6 ms·

Dustin’s high speed videos are an incredible treasure trove of science and engineering to learn from.

ramraj07 3y ago
Does it all have to be 30 minutes though? Not just him to be sure but I’m not a fan of YouTube’s crusade to incentivize long form content which just seems to have made everyone pad out every topic as much as they can. Very rare have I seen 30 minute videos that truly deserve that time commitment.
- mikewarot 3y ago
  >YouTube’s crusade to incentivize long form content They're all about "YouTube Shorts" now, of course that will change soon enough.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    Shorts are mostly just “here’s a weird or unexpected thing, look how weird or unexpected it is”. There’s also regular, formulaic stuff like Half as Interesting which tend to be about one paragraph of information laboriously spread out over five minutes of generic stock footage and painfully tedious jokes. YouTube, at its best, are the videos where someone genuinely interested in a topic can show you why it’s interesting and hold your attention, allowing the content to dictate the length. CGP Grey probably being the most perfect prototypical example of this. Or it could come in the form of a Richard Feynman lecture, with absolutely no production value needed beyond reasonably intelligible audio.
    - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
      > allowing the content to dictate the length This is Tom Scott for me. His videos tend to range around the 5- to 10-minute mark, but are occasionally far far longer. And yet every one of them is exactly the length it should be.
      - simondotau 3y ago
        I love love love Tom Scott, but some of his recent videos are getting an eeny weeny teeny tiny bit Half as interesting-y, but with Tom’s face to camera instead of incongruous stock footage.
- userbinator 3y ago
  I watched it at 2.25x to cut it down to ~13m, but even at that speed I agree a lot of videos are unnecessarily dragged out.
  - smcl 3y ago
    If I recall correctly there's a certain length videos need to be to get adverts or to be monetised - something like ~10 minutes. So while this one is a little bit played out (maybe this happens to get an extra set of ads in the middle) the worst are when you have 2-3 minutes of information streeeeeetched out to 10 minutes.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  It's entertainment. People don't want to just look at the results for 10 seconds. What would they do with the next 29 minutes 50 seconds? They want to watch people and hear them talk, make jokes, work on setting up the experiment, etc. Same reason Mythbusters isn't 30 seconds per myth. You could just read scientific papers if you're looking to condense knowledge transfer per time.
  - aequitas 3y ago
    However, 30 seconds and 30 minutes are at far ends of a spectrum with a sweet spot in between. Of course there is a market for 30 minutes of content and not everything should be optimised to fit as much content in every second of video. But I definitely do not get entertained by hollow filler and senseless suspense building. Even Mythbusters did this with constant flash forwards/backwards and recaps (which especially stood out to me because TV commercials where I'm from are about once per hour and not every 5 minutes), but back then it was the only format we got.
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      Presumably you are able to understand that your preferences and your sweet spot is not the same as everybody else's, and would be open to considering that you might be significantly far from the middle of the spectrum. So I don't see the "however".
- forrestthewoods 3y ago
  Smarter Every Day is one of the only channels where it doesn’t feel dragged out. I agree that unnecessarily long videos are rampant on YouTube. SED hits the sweet spot for me. YMMV.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  I love everyone that claims YT forcing X... Almost everyone that claims that is wrong... I prefer 15-45min videos, I hate both the Trend to 3-4hr "streams" and the "we gotta beat tiktok" vertical video shorts... //sidenote... Bring back the 00's where people were shamed for posting vertical video....
- hnbad 3y ago
  I have literally watched a 5 hour plus video essay (NOT just a stream VOD, an actual video essay without much filler) recently but I concur that a lot of times a shorter video would suffice to get the point across. I guess there's room for a happy middle ground between traditional TikTok and modern long-form YouTube.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I have rewatched, over and over and over, a 3 and a half hour long video essay on a video game I've never played, in a video game series I actively dislike. Honestly a long form video essay on youtube has gotten to the point, by most talented creators, that it is basically just a high quality book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-_r0w7ykI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-_r0w7ykI
- Rastonbury 3y ago
  The creator himself has spoken out against YouTube's incentives, he said that he likes to produce longer than is optimum and does not want his videos to be influenced by the algorithm. YT pushes towards 8-15 min as sweet spot, I subscribe to a few who used to do 20+ min vids, and now they do around 10 min. LTT and their shorts for one.
sixothree 3y ago
I have a hard time know he works in weapons of war for a living.
- ctechbob 3y ago
  He retired from that to pursue an engineering PHD several years back.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  I'm curious why. Are you thinking that it's wrong / evil for a country to maintain an effective military?

Does it all have to be 30 minutes though? Not just him to be sure but I’m not a fan of YouTube’s crusade to incentivize long form content which just seems to have made everyone pad out every topic as much as they can. Very rare have I seen 30 minute videos that truly deserve that time commitment.

mikewarot 3y ago
>YouTube’s crusade to incentivize long form content They're all about "YouTube Shorts" now, of course that will change soon enough.
- simondotau 3y ago
  Shorts are mostly just “here’s a weird or unexpected thing, look how weird or unexpected it is”. There’s also regular, formulaic stuff like Half as Interesting which tend to be about one paragraph of information laboriously spread out over five minutes of generic stock footage and painfully tedious jokes. YouTube, at its best, are the videos where someone genuinely interested in a topic can show you why it’s interesting and hold your attention, allowing the content to dictate the length. CGP Grey probably being the most perfect prototypical example of this. Or it could come in the form of a Richard Feynman lecture, with absolutely no production value needed beyond reasonably intelligible audio.
  - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    > allowing the content to dictate the length This is Tom Scott for me. His videos tend to range around the 5- to 10-minute mark, but are occasionally far far longer. And yet every one of them is exactly the length it should be.
    - simondotau 3y ago
      I love love love Tom Scott, but some of his recent videos are getting an eeny weeny teeny tiny bit Half as interesting-y, but with Tom’s face to camera instead of incongruous stock footage.
userbinator 3y ago
I watched it at 2.25x to cut it down to ~13m, but even at that speed I agree a lot of videos are unnecessarily dragged out.
- smcl 3y ago
  If I recall correctly there's a certain length videos need to be to get adverts or to be monetised - something like ~10 minutes. So while this one is a little bit played out (maybe this happens to get an extra set of ads in the middle) the worst are when you have 2-3 minutes of information streeeeeetched out to 10 minutes.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
It's entertainment. People don't want to just look at the results for 10 seconds. What would they do with the next 29 minutes 50 seconds? They want to watch people and hear them talk, make jokes, work on setting up the experiment, etc. Same reason Mythbusters isn't 30 seconds per myth. You could just read scientific papers if you're looking to condense knowledge transfer per time.
- aequitas 3y ago
  However, 30 seconds and 30 minutes are at far ends of a spectrum with a sweet spot in between. Of course there is a market for 30 minutes of content and not everything should be optimised to fit as much content in every second of video. But I definitely do not get entertained by hollow filler and senseless suspense building. Even Mythbusters did this with constant flash forwards/backwards and recaps (which especially stood out to me because TV commercials where I'm from are about once per hour and not every 5 minutes), but back then it was the only format we got.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    Presumably you are able to understand that your preferences and your sweet spot is not the same as everybody else's, and would be open to considering that you might be significantly far from the middle of the spectrum. So I don't see the "however".
forrestthewoods 3y ago
Smarter Every Day is one of the only channels where it doesn’t feel dragged out. I agree that unnecessarily long videos are rampant on YouTube. SED hits the sweet spot for me. YMMV.
phpisthebest 3y ago
I love everyone that claims YT forcing X... Almost everyone that claims that is wrong... I prefer 15-45min videos, I hate both the Trend to 3-4hr "streams" and the "we gotta beat tiktok" vertical video shorts... //sidenote... Bring back the 00's where people were shamed for posting vertical video....
hnbad 3y ago
I have literally watched a 5 hour plus video essay (NOT just a stream VOD, an actual video essay without much filler) recently but I concur that a lot of times a shorter video would suffice to get the point across. I guess there's room for a happy middle ground between traditional TikTok and modern long-form YouTube.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I have rewatched, over and over and over, a 3 and a half hour long video essay on a video game I've never played, in a video game series I actively dislike. Honestly a long form video essay on youtube has gotten to the point, by most talented creators, that it is basically just a high quality book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-_r0w7ykI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93-_r0w7ykI
Rastonbury 3y ago
The creator himself has spoken out against YouTube's incentives, he said that he likes to produce longer than is optimum and does not want his videos to be influenced by the algorithm. YT pushes towards 8-15 min as sweet spot, I subscribe to a few who used to do 20+ min vids, and now they do around 10 min. LTT and their shorts for one.

sixothree 3y ago

I have a hard time know he works in weapons of war for a living.

ctechbob 3y ago
He retired from that to pursue an engineering PHD several years back.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
I'm curious why. Are you thinking that it's wrong / evil for a country to maintain an effective military?