Subscribers to the Blog or Die! YouTube channel expect to see radios doing the talking, with some occasional titles to give context. In large part, those videos supplement the detailed reviews of radios and discussion of shortwave listening that appear here on Blog or Die!
I like the blog format and have written thousands of articles for my blogs, the oldest of which is Blog or Die, registered in 2004 (some of the content goes back at least to 1995). I notice, however, that the Blog or Die YouTube channel gets far more engagement than the Blog or Die website, so I’m going to try an experiment, taking my next Blog or Die shortwave radio blog post and reading it, probably verbatim, on my YouTube channel, with video supporting the article added.
My problem with YouTube (besides the advertising) is that you can’t search for text within a video. You can’t simply listen to the part you want, and skip the rest. The presenter sets the presentation order and the pace. I hope with my approach, it will be the best of both worlds: video for those inclined that way, and text for the ones looking just for specifics. (I love Todd Erbert’s videos, but if I see one more comparison of a radio to a pack of Iron Man playing cards, I’m gonna explode.) I’ve learned how to add chapters to my videos, marks on the time line where viewers can locate specific content. I did it with my Radio Friends at the Pond video, and now you can directly position to each of the radios featured. I’ll be doing that for my videos going forward when it makes sense.
Longer videos with voice over add a fair amount of extra work; video editing is more time consuming than writing text. I want the video to be decent looking and that requires attention to video production, something I’m not skilled at. At this point, I don’t intend to appear myself in the videos, but voice over static images is pretty lame. I’ll have to think more about that.
There will be some delay after the articles before the video version is published. My blog articles go through several revisions shortly after they are published (sometimes years later). I want a close-to-final version for the video, because while the blog is easy to change, you’re stuck with what you upload to YouTube unless you want to delete it entirely and start over. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
The first video in the series is likely be a “first impressions” look at the Tecsun PL-880 receiver that is scheduled to be delivered to me June 1. That day is also a day that a station of particular interest to me, Music 4 Joy, is on the air. If the radio arrives on time (it didn’t), I’ll give that a shot and compare reception with the PL-880 it to my venerable Tecsun PL-660. If it’s not available, perhaps I’ll compare reception of CFRX in Toronto — in the park?
[Update] The video is posted.