The pains of publishing the first episode

When I first decided to make Complex Business Made Simple a reality, I felt pretty confident about doing it. Topics? Oh yes, I do many of these things on a daily basis, I’m passionate about them. Website? Sure, it’s not the first one I roll out, you register a domain, install WordPress and it’s done. Graphics and photos? I have some friends who are great at what they do, we’ll get it done.

One thing I underestimated. The videos.

The experience of producing and publishing a video

Let me narrate my experience, in a very informal fashion. Just to preserve reality.

Some context

• I’ve never presented in front of a webcam, alone
• Certainly not elegantly dressed up when clearly I’m still at home (thanks COVID-19)
• I always seek for feedback to understand if a concept is clear to whoever I’m presenting to and – needless to say – the only feedback I received from my screen was “yes, I’m still recording”
• Recording videos is stressful – you need to set up the scene, checking the light, remember the audio, don’t glimpse at the camera, don’t make jokes to yourself, [add-another-awkward-activity-here]
• Once you have a recording that you deem acceptable, that’s still far from final – you need to fix the audio / remove slides repeated hundreds of time / cut out cursing at the camera that stops recording (it’s only audio, luckily) / fix lighting – and that’s only to make it “publishable”
• But then you want branding – add the little jingle, put the song, adjust the volumes, move my ugly face that covers my stunning presentation
• Note that the previous 3 points were done learning to use 2x softwares that I didn’t even know they existed: OBS ^{(free, open source)}, Open Broadcaster Software, that allows you to record screen/audio/camera/etc., and DaVinci Resolve ^{(basic free, proprietary)}, one extremely powerful video editing software
• Then the (seemingly) last step come: export the final video

The last step (maybe)

Now, this is the part where I’m staring at my computer, having clearly spent more time than I’d care to admit to make my video presentable. (Here is the final video, for context)

I press “PLAY” and my face clearly shows that I’m going through the following thoughts:

• Urgh, my voice is all …
• And there’s a shadow at the back. Damn.
• Wait! Why are my eyebrows lifting when I stress a word?
• I thought I removed echo from the audio?
• Oh gosh, the transition didn’t render at the right time.
• Here comes the jingle, it’s a bit awkward, the music starts randomly while I’m still talking…
• Seriously, the volume drops when the image fades and grows again when the jingle starts?
• Ok at least the music is timed with the animatio….and no. The last dot disappears too late.
• And here’s my face again with the shadow behind it

I’ll cut it here because, frankly, I told to myself – it should be about the content, not the video, isn’t it? Clearly, I know presentation counts, but at this stage I really think that – paraphrasing an Italian saying – “better is nemesis of good”. I really need to get this done.

The very last step (maybe)

Proud (not so much), I head to YouTube and publish the video. Once uploaded, I’m told to wait that the video will be handed over to the magic wizards that Google employs to analyse videos – it’ll come back for me to play with soon.

Fast forward 2 hours, I’m back at my laptop just to find out that “problem – my video is longer than 15 minutes”. Well, the wizards must have clocked in some overtime to find out! Too bad, I could have told them that before uploading it, had I known this was a problem. Apparently this is a problem, unless you give your mobile number to YouTube (don’t ask, ignorance is bliss).

Hence, I willingly and happily hand over my number so that I can continue customise my vid… no, I need to re-upload it. Wow, now that’s great.

So, let’s re-upload, re-wait, re-fast-forward by 2 hours… the video is on. I repeat, the VIDEO. IS. ON.

It doesn’t look any better than when I exported – why would it? – but it’s on Youtube.

Now I can publish it? Let’s have a look… There’s no subtitles.

Really, the very last step

At this stage, having spent almost more time on the video that on the content itself, I realised I need to put my pride aside and publish the video.

Done, it’s live.

Subtitles, I’ve downloaded the autogenerated ones and I’m editing them. The AI clearly understands my confused accent, and likes to put all my humming and “I don’t know’s” (the Italian equivalent of humming) in the subtitles.

I’ll publish the revised version soon. Now it’s time go live.

Lessons learnt

Just publishing a single video taught me quite a few things:

• Clearly, there’s a reason why people pay big bucks to video professionals – I can appreciate it even more now;
• Just like everything in life and business, getting started is always the most challenging thing; (keep going being the second);
• Also, I’m sure future videos will come out better, so it’s just about accepting that videos are like pancakes – the first few are always weird looking;
• I can’t believe that there’s so much good software (some of which open source!) available for free out there – kudos to these developers and their companies;
• Wearing sweatpants under the shirt/jacket, simply because they’re not framed in the camera, works well in video recording, too;
• Recording from a house with no doors alongside a loud, happy family increases the editing time of a good 35%;
• Sharing all of these frustrations and rantings openly, on the same space where the content is published, makes for a good stress-relief
• Google will ask for some bits of personal information at every chance, and without forewarning (well, this I learnt earlier to be fair, I just experienced it again)

Ok, enough rantings.

You can find the first episode here: How to roll-out a CRM.

Off to edit the second video then. Wish me luck.

_{Header image by Tati Halabi from Pixabay}