In January, Google unveiled a pair of 3D 180 VR cameras by Yi and Lenovo for their VR180 app. Today, Lenovo’s Mirage camera is officially available for purchase. It would only cost $299 for those who are willing to experiment creating content with this new technology.
Japanese sushi chain bans photography in all their restaurants, thanks to a single GoPro
While some restaurants want to help you take better photos of food, others are banning photography completely. Japanese sushi chain Sushiro has banned photography from all its restaurants, thanks to a single GoPro camera and YouTuber TkyoSam.
YouTube makes it easier to live stream from your phone or desktop
YouTube’s live streaming has been very popular since they introduced it in 2011. But for many users, it’s just been too complex to deal with. On the desktop you have to set up some kind of capture & streaming software like OBS, Wirecast, or X-Split; None of which are the most intuitive of applications. With mobile, it’s a little easier, although the capability hasn’t been around as long.
Now, YouTube is changing all that with new live streaming from directly within your browser and mobile app. This change was inevitable, really. Facebook’s live streaming has become ridiculously popular, and YouTube has been struggling to draw those people onto their platform instead. Now, this may change things a little.
YouTube implements tighter restrictions for creators to monetise their content
This one’s going to upset a lot of people. That much is obvious. Because, whenever YouTube move the goal posts required for monetisation, people always get upset. This morning I received an email which serves as 30 days notice that my channel is being removed from the YouTube Partner Programme. As I’m sure have countless thousands of other people.
The email (and a blog post) states that there are now new thresholds that must be met to monetise your YouTube channel. Those requirements are now a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the previous 12 months. They seem like unattainable goals to a brand new YouTuber just starting out today, and may cause us to see fewer new creators in the future. But are things as bad as it may seem?
How to film yourself when nobody’s around to help
Filming myself is probably one of the more difficult things I’ve ever attempted to learn with a camera. It’s so easy when you’re filming other people when you have all of the camera’s controls at your fingertips and are able to quickly adjust. Filming yourself, though, is an entirely different set of skills. But they’re essential skills if you’re looking to start vlogging, which I have.
I’m still no expert at it, and I still have a lot to learn. But you know who is an expert at filming themselves? Peter McKinnon, that’s who. In this video, Peter provides a whole slew of advice to help you film yourself. It’s full of lots of little tips and tricks to make life just that little bit easier and get you thinking a little bit differently about how you approach it.
How Peter McKinnon makes his YouTube videos from start to finish
One thing that many viewers of popular YouTube channels want to know is how the people they watch create their content. Being an educational sort of chap, Peter McKinnon was more than happy to oblige. This particular “Two minute Tuesday” ended up becoming almost 16 minutes, although it’s well worth watching.
In it, Peter goes through his whole process from start to finish. From planning and shooting the footage through to the final edit, he goes through it all. He even shoots b-roll of shooting b-roll.
“Every Frame a Painting” officially calls it quits
For those who’ve never seen it, the YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting it’s run by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos. They dissect movies. But not in the way many other channels do. They talk more about the psychological, metaphorical, symbolic and emotional side of movies, rather than the technical.
It truly is a gem. I mean, to amass more than 1.3 million subscribers with only 28 videos, the majority of which each have over a million views, they must be doing something right. Right? We’ve even featured their videos here on DIYP in the past. Well, the channel’s been quiet for a while, and now they’re officially calling it quits.
YouTube is testing “Reels” – its own take on Snapchat/Instagram style “Stories”
Instagram Stories has been wildly popular since it launched a little over a year ago. It’s developed since then into a fantastic tool for Instagrammers to get more involved with their community. YouTube seems to have taken note of this, and are currently testing out “Reels”, according to their Creator Blog. It’s their take on this popular feature.
There are a number of differences between Reels and the way existing Stories-style features work. For a start, the clips don’t get automatically deleted. You can also create multiple reels to separate content by topic, event, or whatever you like.
Learn to edit before you shoot to tell a better story
If you’ve been making films or videos for any length of time, you quickly figure out how important it is to plan in advance. But for things like run & gun style documentary shooting or vlogs, that can be difficult. Even if you have a rough idea of what the day may entail, you never really know for sure until it happens. You’re often just shooting what you see, then trying to figure out how to tell the story in the edit.
But it’s still possible to think on your feet and come up with a story while you’re shooting. As Jordy Vandeput explains in this video, the trick is to figure out what’s going on, and how you want edit it to before you even hit record. Then let this edit in your head guide your shooting.
YouTube discontinues their video editor
A recent post on Google products forum announces that YouTube Video Editor and Photo slideshows will be discontinued in September. Apparently, there were a limited number of users of these features. So, Google has decided to cancel them completely so they can focus on “building new tools and improving on other existing features.”
