Anyone else with YouTube channels?

Setting up a YouTube channel was one of the most beneficial things I did when I started to learn Welsh at the end of last year. It helped when I was living in a part of Wales that didn’t really have an abundance of Welsh speakers to practice with - and before I’d discovered the joys of Skype.

Anyone else have any YouTube channels out there (Welsh or not?)

Here’s mine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvvS3RfzSQwiVf7Ocejf6yg (Pre-warning: not for those easily offended by the odd swear and the odd politically natured rant now and then)

If not, it’s something I’d really recommend for those looking to improve pronunciation etc. I’ve had some great and constructive feedback from fluent speakers over the last nine months which has really gone on to help a great deal.

7 Likes

I’ve just watched the video you uploaded 3 days ago…and I loved it…and how in the world have you managed to speak THAT BLOODY WELL Welsh in just a year! Honestly, that must have been magic…admit it! :astonished::raised_hands::nerd:

2 Likes

Diolch Claudia! Thanks for your kind comments.

I’m happy with my progress and I put it down to two things.

  1. SSIW, and doing it a lot :smiley:
  2. Going down my local Welsh speaking pub and doing a lot of Welsh drinking.
4 Likes

I’m doing point 1, too, but with much, much…MUCH less success. Admittedly, I’ll have to work more on pint…point 2! :innocent::wink:

2 Likes

I have YouTube channel, actually two of them, but on the whole two channels I have only 1 Welsh recording though. Most of my vids are animations and music, however if someone wants … here it is the one I usually preset to the World https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi0mrndDWp_OTGS49h_Jh9g/featured?view_as=public. Enjoy whatever …

2 Likes

There are a few videos on my channel, but they were just so I could post them to my blog/LiveJournal. They’re years old and not very exciting, so I won’t link.

I have thought about doing some Welsh videos, but haven’t really thought of a theme/topic yet. Do you just use your phone to make videos? Which editing software do you use?

I use my camera for most videos, but there are a couple on my channel - especially those where I’m about and about where I’ve just used my iPhone.

I don’t use anything fancy for editing - just Windows Movie Maker to be honest. I did try messing around with more advanced software - but i couldn’t find much for free, so I just ended up sticking with Movie Maker :smiley:

1 Like

My DSLR doesn’t do video and I think my Samsung phone is better quality than the Canon PowerShot. I may experiment because I do have some vague ideas for videos but nothing has quite gelled yet.

One thing people could do might be to record in audio-only. Technically, this is a lot simpler - all one needs is a smartphone with a voice-recorder app. Then one doesn’t have the pressure of learning how to be a film director, in addition to worrying about the correctness of the Welsh.

And editing audio is relatively easy using the freeware Audacity.

I think one could put an audio-only “video” on Youtube (I have certainly listened to quite a few, e.g. musical pieces), although I’m not sure of the technicalities of doing so.
However, the obvious place to share audio files is Soundcloud.

It depends of course on what exactly one is trying to achieve with ones recording (audio or video).

1 Like

SoundCloud has one limitation to that. If you tend to share a lot of tracks (let’s say so to recordings) you will have to be aware of the time they lenght. It’s not limited ot particular track how long it is but the lenght of the all recordings you upload. It works like this:. (I don’t know how much time you have with free acount though) If (let’s say) free acount allows you to upload about 3 hrs of lenght you’ll have with that limits. Now you have to decide will you upload one track in lenght of 3 hours or you’ll save that time for many more tracks (what I know you’ll do of course).You can upload more than just 3 hours of files of course but that means that those old will be hidden and new will come on or you’d be prompted to delete old files according to upload the new ones. (I’m not sure which option is correct because I actually use Pro acount on SoundCloud and it’s without any limitation of amoun tof uploaded time).

YouTube (as you know) has it all for free. However (as much as I know) you’d still have to convert audio files into any video format in order to upload it. It is fine with this forum to use either YouTube or SoundCloud because with posting the link the forum software recognizes the services and embeds the video or audio by itself.

Audacity is free and good enough to compose audio files together while you can also record directly to SoundCloud if you allow to it the access to your microphone. For really short recordings I many times use that option (however you can’t edit files that way of course).

For making videos I use whatever camera being it webcam, phone, photo camera or something else but I compose them with MAGIX Vegas although I don’t know where and when I’ve got it because it’s not for free. (I speak of me speaking of course). All the rest I animate with all kinds of software which I won’t name all here (except it’s of someone’s interest).

1 Like

Thanks Tatiana. I hadn’t noticed the limits on the free Soundcloud.

Maybe they didn’t allert you on them because you didn’t reach “critical” time yert. And it could be also that they have changed something. Since have pro acount I couldn’t possibly know but the time limit was the decider for me to go into PRO plan in the first place.

I think it’s around two hours. I can’t check because the thought police have blocked Soundcloud at work, but I’ve got a fair few tracks up there and I’m still not anywhere near hitting the limit.

I believe you’re correct.

Then I’m breaking that racord with (more or less worthy) 70 tracks :slight_smile: . I’ve instantly got too little time to spare so I’ve decided to go pro. It’s €9.00/month (if someone is interested (but i don’t want to make propaganda for them, just sharing the info)).