into getting the pictures and videos into a safer place.

 

Monetization is not allowed in Youtube if your video used music that is not your original. But being viral is out of logic as you had observed. A bad video getting more hits than a good one. It always happens. Do you know that some guys are doing the monitoring and evaluating of videos on youtube to come up with statistics on what elements make a video viral. They don't have conclusive findings on that. Popularity is still an X factor - unknown and has no basis at all.

 

I know that monetization isn't allowed for videos with music that isn't my own. Unfortunately I didn't know one could monetize videos when I uploaded the first one, or I'd never have added the music. When I found out I tried to remove the music, but it seems that it can't be done.

I'd love to know what the elements are that make a video viral, but I'm not sure that they'll find anything conclusive. Anyone who could work that out would become very rich.

 

@Michelle Stevens, my husband is the master in youtube videos, hahahaaa. But he also has some videos that have cover songs. And like you, when the monetization function came up, his old videos couldn't be edited anymore. Most of his videos are about his passion - his own music and creativity. But it's not limited to that, he also has human interest like traffic on the road. He's got one video that went viral (before the monetization) and it now has almost 200k views. With the earnings in youtube, his bank remains at zero until now.

 

@Corie Henson - If that's the case it doesn't sound like I've got much chance of making money out of YouTube, even if I put effort into it. Maybe I'm better off sticking to writing and photography. On the other hand, it would be a thrill to have a video go viral, even if I don't make any money from it.

 

I don't usually film that often. When I do, it's mostly of family vacations or special events, and I am forced to upload them to the cloud. My wife would kill me if I would lose any of the precious moments. Even if it's just footage of her, she still thinks it's "special" and doesn't need to be lost.

 

I am not a photo-enthusiast person, much less interested on video, even when I know how important is media to succeed in business today.

However in a family context, while I liked to take photos before the digital era, by the arrival of this I lost interest probably because I started to have less and less time to go around capturing landmarks, which was my kind of favorite photography.

Even though no personal/family photo or video footage are longer of my interest since my father passed away over six years ago, time at which my mother burned down all those photos and old-time movies/videos he was in, while I found she had some photos of me, being a child, totally broken and abandoned like if they were trash.

This hurt me so much that, starting since, I promised to myself never take or keep any photo or video that someday could be destroyed for someone I love.

 

@Carlota Clemens, that's a sad story you have. I cannot imagine the pain you felt upon learning of those burned photos. Certainly photographs, old or new, digital or not, are pages of history even if that photo was taken only yesterday. Photos are like time that you cannot go back to. Once taken, it is that already and you cannot take the same photo on another day.

We don't have much photos when we were young because we didn't own a camera. Most of our photos were taken in the studio. So now we are taking so much photos with the digital camera to get even with the times.

 

I recently discovered that it's possible to remove the music from those old videos, so I've done that to mine and I was finally able to monetize it. Somehow I doubt I'll ever earn anything from it though. Still, I recommend your husband tries to remove the songs from his, just in case he's able to earn from one of them.