After a few YouTube live streams, I made a little video guide. The process I cover applies to Live Streaming from within YouTube (in this case within the Chrome browser). This means the guide can be used for Windows, Mac and Chromebook devices.
I am a keen photographer, small YouTuber and podcaster. This means that I have quiet a lot of photography and filming gear. Some gear I sell on sites like eBay once I’ve had my use of it and there are some pieces of gear that I’d never sell for various reasons.
I came across Fat Llama a few years ago. Fat Llama allows you to rent your gear out to people. Typically, the renting is to local people. You set a daily, weekly or monthly price and people can rent the item off you. In principle this sounds great and ticks boxes for being green, making some money from your gear and helping others out too. I’ve used the service enough to consider this a thorough review.
The borrower gets to rent an item at a much cheaper rate than if they used a commercial renting company. As the rental is local, they don’t get stung for delivery. Both factors make renting via Fat Llama much cheaper than renting from a commercial company. Potentially the range of items available to rent through Fat Llama will be greater than offerings from commercial renting companies too.
Both the renter and the borrower pay a Fee to Fat Llama. The renter has a fee deducted from their ‘income’ and the borrower also pays an additional fee to Fat Llama on top of what they pay to the renter.
I’ve borrowed a single item and rented many of my items. However, I’ve now stopped using the site altogether as my experiences have been less than great and I have big concerns about safety.
Should the item being rented become damaged or not returned then Fat Llama claim that their insurance will pay out. However, based on my experience of their customer service and reviews/stories I’ve read, I have huge misgivings about if the insurance would actually pay out. This is my biggest reason for stopping to use the service.
My concerns are:
After reading my review, would you rent your expensive gear out for £10 a day?
I’ve been experimenting with live streaming on YouTube during the Corona Virus pandemic. I’ve released 2 live streams so far. Live streams are a very different beast from delivering content via edited videos. For one there’s no editing in a live stream (although you can do some light editing once the live stream has finished).
I feel that live streaming does have a place in a channel’s output, but the most important aspect of using live streaming is to work out what role live streaming will play in your channel.
A live stream will have lower video quality than a traditionally uploaded video. You also won’t be able to seamlessly cut out mistakes or edit it into a succinct video.
With this in mind, why would you opt to do a live stream? I can see the merit in live streaming if you want to get something out quickly or have some breaking new. With no editing it will be much quicker to produce and the lower quality (compared to your edited videos) will be forgiven by the audience as a consequence of delivering by live streaming.
The use of live streaming as a tool for a channel could lie in its immediacy. Reasons for streaming content immediately could be:
In each case the quicker delivery of content or the higher level of transparency benefits the audience.
An audience will, at some level, know that what they see in a live stream cannot be edited. Live streaming will increase an audience’s trust and allow the creator to have a higher level of transparency. This benefits content where a high level of audience trust is required. For example, a prize draw would be trusted more by an audience when it is delivered as a live event rather than any other posting method.
There is also a section of an audience who will appreciate the ability to have early access or are keen to see a bit more of how your production works.
I think live streaming is also applicable to giving your audience the ability to see a raw version of a production if they want. A good example would be recording a podcast. The podcast could be streamed live, as it is recorded, allowing your audience to get an early viewing of it before the edited and polished version is released. Some of the channel’s audience may be keen to see how things are done or to gleam other insights from from watching a raw unedited stream.
To try live streaming out, I streamed two videos that normally I would have either not created or would have output the content as an edited video.
I now have the technical understanding and experience of doing live streaming, but I’m yet to find a good rationale to produce content as a live stream rather than an edited video (I’m not running a competition nor have any breaking news).
You can see my live streams below:
If you are considering a live stream consider:
Now I’m editing more on a PC I’m keen to have a better set up. I came across this USB monitor from ASUS. Light, portable and useful its a great second screen. Sadly, I cannot get it to work with my ChromeBook. It will only work with my Windows machine (should be mac compatible).
I’ve created a quick unboxing video and hope to have a review out soon.
I have now finished and published my video review of the Ricoh GR3.
I found this video difficult to complete. I had aimed to film the video in 4K and publish at 1080. I filmed the footage using the Sony AX53 in 4K. I had real difficulty editing the video in Lumafusion on the iPad. It turned out not to a Lumafusion issue but an iPad issue. I suspect that you cannot use XAVC-S clips over a certain length on an iPad. Due to this I reverted back to using a PC. I found my PC software frustrating and changed my editor after some time. I went back to Camtasia and while this was slow it did a good job.
I am to write a post soon about using Camtasia and the problems of using XAVC-S with an iPad.
I think the macro feature on the GR3 is excellent. So I’ve created a video tutorial for using it. Enjoy: