geerlingguy / youtube

YouTube channel repo. Stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.

Jeff Geerling - YouTube

I currently have two YouTube channels:

Channel	Subscribers
Jeff Geerling (main channel)
Geerling Engineering (second channel)

This repository is a home for my YouTube production process, my thoughts on video creation and workflows, and sometimes stores things related to channel videos or series, if the work doesn't fit better in some other repository.

Since I started my work in computing, I loved the open source philosophy, and I develop almost every line of code in the open. This repo is an extension of that philosophy.

Supporting my work

Please consider sponsoring my work on GitHub Sponsors or Patreon.

I have Crohn's disease and a family I support, and I am thankful to be able to do the work I do with the support of people who've liked my blog, open source projects, or videos.

Equipment

Many people ask about what camera I use, what software I use to edit, etc. — instead of constantly emailing them back, I thought I'd keep a current listing of the equipment I use in my video production workflow.

The links below are mostly affiliate links.

Hardware

• A-roll camera: Sony a6600 + Sony 24mm 1.8
• B-roll camera #1: Sony a6600 + Sony 16-55mm 2.8 G
• B-roll camera #2: iPhone Pro 13
• B-roll Macro lens: Sony 50mm 2.8 Macro
• Handheld Vlog camera: GoPro Hero 10 Black
  • SmallRig Hero 10 Black Cage
  • Sennheiser MKE 200 mini shotgun mic
  • GoPro Max Grip + Tripod
• Timelapse/utility camera: GoPro Hero 7 Black
• Tripod (main): Manfrotto MT190XPRO3 + 128RC Fluid head
• Tripod (secondary): Manfrotto 3001BN + Manfrotto 494RC2
• Motorized slider (for b-roll): iFootage Shark Slider Nano
• Gimbal (primary): DJI RSC 2 Combo
• Gimbal (secondary): DJI OM5 Smartphone Stabilizer
• Preview monitor (a-roll): Blackmagic Video Assist 3G 7"
• Teleprompter (a-roll): Glide Gear TMP75
• Bluetooth Remote (for teleprompter): Satechi R2
• Preview monitor stand: Manfrotto PIXI Mini
• Microphone: Sennheiser MKE600
• Preamp: Symetrix 528E
• USB Audio Interface: Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD
• Microphone (wireless): Rode Wireless Go II
• Microphone (lav): Rode Lavaliere Go x2
• SD Cards: Sony TOUGH Series
• Acoustic Treatment: Owens Corning 703 Acoustic Insulation
• HDMI Capture Interface: Elgato Cam Link 4K
• Desk Light #1: Elgato Key Light
• Desk Light #2: Elgato Key Light Air
• Portable audio recorder: Zoom H6
• Portable lav mic / bodypack: Zoom F2 Bodypack Recorder

Software

• Apple Final Cut Pro X (editing)
• Felt Tip Sound Studio (audio recording)
• Apple Photos (used to manage photo library for stills)
• Adobe Photoshop (thumbnail creation)
• Apple Keynote (illustrations and simple motion graphics)
• iShowU Instant (screen capture)
• OBS (streaming)
• Sublime Text (writing)
• Teleprompter Premium (script reading)
• Trello (project organization)
• Hubstaff (vendor invoicing)
• Social Blade (external analytics)
• Hindenburg Field Recorder (mobile audio recording)

My philosophy (why I'm making videos)

I've always wanted to teach.

There's a saying:

Those who can't do, teach.

That saying is complete and utter BS.

There are doers, and there are teachers, and some of the same requirements cross over, while others do not. In early 2021, I quit a very lucrative software development career and more than halved my annual income to devote my full work week to writing and creating my books, blog, open source projects, and videos.

And I can say, definitively: to be able to teach well, you not only have to know how to do. You have to know why you do, how not to do, and the entire history of whatever task is being done.

I think most people have had bad teachers. And most have had amazing teachers that radically changed their perspective on something.

I can vividly recall two teachers in high school who ignited my passion for writing, and they were both teachers who could run circles around most professionals in their field.

I've always wanted to teach like they did.

And with this YouTube channel, I can do that—in ways I think many teachers never could've, to new and diverse global audiences.

Let me hop down from my high horse, though... if you've watched my videos, you can see I'm not always teaching.

I also have to entertain (for better or worse), earn a paycheck, and support my family. That means it's not 24x7 lecturing, like you'd get if you walk into a college classroom.

So I accept paid sponsorship (either via trade or direct payment).

Sponsorships

I accept sponsorships sparingly. Every sponsor I've had on the channel is a company or small business I've interacted with on a personal level—either through direct communication with owners or personal use or interest in the products they offer.

Sponsor Vetting

I'm picky about corporate sponsors and will never promote something I feel is either scammy or wouldn't be a good value for viewers who might click through the sponsor's link.

Paid Videos / Product Showcase Videos

I never do paid 'product showcase' videos (where a sponsor pays for a video highlighting their own talking points).

Review Videos

I do accept review samples, and sometimes devote a video to a particular product if I find it interesting, but I never accept any payment for those videos, nor do I give the company that sent the product any input into the creative process.

They are seeing the video for the first time when it goes live on the channel, just like the rest of my audience.

Pricing

The tech space is flooded with thousands of channels churning out paid review content and low-effort videos.

I create stories, not just videos that run through feature checklists and offer boring exposition.

As such, many of my videos—even on more mundane topics—are watched by a much more invested and consistent audience. My channel's AVD is high, and sponsored segments integrate into the video topic itself, leading to much higher viewership.

I have a fixed paid sponsorship rate based on my channel's CPM, or Cost Per Mille (cost per thousand views), and the CPM used in this calculation is currently $15.00 USD.

I update my sponsorship rate regularly, based on the average view count for all long-form videos posted in the past 90 days. The rate is negotiable depending on the specific video and sponsorship.

Process - How I make a video

1. Ideation: Takes anywhere from hours to months or years. I have a running list of every video idea or topic jotted down in a Trello card in an 'Ideas' column. 90% of these never make it to production, but I always have at least 10-20 projects I want to work on in the wings. If it requires external help (collaboration, sponsorship, etc.), I will often create a folder in my active Video Projects directory for it to throw any notes and materials I gather.

2. Rough Scheduling: I try to have videos scheduled out for at least 3-4 weeks in the future. Sometimes it gets down to 1-2 weeks, and that's when things get more stressful.

3. Research: I have a Trello column for 'In Production'. I limit myself to two videos at a time (my personal WIP limit), no matter how much planning is required. Research often involves installing something ten different ways, taking it apart and putting it back together. Sometimes breaking and un-breaking it. Then benchmarking it for hours, checking thermals, debugging issues I find, contacting vendors, waiting for accessories required to complete testing, etc. Sometimes, this is the bulk of the work for a given video, and it can take days or weeks. Rarely, months.

   Sometimes I also record some 'b-roll' during this portion. I'll take screen recordings of relevant parts of the process, I'll take some product pictures, get a little footage of my setups, that sort of thing.

4. Script Writing: Once I have a good body of research, and feel I understand the topic enough to speak coherently about it, I open up a script document, and write. I write as fast as I can, focusing first on overall structure (I often put a few section headings in, with one or two notes per section), then on the introduction. I spend a lot of time reworking the introduction, to try to give the most important information in the first 5, 10, or 15 seconds. YouTube rewards the ability to 'hook' viewers in the first 30 seconds, and I've found an interesting first 5 will go a long way towards keeping someone's attention.

   The rest of the video has to be good, too, though. And at my speaking rate of around 170 words per minute, I try to limit my videos to 2000-3000 words tops.

   I have never added fluff/padding to my scripts—on the contrary, I am often ruthless in cutting out parts I don't think serve to highlight the main topic of the video, or the story I'm trying to convey.

   During the Script Writing process, I also tend to throw out two or three title ideas, along with thumbnails to go with them. If I'm doing really well, I'll even make sure the title and thumbnail tie in strongly to the first five seconds of the script!

5. Script Read: When I feel like I have a good script (usually after two or three drafts), I read the entire script out loud, usually twice. During this time, I tweak the text to fit my spoken style, like changing "would not" to "wouldn't" and "going to" to "gonna". The key is to make my brain translate what I read from the teleprompter into something close to how I normally talk.

6. A-roll Recording: I record most videos in one long take, with pauses between every few paragraphs. Sometimes I'll take a 2nd camera and teleprompter to another location to record parts of the A-roll elsewhere, if the script calls for it.

7. B-roll Recording: I often put this off until after I begin the editing process, but I shouldn't. I'll record inserts, product shots, and screen recordings that help illustrate certain points in my video. There are often 10 or so B-roll clips per minute of A-roll, and some of these shots require many minutes or even hours of preparation, so sometimes I incorporate B-roll capture into my research. Frequently I'll assemble and tear down a particular setup five or six times in the course of making a video. It can get quite tedious.

8. Ingest: After all this is done, I stash every asset—A-roll audio and video, B-roll clips, screen recordings, product images, illustration files, etc.—into a 'Scratch' folder in a project folder for the video I'm working on. Then I'll create a new Final Cut Pro Library and import all assets into it.

9. Edit: As a rule of thumb, assembling all the footage in the edit takes at least one hour per minute of final video. Sometimes two or three, depending on the complexity of the edit. Some aspects, like fixing audio mistakes, adding motion text or graphics, or even mundane things like tracking a blur on something, can double or triple the time required editing a video.

10. Pickups: During the editing process, I note any timestamps where an extra insert (like a motorized dolly shot of something) would spice up the video. Then I spend a few hours gathering the missing pickup shots that I didn't get in my initial B-roll acquisition. Then I incorporate the pickups into the video.

11. Final Review: I watch through the entire video, full screen, both with and without headphones. I listen for any audio gaffes, make sure I have decent transitions, and try to catch any flaws in titling, effects, and overlays. After I'm happy with the edit, I export the video using Final Cut Pro's built-in Share tool.

12. Metadata: While the video is exporting, I work on metadata, and choose my final title and thumbnail idea. Then I fill in a description, go through the video and translate my script sections to timestamps, add relevant tags, and note any times when I want to add cards to the video.

13. Upload: The end is in sight. I upload the video to YouTube, copy and paste all the metadata over into YouTube, and schedule the video for the appropriate day and time.

14. Thumbnail: Sometimes I'll have already worked on a thumbnail if I was able to think of a good idea earlier in the process. But usually between the time I upload the video and it's publish date, I'll set up my greenscreen and some lights, and either use my camera remote and self-timer or my wife's assistance to get ten or twenty different thumbnail image options. I try to minimize 'YouTube Face', but I also know without a certain amount of clickability, my video will get buried. I aim for a happy medium of 'mildly clickbait' expressions, while not embarrassing myself—at least not too much.

15. Blog Post: After uploading the thumbnail, I usually write a completely separate blog post on the topic. Sometimes I'll have already written the blog post's outline during the Script Writing process, other times I'll start from scratch.

    But I've found that writing a video script and writing a compelling blog post require a different style of prose, so I usually spend a few hours writing a separate blog post covering most of the topics in a given video. Sometimes my blog post is more of a short summary, though, if the video is highly visual or process-oriented, and the topic won't translate well to written form.

At long last, the day the video posts, I run through a checklist, sharing the video to my audience on social media, publishing my blog post, and interacting in the comments section for at least a couple hours. I'll come back a few points through the day and check recent comments again.

The community on YouTube is generally constructive and supportive, and even those who detract on my channel often do so in a respectful and helpful way, so I get a lot of value out of the comments section.

Editing - Titling

Titling used to be a separate editing stage, after cuts were made. Nowadays, NLEs have made titling a lot easier, at least in simple cases.

But titles can still get quite complicated. I like to keep things simple—most of the time—and my current title style is:

• Font: Montserrat
• Face: Bold or ExtraBold
• Color: White
• Size: (choose a size that fits with the title displayed)
• Style: 1px black outline, 3px black drop shadow

My main goal is for titles to be legible, and only to be used to enhance the visuals or spoken word.

Title Templates

I am slowly building up a Title template library for custom titling I do on the channel. For quick pop-up caption titles, I use my 'Caption' Motion template, and for references to other YouTube videos (overlaid when playing a clip from one of those videos), I use the 'YouTube Video Title' template.

These templates are inside the fcpx/motion/titles directory in this repository. See the included README for where to place them for use in Final Cut Pro X.

Editing - Sound Design

I started my career working in radio. I did mostly IT-related tasks, but radio is an inherently audio-focused industry, so I spent a lot of time working around audio and voice processing chains during the era when everything converted from analog to digital.

So I have a pretty deep understanding of audio, and I think anyone who's successful in video knows how essential good audio and sound design are to making a great video.

For my YouTube channel, I mainly focus on getting the cleanest audio possible in my footage, so I only have to tweak things slightly during editing.

That said, almost every audio clip I record gets a baseline level of processing to bring it up to a good YouTube standard, suitable for playback on devices ranging from smartphones with tinny speakers to home theater sound systems.

I use music and sound effects sparingly, so I try to make my vocal tracks as good as possible. Nobody likes listening to mud.

My minimum processing for a clip in Final Cut Pro X looks like this:

• Loudness enhancement enabled (light compression)
  • Amount 40%
  • Uniformity 6%
• Voice Isolation (AI assisted) enabled
  • Adjusted based on environment, if necessary
• Limiter (FCP Effect)
  • Release 210 ms
  • Output -0.5 dB
  • Lookahead 0.2 ms
  • Mode Legacy (Soft Knee 'ON')
  • Gain (adjust as fit to push peaks between -6 and 0 dB)
• Volume
  • Adjust if needed so peaks hit near 0 dB (avg between -6 dB and 0 dB)

Recording devices

If recording in my 'studio', I also have an analog Symetrix 528E Voice Processor, with very light compression and a noise gate, which reduces processing time in post, and is very useful for live streams, so I don't have to tweak software controls.

I could easily do without it, but it's just nicer to know the mic input into my computer is already close to as perfect as it needs to be.

In the field, I use a variety of mics, depending on the situation. I will put a Rode Wireless Go II on my camera for run-and-gun style shooting (vlog-style), or for A-roll when I don't have time to set up my boom arm and shotgun. I'll also use an on-camera Sennheiser MKE 200 for environment and backup audio, if recording to a separate audio recorder (either my phone with Hindenburg Field Recorder, or a Zoom H6).

youtube's Issues

Document a few oddities to the way I edit / like to see things work

Letting someone else edit my videos is definitely an enlightening experience—there are some things I notice another editor does that I love, and other things where I realize my communication through notes and the way I recorded something is lacking :D

This issue is just so I can try to formalize some parts of my video / editing style so it can be consistent video to video, no matter who edits them.

For starters:

• When using images, I typically use a ken burns effect, but I typically only zoom in or out by a tiny amount (often just enough to be noticed, but not enough that someone would notice. The default amount added by Final Cut Pro is way too much IMO, unless doing a photo montage with 8-10 seconds per photo.
• When using Ken Burns effects back-to-back, I always make sure to alternate the zoom in / zoom out (so the first one would push in on an image, then next one would pull out...).

I'll continue to add to this list when I notice other little style guide notes I should make more explicit.

Document my video standards / editing conventions

I'd like to do this for two reasons:

1. So I can have a more consistent style through my video work.
2. So I can have something to hand over to other editors or others who may touch my video work.

Basically, right now I wing it sometimes. But I'd like to have some very basic 'brand standards', like:

• Montserrat for titles, with white face, 1px black outline, and drop shadow. Bold or ExtraBold face, depending on the size of the title.
• Audio with FCPX default volume control:
  • Loudness Amount: 40%
  • Loudness Uniformity: 6%
  • Peaks near 0 dB after all compression/editing stages
• Each project is contained in its own Final Cut Pro library, with all assets inside the library itself.
• Export Quality:
  • 1080p: Format "Apple Devices", Video Codec "H.264 Better Quality", Resolution "1920 x 1080"
  • 4K: Format "Apple Devices", Video Codec "H.264 Better Quality", Resolution "3840 x 2160"

I also have a small 'Scratch' library locally where I store certain elements like the overlay and animation for Red Shirt Jeff merch integrations, the end titles for sponsorship thank you's, etc. I need to find a way to make that library more sharable, maybe also convert some timeline stuff into a motion template.

Add 'conflict of interest' template to my videos, maybe?

I've been thinking about adding an at-a-glance 'conflict of interest' statement to the front of each video, as a translucent overlay, similar to how boxes of cereal have started adding at-a-glance 'nutrition facts' to the front of boxes so it's easier to see what you're getting on store shelves:

(Aside: Yowza! Lots of sugar in most cereals...)

I think it might even be a nice thing to contribute to the creator economy—a way of indicating what sort of conflict of interest you may be receiving on a given video.

My initial idea is to have three circular icons, with a word underneath:

• $ -> "Sponsored video" (or $ with cross, with text "Not Sponsored")
• I -> "Paid Integration" (or I with cross, with text "No paid integration")
• P -> "Product provided" (Or P with cross, with text "No product provided")

Something like that... but basically to make it more explicit when a video your watching might have certain conflicts of interest a consumer should know about. And even though free products are seen as liabilities by most larger creators (you have to deal with the product, it is not like "ooh I got this free box I can store for the next 20 years!"), there is a different incentive structure vs something like Project Farm, where he buys everything he reviews with cash!

Automate Blackmagic Video Assist recording control via Stream Deck

Here's my rough idea:

• Use either a Pico/Arduino over USB, or a prebuilt cable (some people mention "Applied Logic Engineering's USB to LANC cable ALE708" but that company seems defunct) for USB-to-serial communication with the Video Assist via its LANC port.
• Set up at least Record Start / Record Stop following these codes from the BMD forums.
• Tie in Record (ideally as a single toggle button) to my Stream Deck, so I can hit one button to turn on lights, and another to start recording.
• Bonus points for:
  • The Record button is a macro that also launches Sound Studio and starts recording there, for a backup audio track.
  • Use LANC (or just a software toggle) to determine status of 'rec'/'tally' light so I can trigger an HA automation to turn on a red REC light outside the office.

Some resources:

• The SONY LANC protocol
• LANC commands for BMCC
• USB to LANC Interface Adapter by Applied Logic Engineering
• Arduino LANC control article
• arduino_lanc_sample with LANC Plug diagram

Inspired by this tweet.

DietPi review

Hi Jeff,
I would like to suggest the review of DeitPi on your channel. It is a great lightweight alternative to the "vanilla" Raspberry Pi OS, still based on Debian. Originally, I found it when tried to find a compatible OS for my NanoPi NEO Air.

https://dietpi.com
https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi

Thank you!

[Move to Google Docs]

In my opinion, this will make better sense in a Google Docs as there isn't any need of any code for this, right?

Test Parsec for remote video editing

Parsec: https://parsec.app/

After hearing about this a few times via LTT, I'm wondering if it might be the ticket for a good remote editing workflow.

Will it work well through WireGuard? Locally on the LAN (wired)? Locally on WiFi?

And longer term, my idea would be to have a PC or Mac sitting in my rack dedicated to remote editing that editor(s) could remotely use to edit with local footage on the home LAN on a central server.

There's also a few tools that are made specifically for remote access and locking for Final Cut Pro X libraries, so maybe take a deeper look at that too...

Completely remote Sony a6600 camera recording control

For the time being, I will have to either record to my camera's SD card, or to my computer, to get 4K footage. I just upgraded my a-roll camera from an HD-only a6000 to an a6600, and until I also upgrade my external recording monitor to support 4K (I'm using the Blackmagic Video Assist 3G 7", which does ProRes 1080p only), I need to record on the camera itself for 4K.

So I got to thinking... right now when I want to start a recording, I do the following:

1. Prepare recording devices:
   1. Walk around to my camera and turn it on.
   2. Turn on recording monitor on desk.
   3. Open Sound Studio on my Mac.
2. Start recording:
   1. Click 'Record' in Sound Studio on my Mac.
   2. (if recording HD) Press rec button on recording monitor.
   3. (if recording 4K) Walk around to my camera and press rec button.

I'd like to simplify this process. Ideally I'd have my Stream Deck have a button to start everything (open Sound Studio, turn on camera and recording monitor via smart plug like Shelly US plug), and another button to start recording.

Looking around, I found the following:

• Stream Deck Home Assistant integration for something like Shelly Plug control
  • NOTE: I would like to make sure I always cleanly power off the camera before yanking power, though...
• qDslrDashboard could integrate my a6600's recording controls, maybe
• Sound Studio seems to have Automator/Applescript integration. Maybe that could tie back into a Stream Deck automation?

If those options fail, at least I could avoid walking over to my Sony camera if I had a remote video recording button like this one from SmallRig. Maybe.

Document or store the project Template.md file here

Right now I posted this gist: https://gist.github.com/geerlingguy/e5bb8cda57eb39270cff5ac35a864039

But I would like to maybe store the structure of my new project folders in this repo, and perhaps create a terminal command/alias that would copy the template from this repo into the working directory, so I could more quickly generate new projects.

Heck, maybe have the command clone the folder direct out of this repo on GitHub every time.