Test of an experimental "shorts" setup

His shorts are probably in the drawer at the moment as it's chilly on the IoM!!

Stephen Eyles

What browser/extension to remove Shorts?

Gadgetman

A Short has to be a minute or under, or it can’t be classified as a Short by YouTube, who unfortunately make the rules.

Gadgetman

The problem is if you follow a channel on YouTube for their main videos, you can’t stop Shorts from appearing in your feed, unless the channel chooses to tick the “Don’t send to subscribers” box. This makes sense, as Shorts are typically a cut-down version of a main video which isn’t aimed at existing subscribers. People who want to see them can visit the channel’s Shorts tab. The only way to tell YouTube you don’t like Shorts is to Dislike every single one that appears in your feed. So it is a big problem as far as I’m concerned. YouTube are trying to be TikTok, but they’re not and never will be.

Gadgetman

It's no problem for me. Nobody forces us to watch them. If you don't like the format then don't watch them 🤷

Apart from the sickening and illogical format (vertical …. I know why …. But come on YouTube!?) … I think you’ve got these down well as a format. Let’s hope they drive “audience” participation or whatever the buzz phrase is.

Amro

When I saw shorts I was wondering if Clive was going to let us find out if he has hairy legs. My fantasy was crushed.

Nuts 'n' Proud

Many of those early videos had to be short to allow them to be uploaded without tying up my Internet connection for a day and eating the entire meagre data allowance.

Big Clive

YouTube will only promote videos as shorts if filmed vertically. They're basically pandering to the TikTok generation.

Big Clive

Yes, signs of the times that the young folks don't have time to produce quality. My last semester of teaching, nearly half of one class failed because they couldn't be bothered to take the time to do the required labs.

George Cohn

The average attention span of younger folks sure is getting worse. What’s next, 10 second videos on the new TikTik? Some things just need time well spend to explain and show things in a proper way so that one can actually learn something. Some contend may be suited better for short videos than other. For short laughs it’s all fine.

Elim Garak

Will your shorts be in 4K ?

Andrew Donaldson

but seriously, bloopers and blowing stuff up vids, (like the exploding table lamp short or pepsi can vs kitchen ceiling ones) short, sweet and no need to deal with the mindless, argue for the sake of it coz im bored style comments... the others could be 'trailers' with links to the full version... What ever you decide, dont let it impact on the 'long' videos. Leave yourself enough time to live!

Sog Sussex

They can be fun, but please NOT in 4K as they can take up too much archive space.

Andrew Donaldson

and bloopers, you forgot about bloopers!

Sog Sussex

yep, short interesting trailers that link to the main 'in depth' videos would be the way to go I reckon. That way you keep the integrity of your channel. Us patrons are happy to review them for you early if needed :)

Sog Sussex

If I were you I wouldn't bother pandering to tictoc millenials BUT I'm not you, You are inspiring and with these portrate style shorts you may end up being the first person able to educate a millenial! :p

Sog Sussex

Have the comments been turned off? I wrote a couple of lines without using any defamatory remarks, but when I returned they'd vanished. Hmm!

Andrew Donaldson

All very well keeping up with the latest Tends and Technology. But I hope Clive draws the line at having a Covid Passport Microchip implant behind his thumb, as some are now having in Sweden.

Andrew Donaldson

All very well being driven by the latest technology, but when it comes to the latest trends, will Clive be having a Covid Passport Microchip implant behind his thumb as they're now introducing in Sweden? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BNt-0kfic8

Andrew Donaldson

By all means do shorts but please rotate the camera 90 degrees.:-) I would hate to think that doing shorts detracts you from your normal excellent and informative videos.

Mr B Shepherd

There is no harm in doing these videos and it was fine by me. Although I guess you are up against the short 'cat doing stupid things', 'this is how I died playing x video game' etc videos. For those with short attention spans, having a couple of minutes to waste at the bus stop, etc they may pick up on some technical video short but probably more likely to go for one of your non technical ones e.g. hammer vs lithium cell, electrocuted sausage etc. Perhaps a BigClive Video Shorts channel would entice them in and then they may progress to your other two channels.

John Russell

I dislike the vertical format, but if Shorts help grow your channel, I say go for it. You did this one very nicely, with enough detail so anyone with a little electronics experience could easily understand and reproduce the circuitry and with beautifully intoned and entertaining narration. Reminded me that some of your very first videos were only a few seconds long and still quite entertaining as well.

well done Clive don't let the chilldrun best ya

Efault

I've toyed with the idea of a 3D bench video.

Big Clive

You can get the receiver pads from eBay that put out 5V. With a suitable resistor you can drive a relatively high power LED with it, or directly drive some 5V LED tape.

Big Clive

If doing these short videos helps keep YouTube's recommendation algorithms tilted in your favour, then I say go for it, do short versions - maybe summaries of things that can't be condensed to 60s - of every video if you feel up to it. I think it's kind of funny that in this one, you use the same voice/intonation as in some of your joke/satire videos.

Charles

Your USP of using a notepad will be missed for sure!

Andrew Donaldson

Nifty! I enjoyed it. If you can come up with some "quick and dirty" stuff like this it keeps you fresh and is like popcorn for the viewer. But......don't abandon the Big Clive Classic where you take those charger pads and show what can really be done with them! I've just bought a "converter kit" to transform a normal phone to one that can use a charger pad but I'm going to try and fit it to a Christmas LED tree so that I can place the tree on the pad and illuminate it! Wish me luck!

BARGERS!!!!

Ryan Coleman

I think YouTube has made a mistake promoting shorts so hard and I use a browser extension to remove shorts from my subscription feed. Therefore if you feel you need them they don't bug me anymore. Consider, that if it takes considerable effort to make technically sound shorts, you'll be struggling against a tidal wave of 'low effort' content in the form of shorts.

I hate the vertical format. Is it REALLY too difficult for the yoof to turn their phones 90 degrees? Its certainly a lot easier than me unscrewing the TV from the wall. And dont get me started on 45 second attention spans. Hmmn, I seem to be getting quite good at the grumpy old man stuff

Gary Bleads

I have tried that format as a creator and abandoned it as it doesn't fit my personal style (which is long "boringly slow" train model videos where nothing happens). The value of Shorts is in short topics, focused at average people with a LACK OF ATTENTION. In the business, we call this "snackable videos", with the idea they are consumed by folks waiting to kill time. Like snacks, they have no nutritional positive value. It's the ultimate concept of "I don't want to think, please entertain me with some irrelevant crap that I will forget in a minute". IMHO for a creator like you, Shorts have value as A/ teasing videos, or B/ rambling "vlog" like videos. Basically it's all about marketing yourself, while providing zero technical value to your viewers. For example this montage you showed here would be a nice teasing video leading to a more elaborate long YT video. I think your "will it fizz" or the "distillate" video series would also work well there -- you can condensate them (pun intended) into an insipid short video, enough to tease people who want a complete lack of depth.

Raphaël

Pleeasseeee.. Dont start with the Youtube Shorts. As many of us (as seen in your live stream comments), we hate them. But with that said, this short was actually really well done, not like most that just take 20 seconds from their original uploads.

PS How about using widescreen to show a pair of 4:3 images for viewing with a stereoscope viewer or 3D glasses?

Ymir the Frost Giant

Oh I must be a dinosaur! Widescreen? Vertical? Why can't we just go back to 4:3? I'd even accept the slightly wider 35mm frame format. Dunno whether you deliberately aimed for under 1 minute, but for me it is just a little bit too short. I think including a quick shot of you soldering the LEDs together would help a lot, along with 2 or 3 other similar quick cutaways relying mainly on visual rather than verbal guidance; and 2 mins must surely still be within the attention span of almost anyone, that is anyone drawing a pension.

Ymir the Frost Giant

Out and about shorts make sense. Bench ones just don’t fit enough substance into the minute to be meaningful. Less if you remind new viewers to subscribe.

Chris

...also now i want mcdonalds LOL

Totally Normal

im not the biggest fan of vertical video BUT i think ya nailed it with this clip! its got the millennial/zoomer life hack vibe goin on! im curious to see the stats on that video after its posted for a few weeks!

Totally Normal

OK some things are suited to shorts but don't stop making proper videos!

Dr Andy Hill

You might be interested in CathodeRayDude's experience of shorts: https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/1476303320557834240 Basically it turned his comments into an impossible to moderate mess because while it got him a lot of views they weren't views from people who would be interested in his content. They were just views from random people on YouTube. Personally I'm not a fan of shorts. Not because they're short, but because I do 95% of my YouTube watching on my TV and vertical video looks ridiculous on a 65" horizontal TV. That and because when shorts came out nobody (at least nobody I subscribed to) was making original shorts content. They were literally just cutting segments out of longer videos they had already released, cropping the sides off, and then rereleasing them as if they were new videos. It was like 2 weeks of nothing but poorly framed rereleases cluttering up my subscriptions feed.

I likewise hate (and don't watch) vertical videos but do what you need to do.

Me too. But it may be a requirement these days. But it's OK - I'll be abusing the format.

Big Clive

Thank you Clive, I did not know that I could find "shorts" that I like. But this one, I love!

lImbus924

I hate vertical videos, but you do you Clive.

Michael Dunn

I spent a LOT more time adding the facility to my bench to film vertically than I did recording that short. I'm not keen on vertical video either. It's completely pointless except for the very few things that are tall and thin.

Big Clive

I'll link to the full version, which is already released here. To fit within a minute there's literally no time to show winding, soldering or even a schematic.

Big Clive

I noticed that some smaller channels were getting huge hits on their shorts, so didn't want left behind.

Big Clive

Yup. Trash content. But popular.

Big Clive

It's a fairy light cap that I stuffed over an LED just for effect.

Big Clive

To try and avoid getting overtaken by TikTok which is for people who want very short trash videos.

Big Clive

Yeah, it's bizarre that YouTube who tried to move people away from vertical framing had to use it to compete with the expanding success of TikTok's shallow offerings.

Big Clive

It's more of a gimmick. I'm worried that if I don't use the facility I'll fall behind. It'll just be used for silly videos or tasters to pique interest.

Big Clive

I think YouTube are just trying to avoid losing out to TikTok.

Big Clive

Exactly why I said he should include the connection points of the coil to the LEDs in my comment below 👇🏻.

Zane Revai

I love the video content, but I'll never not hate vertical videos. I watch YouTube almost exclusively on a desktop PC or my 55" living room TV, for one. I also almost constantly feel like things are being cut off in vertical videos and way too much of the top and bottom are being shown. People tend to shoot vertical video as if it were horizontal - it can be done right, but some real thought has to go into shooting specifically for the format.

Circuitmike

Another good short video "how to use LEDs with USB power" (including the powerbank shutting off thing)

Coil B

This was just enough to get the idea 💡 but not enough to actually do that project with the information and no other knowledge about inverse parallel LEDs. Like where’s the coil connect with your LEDs?? That’s a critical question 🙋🏻‍♂️ if you added the connection points of the coil I think we have a winner, unless you have a link to a longer version which includes the connection points of the coil to the LEDs.

Zane Revai

Long or short i would still watch you videos :-)

I'm impressed with how well you condensed the original video/idea down, especially without using editing. I suspect that creating some of these is probably needed to keep on the good side of the youtube algorithm. Personally I'd love a series of shorts that are each educational on a very narrow topic. Like "How Inductors Work", or "Soldering Basics". I think there's just enough time to cover the core of a topic like that.

It can be very difficult and time consuming to make short pieces understandable.. I once heard about a long-winded letter being received that contained the line "I'm sorry this letter is so long as I didn't have time to write a short one"

Malcolm J Bannister

Short to the point, ok for some easy project or tech ideas

richard ockman

Why bother? Those shorts will be forgotten in less than a minute too :-P

Jeroen van Oosten

I personally hate the short shits but will watch yours in support

Pierre

I'm not a fan of YouTube's #shorts but I have to say that's probably the best use I've seen of it so far. Even better than Colin Furze putting a drill up through his larder floor from his Top Secret tunnel.

Jon Knight

Noooooo.... not you too Clive. :-)

Howard Simons

Just a side note but I love how corporate suits at Youtube etc. take a look at young people today, y'know the people who will binge an entire season of TV in one sitting or listen to a 6 hour deep dive true crime podcast or whatever, and go "hmm yes, these kids have no attention span and obviously we must tailor content to be in bite-sized chunks for their soft, fried brains"

Shame Boy

Perfect!! :D I'm not a huge fan of shorts, but as far as using them as an advert for a more detailed video then it's got to be a plus.

Dave Matthews

Big Clive, maybe you should have a little Tik Tok channel? It would be interesting and fun to see young geeks enter the world of electronics. You might have to edit in some old bat man graphics (Zap! Pow! Boink! what have you) to hold their attention and make it unique and zany.

Dave Frederick

Funny..made me laugh and cough a little...COVID passing

Sorry for the inevitable storm in the comments that are to arise when it goes public.

Michael Vokabre

Keep it simple like wind coil skip soldering then show them working, flashing and add bit of cheese. A good video for this free batteries from vapes

N. Shaun Tremayne

A shorts vid that isn't a reaction, a terrible video edit, or an ad for Chinese heavy machinery? This is fantastic Clive!

Witold Witkowski

These shorts are not available on all platforms so miss most of these shorts unless like today, stuck to using my mobile to view YouTube after being taken to casualty after incident with a an axe. Hope you do the same as other Tech producers who make a long video and take out or reshoot portions like eefix and they are short to lead you into the main video like a form of clickbait.

N. Shaun Tremayne

that was the first short I liked

Juraj

As far as shorts go, its better than 99% of them. Educational and entertaining. (And slightly devious, mmmwahahahahaa!)

Wim

For full details, see the Patreon Stream. I actually liked it a lot, but did not see how the rose/flower was created.

RonNona

Waht LibC says: make a #short of each "real" normal video, just chop up the content to select at most a minute of the highlights. Just don't bother to release them to the patreons early, I don't think we'd be that interested :-)

Paul Slootman

I was a little iffy about the style. But you got me at "feast upon burgers"

Nani Isobel

I've got to admit, the idea of seeing a "short" was not favorable. After all, your relaxed long-form videos are at the top of the class, and why I think most people enjoy your channel. That being said, you did a really good job at this. Your hunch about doing one of these novelty videos every once in a while is probably spot-on.

Stephen Lee

Not sure why shorts exist. I have ignored the ones from produced by other YouTubers I subscribe to.

Kevin Leah (AKA Zoinks!)

I like it as an additional style of video. Now I'm searching online to try and understand how reverse parallel works.

Is the sort of person who owns the gear required to do this the sort of person who has the attention span of a goldfish? It's well made (I hate the vertical framing, but do what must) and I hope it generates more income for you!

mikenco

Ha. :-) I'm not a big 'shorts' fan but that was pretty neat.

Hmm, I'm not sure you should engage in that nonsense. Maybe use shorts as an advertisement for the main content. It just doesn't fit a technical forum and it encourages yet decreased attention spans :/ - LibC

LibC

While I dislike the format of "#shorts" (I wish it would just die out) you've made a good "short" video

Mark Hazlewood