[localplume]

He, like most big Youtubers, probably have a large crew of people working with them. The article was written by Trevor Sesnic, the video was likely edited by others, I don't know if he did the graphics, but Tim still did a lot (and arguably did the most fun stuff). Smaller Youtubers need to do all of that, and from what I've heard editing is the absolute worst given how time consuming it is. Many Youtubers struggle with burnout centered around how time consuming editing becomes.

Tim's content is really great though, and he does a fantastic job of explaining complex topics in a welcoming way. Very similar to smartereveryday IMO, where it is just really engaging and informative content presented in a great way.

[AshleyGrant]

I support Tim on Patreon. He also utilizes a cadre of Patreon donors who provide commentary on early cuts of videos and even drafts of scripts. I personally have never understood why people would pay to do work for him, but they must get satisfaction from it, and the final product is better because of it.

[MichaelZuo]

From the about page: > In 2019 the team grew from just Tim to a small army of incredible helpers who make this website amazing, the videos higher quality, and help foster a fun and positive online community.

So the 2017-2019 period where the channel took off was all done by him solo, apparently.

[somenameforme]

I'd also add this standard. Another amazing YouTuber is Veritasium. He went from [1] to [2]. The production quality is more than slightly improved, but the "spirit" remains identical. And I think that spirit is what drives success or failure. The production quality is just icing.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJPyQtoB5E

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eW6Eagr9XA

[Retric]

Veritasium videos are often subtly misleading which really annoys me.

It’s great for views, but terrible for science education.

[jaywalk]

Whenever he drops a new video, I just look for the "Here's how Veritasium was wrong" videos to get the real story.

[ace2358]

It’s pretty rough because those ‘you’re wrong’ videos are actually just as wrong as he was. The main issue is that these complicated topics are difficult to describe properly is a 20 min English video that has to be edited to be interesting.

How electricity propagates is really complicated topic involving 3D vector calculus, for the EM waves. Most people don’t do electronic circuits by evaluating the vector field, they use the model of electron flow and the elements model (capacitance, inductance, resistance, voltage etc).

Ultimately these models are difficult to understand and most people (including my lecturers) make mistakes explaining them.

[MichaelZuo]

Can you link to a 100% correct explanation?

Can be in any format.

[Diederich]

Is one example his recent set of videos about how quickly electrical energy travels travels?

[Retric]

Yea, like “Darth Vader killed your father” they are true from a specific viewpoint, but people walk away misunderstanding what’s being described.

A more clear approach would be to say what we mean by electricity is the net flow of energy even if no electrons move from A to B, but that’s not going to get the same number of clicks.

[dylan604]

> and from what I've heard editing is the absolute worst given how time consuming it is. Many Youtubers struggle with burnout centered around how time consuming editing becomes.

This totally depends. If you're an editor, there is a great sense of pride of turning the pile of content handed to you into something cohesive and compelling is quite a skill. Some people just don't like it, and that's fine. I don't like building UIs, but sometimes I just gotta do it. It makes me appreciate those that do the task I don't like that much more. walk a mile in another person's shoes so to speak.

Just like coding, you can get in the zone with an edit and things just start flowing. It usually comes after multiple sessions of sitting there scrubbing through the content thinking to yourself "wtf do I do with this?" when inspiration finally hits. You just start remembering a shot from this clip that flows nicely with this next clip and it suddenly "makes sense". It gets really spooky when you then try to find some audio clip like music and drop it in and it pretty much lines right up. That's for unscripted stuff that's just kind of produced like film is cheap kind of shooting.

When you have scripted stuff that every shot has been logged and tagged where there's variations on delivery or any other slight thing that makes it appear to be the same thing over and over again comes with its own challenges and rewards. Sometimes, there's a perfect delivery but something doesn't line up continuity wise, so it looks like it can't be used. Then, you scrub some other angle or reverse or cutaway and hide the edit so that you can use that perfect delivery or borrow that perfect reaction that otherwise might not have made sense.

There's a reason it's an art. Not liking it doesn't mean you're wrong for not liking it personally, but it doesn't make it the absolute worst.

[ragebol]

I'm sure he does. I guess it's like a bootstrapped business: you start small and build from there and hire to do what you can't or don't want to do.

[Gordonjcp]

> and from what I've heard editing is the absolute worst given how time consuming it is.

It can be, but as with many things it comes down to learning the techniques as well as the tools. You can learn how to edit quickly and effectively with a couple of simple rules, but the most important is "don't worry too much about throwing stuff away".