Ray,
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you like it!

Thanks James!
I hate to point out flaws but yes the H4n that we used through FRAPS was clipping a bit during recording. We didn't notice until halfway through, but decided it was salvageable and left the levels where they were to maintain consistency. We obviously could have started over, however the tutorial portion was literally our second attempt at recording the entire thing and we had to get the video up soon to stay on schedule. The first attempt sounded and looked great except for the fact that we accidentally had "Hide mouse cursor in video" checked off for the entire duration of the recording and didn't notice/re-record until the day before we were due to upload. Crunch time is fun!

@ laurence - roflol ;-)

OK, a style question about the video. The "jump cuts": normally I try to avoid these where you can see the jumps in the action. I'll cut away on the speaker's voice if there is b-roll, but not when you can see the jumps. What I've noticed is that after watching this (and other videos made by younger people) that it really doesn't bother me anymore, and in fact I'm even starting to like it. It keeps the tempo up and catches your eye.

My question is this: Is it appropriate to use jump cuts like these outside of a blog or vlog format? I'm kind of thinking it is and that sticking to my old rules is a little like my grandfather still wearing a hat to go out years after it was no longer in style.

Any thoughts?

Also, the idea of just sort of winging it and not editing out bits that are akward: Part of me feels that if you are doing a video, you owe it to your audience to edit it a bit more tightly, and part of me finds after watching these that the polish that us older videographers try for often just looks canned and lacking in spontaneity.

What do you guys think?

Thoughts? Hell yea.. I think hats are making a comeback. My son likes wearing a Bruno Mars style hat.

I think jump cuts are definitely more widely accepted when done in a vlog format. However, I personally think they are acceptable in other situations as well especially if it's something uploaded to the internet. I have actually noticed this done in more professional, polished, things such as TV except sometimes they do tricks such as digitally zooming in and out between cuts or simply shooting multi-camera and switching between cameras. When done right, it doesn't even look like it was edited to cut out the silence and awkwardness. Well at least not to someone that doesn't understand the editing behind it. I personally notice it every time.

I'm not sure what you are talking about as far as the awkward part. I'm not sure if you are talking about the review we did or our other videos. For the review we did wing it, however we did multiple takes for each one until it felt right. I don't personally think there are really any awkward parts but we do leave awkward parts in sometimes because we think it's funny. Sometimes leaving in things like that gives it more personality so it's more relatable to the audience.

With that said, in our case we literally shoot, edit, and upload videos to YouTube daily, sometimes multiple times a day, all while maintaining our website, social media sites, recording, mixing, and mastering full instrumentals, and everything else that comes with what we do all by ourselves. We do our best to polish everything we do to our best ability, but it's difficult sometimes to be perfect with everything.

These are matters of style and there are no absolute rules. Whether you use "queasy cam" (pseudo documentary) or professionally slick camera movements depends on context, what sort of mood you're creating, and so on. My general criterion is that if the technical style (camera, editing, lighting, audio, etc) forces me to notice it, then that is a negative because it drags me out of the story to observe the mechanics. Queasy Cam is one such technique, but smooth hand held is not.
Jump cuts can be used to jar the viewer (e.g a fight scene) and are quite appropriate in such a context. Jump cuts in an interview serve a similar purpose of giving edge to an edgy interviewee. Otherwise a 3 frame dissolve removes the gaps (not just silences) without the agitation. A flash can do the same. It is right if it looks right.

The "dog" thing almost reminded me of the "dog" in the movie Silverado. As an older person I stand in awe of the energy you both posses.
JJK

Excellent description of the new features.

At first I thought the jump cuts were my system stuttering on the playback! So I started again from the beginning, and then again. On the third try I realized the jump cuts were part of the video. Jump cuts are discussed towards the end of the Vegas 11 video as a technique to remove the silences in the audio.

>"I'm not sure what you are talking about as far as the awkward part. I'm not sure if you are talking about the review we did or our other videos"

My criticism is more directed at your generation of videographers than it is at you personally.

Let me say it another way. On one end of the spectrum you have a person reading finely crafted sentences from a teleprompter. On the other end you just capture somebody's first or second take of improvisation and jump cut through the highlights. My generation has tended to lean towards the former. Yours toward the latter. As I watch your videos, it makes me want to loosen up a little and maybe be a little less scripted.

You do the new style well and you should take as a compliment the fact that yours are the first videos I've seen done this way that I've liked enough to rewatch and discuss. There is something very appealing about the spontaneity that is missing in a more rigid format.

Thanks! Don't worry I wasn't getting offended, simply inquiring about your statement because I didn't entirely understand what you were in reference to.

I totally understand, I have taken classes where we learned and practiced the scripted side of things. While it was definitely effective in maintaining control of the group and ensuring that everyone was on the same page, it was never really fun for me. There simply was no room for personality. We sometimes use a whiteboard to write down all of the points to discuss so we don't miss anything when talking to the camera and then just say it in our own words, that's about as scripted as it gets. However, I do on occasion script the entire thing, print it out, get in front of the camera, read/memorize/say one sentence at a time, and then the jump cuts make it appear to be fluent.

This style of making videos obviously came from the low budget vlogging community on the internet. It was more of a "I don't have a camera crew or money, this is how I'm going to do things." I feel as if it spread so quickly because a lot of low budget, yet extremely talented individuals that personally enjoy that kind of style decided to pick it up and apply it to more professional situations and quickly became very popular and respected doing so. Now it's becoming more of a standard because of this.

We won a competition called "YouTube NextUp" in which they gave us money for equipment and flew us out to Google headquarters in NY to basically put us through content creator bootcamp. There were quite a few seminars that we had to sit through where very successful people basically explained what to and not to do. It was like school. I was surprised to see that a few of them actually suggested we use the jump cut style. Their reasoning was that the average attention span goes down every year thanks to the internet, and keeping audience retention is very important for not only getting your point across, but it also helps with YouTube algorithms for getting your videos ranking in search results. There's other reasoning behind it that we learned in NY, but I don't recall everything. It was a long week!

-DJ

DJ, I will say you and Sabrina are very talented. I would have never heard of Terabrite if it wasn't for your post here.

Wow I just listened to some Usher cover you two did---fantastic.

Why thank you, that really means a lot! None of what we did on our TeraBrite channel would have been possible without Vegas. Well I suppose technically it would have been possible, but you get what I'm saying. We use Vegas for everything and wouldn't have it any other way.

I think it's a Great video, and you guys rocked it... helped me decide to u/g to v12. You're fresh, personable, lots of content and fun to watch... keep up the great work! :)

I agree. I wasn't really thinking about upgrading to 12 but your enthusiasm and explanation of the new features made me get excited once again for Vegas. Sony should give you a cut of the sales...

DJ, You guys must be insane. No-one can produce as much content as you do without an army of elves. I normally have a YouTube attention span approaching one minute, but I watched your whole video and then bought the upgrade. SCS owes you.