I don't understand this argument. What has video length to do with whether it can be denser? This is like looking at a 1gb file and saying it could certainly be smaller.
The commenter believes the video should take less time and contain a higher percentage of strictly factual information.
A text analogy might be a recipe written in simple style, steps, ingredients, etc. and one you might find on a food blog where there is an intro about their childhood, how Nana was the best and along the way, somewhere in there one might learn how to prepare the food.
In this case, the video producer made pretty good choices about info density and content length.
The commenter disagrees and here we are chatting about all that.
You mean 20 minutes short. There's enough in there to blow it up into a 45 minute documentary at least. You already spent more than 20 minutes commenting under this story.
> The information density can almost certainly be denser.
And what would be the point of that? There's a limited amount of information one can retain in a short span of time, and it's not like he repeats himself or has a verbose style.
I already go back and rewatch his videos later, taking new pieces of information from them.
Again, if you want the tldw, it's already in the comments here. If you want the details, go watch the video.
The video is being linked because the video itself is good. Wanting a summary that retains the same qualities is like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
I generally read faster than some narrator slowly babbling on over a meandering script, so that is 20 minutes long. If the video is 20 minutes long, I wager I can read an equivalent article in less than 5 minutes and come out enlightened all the same.
Videos are great for getting the eyes of the general man who doesn't have a preconceived interest in a subject, you're trying to bait clicks and videos are great for that. For people already interested in the subject though? Videos are almost always a literal waste of time compared to a well written article.
And if you wanna say I have a short attention span: Sue me. I'm a 35 year old millenial, we're infamous for having short attention spans.
You my friend may benefit from developing the arts of the 2x speed, the skipping, the scrubbing and the stopping.
Not every video is worth watching to completion (some are, you get a feel for it), there may be background details you want to skip or scrub through eyeballing the thumbnails depending on familiarity with the subject matter and sometimes everything you want to know is right at the end of the video in a neat little summary. The comments can even give you some insight into where the video is going and whether you want to continue if you read through some of the top ones during playback.
I’m not much younger than you, but watching and re-pacing YouTube for educational/information videos is a skill that can be refined and the visual imagery can provide details that again, depending on what it is, might be missed in a written summary. And hey, if none of this is for you, maybe this comment helps someone else out.
One reasonable compromise would be for video makers to provide a transcript or written article to complement their video. Video is a terrible format especially when you're actually using the video and not just using it as a mechanism to deliver audio. Audio is not a bad medium because you can do something else while listening to it.
I mean you could restrict yourself to only a single medium, independent of what the rest of the world is doing; or you can learn to process information efficiently regardless of medium and respect each medium for its own strengths and weaknesses. A good YouTube video produced perfectly needs none of the “hacks” I listed above and will relay far more information on complex subject matter in context than just an essay will, but people are more comfortable writing will write and people who want to make videos will make videos.
There is a slight conflict of interest where more money can be earned by wasting the information recipient’s time via advertising. Text offers less opportunity to do this.
Perhaps some amount of time wastage is necessary to incentivize the information providers to provide the information, but the pendulum can also swing too far.
Same. Reading is always faster than watching video.
However, listening to one can be done while driving, or doing many other tasks.
Expecting producers to cater to the can read fast crowd is not realistic. People are just not going to produce for us. And I do not believe they should.
Nope. That producer packs it in solid. Yes, it could be more dense, but at the expense of it being watchable by most people.
This is a case of just because one can does not mean one should.
Having an audience matters. It matters more than optimal info density does. Besides, just watch it at 2x. With this producer doing that is challenging. Pay attention!