5 ms·

The real underrated medium is video. Video captures the moment in a much more real way, and brings back memories in a way that photos just can't. Think about th

by gpt5 5y ago

The real underrated medium is video. Video captures the moment in a much more real way, and brings back memories in a way that photos just can't. Think about the experience of seeing a photo of your young self (or your child at a young age) vs a video, it just doesn't compare. The big problem with videos is that the tech is not yet there is term of consumptions. Finding the highlights can be tough, and editing videos is still a manual and painful job. However, these are problems that technology will eventually solve (and is already getting better day by day, see for example how well Google Photos search for content inside a video today in a query like "[person1] [person2] [location]"). Ever since I had kids I made it habit to default to shooting videos. Not only as an observant, but actively participating in the moment (i.e. the video becomes sort of a first person view of my experience at that moment). Now that the kids are slightly older, they gain so much joy from just swiping through the videos and experiencing their favorite moments again. I do wish there was a TikTok for private videos that would make the consumption part more seamless and fun though.

Void_ 5y ago
I love making little vlogs when I go somewhere with my friends. But you have to pick one - it's either photos or videos. If you try to do both, you'll playing with your camera nonstop. It's also good to have that one crazy person who will keep talking on the video. And if you spend some time editing, you'll create some amazing memories.
jeena 5y ago
As a workaround for the private TikTok, I use PeerTube. It's not as nice and seamless but it kind of does the trick and it safes a lot of metadata so you can search for hashtags, titles, etc.
voussoir 5y ago
Your comment reminded me of this video: "2:30am at 7-11 near Disney World - 1987" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA It's definitely the kind of thing that stills can't beat. I find it very hard to take videos of personal events, I'm too much of a nervous wreck. Pointing a camera at anybody, even or especially friends and family, I can hardly do it, though I wish would get over it and film more.
ehnto 5y ago
There's a self-propelled army of "FPS" video walkers, documenting some of the more interesting and popular places around the world as if you were there yourself wandering quietly through these places. I really hope that the trove of videos that exist on YouTube remain intact even after the company itself disappears, because it's a catalogue like no other. I regularly watch train rides or walks through suburbs of places I've never been, and at 2k resolution and high quality audio, it can really transport you for the moment you're watching. During the pandemic lockdowns here, a bit of people watching while wandering through other countries was worth it's weight in gold.
- moneywoes 5y ago
  Any favourites?
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I quite like these channels: Rambalac for walks around Japan https://www.youtube.com/c/Rambalac https://www.youtube.com/c/Rambalac HKSAMA for train rides in Japan https://www.youtube.com/c/HKASAMA https://www.youtube.com/c/HKASAMA Nomadic Ambience for walking in quite a few places around the world: https://www.youtube.com/c/NomadicAmbience https://www.youtube.com/c/NomadicAmbience And Sound Traveler for binaural walks around the world: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSoundTraveler/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSoundTraveler/videos Destin from Smarter Every Day has been getting a bit of attention on Hacker News lately, so it might be interesting to know that Sound Traveler is his project!
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/c/ProWalks https://www.youtube.com/c/ProWalks is good for Europe
0xcoffee 5y ago
My pixel 4 has an 'export frame from video' option, and on my last hike I took lots of photos and videos, but actually by far all my best 'photos' that I send to my friends, are stills from a video. From now on I'm basically always just going to film everything. Probably it just means I'm a bad photography, and this is essentially brute force approach towards it haha
matsemann 5y ago
Yeah, I capture like 5+ hours a week on my GoPro. Editing it is a chore, and if not done immediately it will never be done. Like from a ski trip, I each evening extracted 2-3 minutes of video from the day, remembering the highlights made it quick. Then later stitched that to a short video I shared with the others, that I like to rewatch. One other time, however, I just dumped all files to a HD thinking I'll do it later. That's 200 GB of footage from that trip I've never even looked at, it's too much to go through. At least one nice feature of gopros is you can press the power button while recording, that adds some metadata marking that timestamp as a highlight, makes it easier to jump to the good parts later.
Markoff 5y ago
> Think about the experience of seeing a photo of your young self (or your child at a young age) vs a video, it just doesn't compare. this works mostly only for kids though because they change a lot, once you are adult in finalized stage the videos are much less interesting because you will see same yourself just years ago, so only the place is interesting, not really the person but yeah, take a tons of videos of kids, it will be very valuable to them, I've never had such opportunity since during my childhood videocams were very expensive for regular families to own, so oldest video of me is me in 20s I guess with X265 even few seconds long video takes only a bit of space and it's worth gold compared to photos
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
Video is simply a different medium to express with. I take a lot of random photographs: I really like it when I find a pretty weed against a building, a nice reflection in a broken car window (junkyard picture). Abandoned houses are full of gems. I find this stuff just walking around the city and being out in the countryside. I rarely take pictures of people. If I want to document a memory, I document the pretty things I see (in general). But I'll take a video of a partially frozen creek that is flanked with snow: It captures the creek in a different way than the still pictures I took. A combination of stillness and the sounds of flowing water and the sun gleaming off of different sparkling and shining surfaces - I just cannot capture that in film the same way, not all at once. (Don't get me wrong, the stills were pretty wonderful). I take video of the fireworks out my window on new years. It is pretty spectacular sometimes (not to mention easier to capture on a cell phone). Yet a video of Northern Lights isn't always more beautiful unless you are seeing them dance in the sky. Of course, maybe I just use these differently than most folks - outside of the hundreds of pet photos I take.
terrortrain 5y ago
Spherical photos or videos are my favorite. Yes you have to put on Google cardboard or whatever to really experience it, but it brings the VR experience brings me back to the moment, mentally, in a way that pictures can't. We had the old essential phone, with the spherical camera attachment, and used the hell out of it. I still go back and watch those old videos. Venice in the snow was absolutely amazing. I need to get another spherical camera ASAP, now that traveling is possible again.
holletron 5y ago
For the past 6 years or so I've been using an app to record 1 second long video every day, and then create a montage of a week/month/year/whatever using those seconds. And it's amazing, you feel like nothing much is changing in life, and then you get a montage of the last year and it shows how fast everything is actually changing. And the format is perfect too, it's not boring, just a second a day, you don't have to do it every single day, and it still is enough to bring back memories.
- positus 5y ago
  Would you mind sharing what app(s) you are using?
  - escapedmoose 5y ago
    Not the original poster, but I use 1 Second Everyday, which is the original app that eventually spawned a bunch of copycats. It’s a little buggy from update to update, and I think they’ve added a yearly payment (I’m grandfathered into the free plan), but it’s likely the best you’ll see out there. It’s never lost a video for me in six years.
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  I’ve done the same, also for the past six years! Though I still haven’t figured out how to ask people to feature in my daily 1 Second without feeling awkward about it…
quartz 5y ago
iOS's "live photo" feature is great for this. It captures just a second or so before and after the photo which really brings the image to life. It's very powerful to look back on a photo of my son when he was 2 and catch that little bit of extra context.

by gpt5 5y ago

Void_ 5y ago

I love making little vlogs when I go somewhere with my friends. But you have to pick one - it's either photos or videos. If you try to do both, you'll playing with your camera nonstop. It's also good to have that one crazy person who will keep talking on the video. And if you spend some time editing, you'll create some amazing memories.

jeena 5y ago

As a workaround for the private TikTok, I use PeerTube. It's not as nice and seamless but it kind of does the trick and it safes a lot of metadata so you can search for hashtags, titles, etc.

voussoir 5y ago

Your comment reminded me of this video: "2:30am at 7-11 near Disney World - 1987" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA It's definitely the kind of thing that stills can't beat. I find it very hard to take videos of personal events, I'm too much of a nervous wreck. Pointing a camera at anybody, even or especially friends and family, I can hardly do it, though I wish would get over it and film more.

ehnto 5y ago

There's a self-propelled army of "FPS" video walkers, documenting some of the more interesting and popular places around the world as if you were there yourself wandering quietly through these places. I really hope that the trove of videos that exist on YouTube remain intact even after the company itself disappears, because it's a catalogue like no other. I regularly watch train rides or walks through suburbs of places I've never been, and at 2k resolution and high quality audio, it can really transport you for the moment you're watching. During the pandemic lockdowns here, a bit of people watching while wandering through other countries was worth it's weight in gold.

moneywoes 5y ago
Any favourites?
- ehnto 5y ago
  I quite like these channels: Rambalac for walks around Japan https://www.youtube.com/c/Rambalac https://www.youtube.com/c/Rambalac HKSAMA for train rides in Japan https://www.youtube.com/c/HKASAMA https://www.youtube.com/c/HKASAMA Nomadic Ambience for walking in quite a few places around the world: https://www.youtube.com/c/NomadicAmbience https://www.youtube.com/c/NomadicAmbience And Sound Traveler for binaural walks around the world: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSoundTraveler/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSoundTraveler/videos Destin from Smarter Every Day has been getting a bit of attention on Hacker News lately, so it might be interesting to know that Sound Traveler is his project!
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/c/ProWalks https://www.youtube.com/c/ProWalks is good for Europe

0xcoffee 5y ago

My pixel 4 has an 'export frame from video' option, and on my last hike I took lots of photos and videos, but actually by far all my best 'photos' that I send to my friends, are stills from a video. From now on I'm basically always just going to film everything. Probably it just means I'm a bad photography, and this is essentially brute force approach towards it haha

matsemann 5y ago

Yeah, I capture like 5+ hours a week on my GoPro. Editing it is a chore, and if not done immediately it will never be done. Like from a ski trip, I each evening extracted 2-3 minutes of video from the day, remembering the highlights made it quick. Then later stitched that to a short video I shared with the others, that I like to rewatch. One other time, however, I just dumped all files to a HD thinking I'll do it later. That's 200 GB of footage from that trip I've never even looked at, it's too much to go through. At least one nice feature of gopros is you can press the power button while recording, that adds some metadata marking that timestamp as a highlight, makes it easier to jump to the good parts later.

Markoff 5y ago

> Think about the experience of seeing a photo of your young self (or your child at a young age) vs a video, it just doesn't compare. this works mostly only for kids though because they change a lot, once you are adult in finalized stage the videos are much less interesting because you will see same yourself just years ago, so only the place is interesting, not really the person but yeah, take a tons of videos of kids, it will be very valuable to them, I've never had such opportunity since during my childhood videocams were very expensive for regular families to own, so oldest video of me is me in 20s I guess with X265 even few seconds long video takes only a bit of space and it's worth gold compared to photos

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

Video is simply a different medium to express with. I take a lot of random photographs: I really like it when I find a pretty weed against a building, a nice reflection in a broken car window (junkyard picture). Abandoned houses are full of gems. I find this stuff just walking around the city and being out in the countryside. I rarely take pictures of people. If I want to document a memory, I document the pretty things I see (in general). But I'll take a video of a partially frozen creek that is flanked with snow: It captures the creek in a different way than the still pictures I took. A combination of stillness and the sounds of flowing water and the sun gleaming off of different sparkling and shining surfaces - I just cannot capture that in film the same way, not all at once. (Don't get me wrong, the stills were pretty wonderful). I take video of the fireworks out my window on new years. It is pretty spectacular sometimes (not to mention easier to capture on a cell phone). Yet a video of Northern Lights isn't always more beautiful unless you are seeing them dance in the sky. Of course, maybe I just use these differently than most folks - outside of the hundreds of pet photos I take.

terrortrain 5y ago

Spherical photos or videos are my favorite. Yes you have to put on Google cardboard or whatever to really experience it, but it brings the VR experience brings me back to the moment, mentally, in a way that pictures can't. We had the old essential phone, with the spherical camera attachment, and used the hell out of it. I still go back and watch those old videos. Venice in the snow was absolutely amazing. I need to get another spherical camera ASAP, now that traveling is possible again.

holletron 5y ago

For the past 6 years or so I've been using an app to record 1 second long video every day, and then create a montage of a week/month/year/whatever using those seconds. And it's amazing, you feel like nothing much is changing in life, and then you get a montage of the last year and it shows how fast everything is actually changing. And the format is perfect too, it's not boring, just a second a day, you don't have to do it every single day, and it still is enough to bring back memories.

positus 5y ago
Would you mind sharing what app(s) you are using?
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  Not the original poster, but I use 1 Second Everyday, which is the original app that eventually spawned a bunch of copycats. It’s a little buggy from update to update, and I think they’ve added a yearly payment (I’m grandfathered into the free plan), but it’s likely the best you’ll see out there. It’s never lost a video for me in six years.
escapedmoose 5y ago
I’ve done the same, also for the past six years! Though I still haven’t figured out how to ask people to feature in my daily 1 Second without feeling awkward about it…

quartz 5y ago

iOS's "live photo" feature is great for this. It captures just a second or so before and after the photo which really brings the image to life. It's very powerful to look back on a photo of my son when he was 2 and catch that little bit of extra context.