hi everybody uh today karen and i are going to address another question that comes from
this paper that i wrote and this question uh revolves around how long should a video be you
know science videos can be short or long how long should they be what's the ideal length um what do
you think karen any ideas on on this to start off with well uh my feeling is that they should
be as long as necessary but but not any longer um really if if you need to take 15 minutes to
do a tutorial for example or to show how to use the method then you should then you should use
15 minutes yeah you want to be well prepared and um i i i also i try to keep mine as short as i can
and i you know i my videos range all the way from i think i have one that's
you know one a little more than a minute long and another one that's a little more than uh
actually more than an hour long but but generally um the shorter side i think is better just because
you know keep in mind at least for myself when i see a video on youtube one of the first things i
do uh before i click to watch it is i look at how long it is do you do that to karen sometimes yeah
and yeah and but it doesn't turn me off i mean i i sometimes watch hour-long videos of
seminars for example sure yeah no i do too uh i don't mind long videos um
especially if they are well structured and you know one thing that i found that i think
is very helpful and i um i often don't see this in other in long videos is if you make
a long video you know anything more than about 10 minutes put a clickable table of contents in it
that that kind of leads the um the viewer so the viewer can navigate themselves and
that's not difficult to do you can put that in the video description uh and you can can
you describe just briefly how how that how that's done in youtube yeah no that's a good question so
basically um let's just say at um at minute five of a ten minute or let's say you had an hour long
video and at minute five you have um uh you have a section of the video some some new thing is
is going to be uh be described there you just put these the time signature in there so it'd be
i think it follows the the format hour so it's zero zero for the hour and then a
colon and then the the minutes uh with two uh you know two more uh places and then another colon and
then the the seconds and when you add that at the um on one within your video description you can
then write you know maybe this is section a and a person will go right down there and they will
click on that and they'll go right to that part of the video so um you know during during the covet
period there were a lot of long webinars they were recorded and i i was part of some of those
um and when i was the speaker and had control of that video i went in and put those kind of things
into that into that video because it what it does is it puts the viewer in the driver's seat gives
them control and i think that's so helpful it's like when you're reading a book you know if it's a
textbook you want to you want to know where you're going you want to be able to navigate as you like
yeah and and i uh let's let's uh re-emphasize the idea that when you're
playing when you're making your video you want to plan it really well initially to be as concise
as possible and to avoid digressions unless unless you're a stand-up comedian or you're
a juggler like you are those those can be you know some interesting digressions that people may enjoy
but if not you know don't wait don't waste the viewers time yeah and and planning will avoid that
yeah although i would even say if you're even if you're juggling or doing something like that
you still want some structure in there oh sure you know because um uh you know what you want
people to do is you want them to find your video you want them to click to start watching the video
and then you want them to stick with a video to the end hopefully or as long as they they um
are interested and you don't want to waste their time so uh yeah keeping it short uh can be helpful
yeah another idea kind of similar to your time stamp idea is to if you have a video that's an
hour longer longer is to divide it into separate videos part one part two part three like i've
i've done a series of five or six videos uh show tutorials showing how to use imovie and
they're shorter i think 10 minute each and that's that's enough for somebody to to figure out how to
uh do one aspect of movie editing and once they digest that they can go to the next video which
gets into more detail about editing and so forth and and i think it it i think people like that
better than trying to sit down for an hour or two hours and watching the whole thing at once because
i think some people like to stop and practice if it's a tutorial they like to stop and practice
what was shown in the first part and then once they master that then they go to the second part
yeah that's good i i actually um the video that i i mentioned in another one of our episodes on
on how to make the hoe i have two different versions of that of that video
a detailed version that's about 18 minutes long and then a short shorter version um
the longer version is actually the one that's got more views but but um
i i wanted to give the viewers an option there now one thing i i maybe i can throw out there is
you might even tell people if they want to speed up this video
just to use you know you can go down to the little dial at the bottom of the video
and they can play it at one and a half speed or if you're a slow speaker like like i am and i
think karen you're not a you're also you know that not that yeah we're both slow speakers
we're both pretty comprehensible at 2x i think so that that's a great way to make a um to kind of
get through a video faster and still it can often be pretty interesting and and useful
although uh i i don't really recommend that that people who are when they're making a video to
try to speak really fast in order to cram more information in and i say that because i know my
video channels have a lot of international viewers whose first language is not english and they may
also have difficulty understanding my accent and and so i i often i speak slowly naturally but
i would do it deliberately even if i didn't do it naturally because i know that people are out
there in the audience struggling to understand my english and i often have people come up to me at
conferences and thank me for speaking slowly and distinctly because their english is not that good
but they can understand me because i'm making an effort and i think the same thing goes for
a video that's a good point and i think um you know if you're presenting information too fast
in a video when it's played at the normal speed you're going to lose viewers they're just not
going to stick with you one one thing you know that's different than in a conference in a
conference you kind of have a captive audience on youtube you do not have a captive audience
they're gonna you need to get into that video into the meat of it as fast as possible
and you've got to have some kind of hooks to you know get them interested and then it's got to be
well enough done that you'll have them stick with you because um yeah people will leave and
and what's interesting as a video maker you can go into the analytics on your youtube channel
and you can actually see how long did people watch that video in general you know did it if it's a 10
minute video did they only watch the first minute and you can see how viewership drops off and that
may give you an indication well i got a lot of clicks on that video but nobody stuck with it past
a half a minute that would indicate there's a problem i think yep um uh so
karen we can go into this uh homework or tip assignment if if you don't have anything else
to add i that that that was it i think okay yeah so so here's what we're going to suggest that you
you try with um for for this kind of assignment or or exercise um take
uh something that's a potential script maybe it's an you know an abstract for one of your
papers uh record yourself um reading it out and time time how long it takes you to do that
you know select that text if it's in a word document determine the number of words
and then you know if you have the number of words and you have the the time it took you to
read that determine your word per minute count and why is that important well at least for me
i use that when i'm writing a script because it gives me an idea you know how long i'm already at
in my video i do do you do something like that too karen yes i i often use a script to plan
my videos i may not follow it word for word but as you're suggesting if i want to keep my video
three minutes or less i know that i speak at about 150 words per minute and that means that
i have maybe 450 words that i can get in in a three-minute video and so that really helps me
when i'm planning out the video i i stick to the to that word count or i know that i'll have to
extend the length of the of the video or speak a little bit faster yeah no i i do the same thing
for um you know when i especially when i'm doing a video where i know i have a time constraint
so give that a try and see what your word um what's your word count uh per minute and um
you know you don't want to read too fast you want to make sure that it's comprehensible
uh but i think that's a good starting point for people with when they're working on scripts
so i i guess we can wrap uh this video up by saying that when you make a video
it should be as long as it needs to be but not a second longer i agree 100 percent