Videos

One of the biggest benefits that the rise of consumer technology has brought to us is that it’s essentially let anyone become their own videographer.

Unfortunately, that shift has rooted itself way too deep into the society. And while it’s great that anyone can make their own video about whatever they want, and then share it with the rest of the world, it’s become obnoxious that there’s now this codependence on the consumption of video for understanding the world around us.

I see this generally as I’m mostly complaining about the classwork I’ve been doing that has required me to make videos, despite my degree having nothing to do with video production or broadcasting. It’s a process that’s distracted from me getting other things done (regardless of how much I actually have to do it) as I need to go and record a bunch of things, then stitch them all together in iMovie. And with university requirements on closed captioning. It’s a process that feels even worse.

I genuinely have nothing wrong with the closed captioning requirement. But closed captioning is also a process that requires writing out a better script and having a general understanding of what you are writing about to avoid as much prose as you can. and in general, the fastest way has just been to upload to YouTube and use their captioning services there. Which also feels like it violates the spirit of the rule. 

But honestly what makes the whole video production process obnoxious is the lack of information I have on it. I may have experience working with several video editing tools, but I certainly don’t have any experience with designing a good informative video. And while others, as part of their jobs, may be able to whip out videos quickly before a deadline. I don’t have that kind of workflow. 

It’s true that some things can only be understood in the form of a video. But there are a lot of things that also genuinely don’t need it explained like that. I feel like throughout my classes, I’ve had to waste a ton of time editing and putting videos together just to avoid the inconvenient feeling of having a watermarked submission there’s some cheap third-party tool.  and then worrying if my editing is too fast or slow paced that an instructor is going to be able to understand it. 

Many people don’t even seem aware that their devices may even be able to record their screen without the use of third-party technology. And the ones that don’t clearly don’t seem to know about applications like OBS they can do everything watermark free.

Of course, OBS can also be a difficult app to work with if you’re just wanting to do some basic recording. Especially given that an app also built for livestreaming. Which leads me back to square one, making videos are not easy. And we shouldn’t be asking every day folks to be compiling their findings into presentations that end up going either too long, or far too short (definitely looking at TikTok here).

In addition to it being difficult to make videos, finding the information you need in one isn’t easy. Especially when trying to solve a computer problem.

Several times while looking for guides on configuring certain software, I’ve encountered online articles that are actually just the transcripts for a video. So they’ll be referring to things that there is no context to because they’re entirely on screen.

It’s not to say that I don’t like watching videos at all. It’s just that it’s frustrating when the only source of information you can find for something is a video. And since you can’t just use the find text shortcut to jump around a specific portions as you need. you have to keep track of a long playback bar and repeat small segments over and over again. And there’s also just sitting around waiting for the specific part you’re looking for to come up to if the person or platform you’re using doesn’t include time stamps.

In addition, while everyone can read at different speeds, everyone is forced to watch a video at the same speed. Sure, many clients allow you to adjust the speed of the video. But now, unlike reading, where you can tell if you might be going too fast if you’re not understanding things, and slow down if you need to. A video is always going to go fast, and adjusting the speed any further doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to be picking up anything further.

Google seems to be aware of the mess that they’ve created with YouTube and it’s impact on society. So, using the Next Big Thing, they’re putting everything uploaded to their website through their information shaped sentence generator so you can get a water down, potentially incorrect digest of bits and bobs here and there.

AI kind of feels funny here because it shows you just sometimes how messed up society‘s workflow as a whole is. And all the weird bending over backwards, we have to do to get things done. Like sending arbitrary amounts of emails, engaging in meetings that could’ve been emails, or making large video presentations that could’ve been an email.

Writing a lot of it out (mostly just saying it aloud, because I do a lot of the writing for this blog through the dictation function on my phone), it makes me realize just how much people hate reading. Perhaps there’s a bit of a literacy crisis maybe? I’m honestly not sure. But it actually does almost look like it could be a sign of a bigger problem.