What drives you crazy about tutorial videos?

  • Thread starter Thread starter spantini
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spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
I've been watching a lot of recording related tutorial videos over the past year - some are very professional, and many are semi. Many are just cheesy.

Above all else, the one thing that drives me batty is when they (whoever) cannot stay on the subject. When they have to comment on why or what the reasons are for this or that which have nothing to do with the subject at hand - they cannot resist explaining that this particular example track is bad because they were up all night and hadn't had breakfast yet... you know.



Kenny Gioia (Reaper) does not fall into this category.
 
I don't even know where to start.
It is a serious pet hate of mine, though, so maybe best not to start? :P

Loud ass music from the go is a negative. Advertising something before we even get started - Can't have that.
If I have to skip ahead more than once to find the content start, I'm out.
First time "you guys" gets said, I'm gone. Anyone who says "you guys" once says it about a million times.
Realising the length is > 5 minutes for something that takes 20 seconds to explain..

I could go on but I'll just make myself angry! :cursing:
 
When they spend 15 to 30 minutes explaining something that should take no more then 3 minutes....or when you have to listen to 10 minutes of meaningless self promotion or whatever...so they can finally come to the actual topic in the last 2 minutes. I often will skip and fast-forward when there's useless rambling, which happens in most tutorial/review type videos. I think people just feel the need to provide a lot of fluff, in order to make their videos seem more important/valid, instead of just cutting to the chase, and being brief.

Oh...also with audio tutorial/review videos...I hate when the narration is WAY LOUDER than the actual audio...or vice-versa...and it makes me want to not watch, seeing how the person wasn't able to balance the audio...then they can't be all that good at audio stuff.
 
All good ones. :)
Here's some of mine.

Any mention of "heres my special gift to you"

Videos patterened after an infomercial.

Having to go to the website to get the rest of the info, which is no better, or more in depth than the dribble of the video.

As mentioned earlier, volume issues. That deserves double mention. If the video designed to 'teach someone how to sound good' can't be heard on your phone, how can that person's advice be trusted?

Pros who know what they are doing but are boring as all hell to watch. Won't name names, but he has a 'place' named after him. :D

On the plus side, someone who's videos I like are David from Mixbuss TV. He doesn't bullshit around :)
 
I have to jump on the pile with the loud intro/music thing. That's my second biggest gripe.
 
One thing that bugs me is poor language skills. If you are going to post something that purports to teach, either just show what you are doing or make and follow a basic script please. NO gobbledy-gook
 
Next up on my list (there's a list...?) - When all you see is a computer screen and mouse pointer, with accompanying narrative..
way too many "hosts" are a little too quick on the draw when they're jerking that pointer around to follow the dialog. It happens
too fast to follow and by the time I see where the pointer went it's on to the next item, and the next "chase the pointer".

I get so busy pausing the video and/or scanning the screen for the warp speed pointer, I totally miss what's being presented.
 
I have to say the Hi What's up start kills me too.

I hate the so called tutorials that are simply people showing off, with no attempt to explain.

If I watch a tutorial for a feature or technique I want to use I need to be able to follow it, and maybe go back, or skip forward as required. I hate anything where the idea is to watch an unboxing and see what is inside, as Google always shows you what is supplied on the manufacturers info pages. Unless putting it together is important, wasting my time in this way is pointless - then, you get to the exciting bit - and they say bye!

As somebody with a qualification in teaching, what I can tell you is that for communications to be successful, everyone must get 100% of the information you sent intact. In a room, you can spot the blank expressions when you went over their heads, and you can simplify, and repeat till they get it. In a video you have to guess the level of the audience. If you get it wrong, some will just not get it - with everything too complex or difficult for them, but equally, the same video could be viewed by experts as poor, low level and explained badly, because you had to simplify for the beginners. I reckon 50% of the videos on youtube have this problem, and you cannot beat this figure unless you very cleverly layer the levels of difficulty so everyone gets what they need.

It really is like going into a university and delivering information more suitable for a 15 year old, but worse is going into a school and delivering the material a university final year student would want. Educationalists call it differentiation - multi level streams. very difficult to plan and quite tricky in a video because it may involves the voice doing one level and the images doing the other.

Most youtube tutorials are done by well meaning people who think they're doing it right - but aren't.
 
I hate inconsistency in the "instruction" videos. They'll talk about how they use a particular plugin for a particular thing and explain why they use it, usually because someone ELSE told them to. Then 10 videos down the road, they've suddenly changed how they use that particular plugin, or they use a different plugin altogether to achieve the same result except they NEVER MENTION THAT 10 VIDEOS AGO THEY TOLD YOU SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT! I won't mention any particular names but that particularly annoys me. If they are that wishy-washy, they shouldn't be taking people's money for their videos and "instructions."
 
I'm gonna make a tutorial video about posting on forums like HR. I will start with 'Hi Guys' and then spend 20 minutes talking about myself before (without edits) ending with 'do what the fuck ever you want'. Followed by' Welcome to the forum'. :)

And by the way, go fuck yourself! LMAO!

I kid, I kid...
 
alterman said:
Don't you like Marty? :D



:D

"I'm going to teach you how to play that cover. I got the idea because i was shopping two months ago and saw a nice shirt. As my friend disagreed with me i had to call my mom for advice. Before i could ask she told me that my uncle was at his work were a machine collapsed because the service man couldn't come as his wife cheated on him with his neighbour who's wife ran away with .......because............................................................. so now i'm going to tell you how to play it. I will do that on this instrument i found 10 years ago when i was on vacation in ..... We didn't have that good weather as we expected so we went shopping. While shopping i saw a nice .................................................................... "

:yawn:
Click to expand...
Their tracks are always, always polished BEFORE they start polishing them - they do not sound like real home recorded tracks!
 
1: Usually the voice,
2: The ego inflating attitude.
3:the often miss-information due to item 2.

However I have found some videos very helpful especially when I have to work on strange or new equipment and I need to know things quickly. By the way I am usually an operating manual reader.

Alan.
 
Bugs me when they don't properly A/B something, or give really short samples of whatever it is they're comparing or highlighting. Everyone say's what's up guys... come on! You're not going to find many videos where the creator isn't trying to be personable...it's YouTube, that's what they do.
 
If they say "what's up guys?" I watch no further unless I really need to. It's casual switch off start for me. Hate it! Exactly like emails that start "hey!"

First impressions really count.
 
Well NOW? This thread! Heh! My fault I thought it was about things in general not YT ***t and I wanted an excuse to rant on about Windows 10. Just taken delivery of a Lenovo T430. Nice wee thing, Xmas prezzy for son but! Going through the W10 setup procedure drove me nuts.

On YT generally? If I want to learn something I never use videos. Mainly for all the reasons above. I am an old fekker and can READ!

Not a "teacher" (daughter is and son teaches guitar) but I spent a good 10 years installing and demonstrating/training Joe Public on TVs and VCRs.

Thus I have infinite patience, hide of an elephant and am moron immune.

Dave.
 
Well now... sure it's 2 years later, but I've watched a few videos in the meantime and the biggest gripe I got this time around is editing.

From start to finish there's a jump cut every .75 or so seconds. This could just be sloppy editing or, what I really suspect, is done deliberately as an art form. I'm surprised there aren't instructional videos done in the skakey-cam process - or maybe not too surprised as the host has a need to be recognized.

I posted this elsewhere here and thought this was a better spot (I forgot it was here).
 
This is the video for you ^.
jump cut tutorial

The main thing that bugs me is the constant "you guys"..."you guys" which, at some point, led to the possessive "your guyses".
That drives me mental - "looking forward to reading your guyses comments".
It's just "your". :(
 
I had to zip through the long intro (I found myself reaching for my gun :eek:) to get to the instruction, which was pretty good. I learned something there. So it's a combination of a tool to clean up a sloppy video, and a little bit of artistic presentation.
 
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