I am trying hard to post one minute videos to @dtube each day, and having a lot of failure for each success.
I have a fitinfun you tube channel which I have had since 2013. I have over 100K in views and about 500 videos over there. So when dtube started I tried to make it work. I’ve tried to make it work several times and given up each time. But my steemit friends started to have success on dtube over the summer and so I decided to try again.
In October I was trying to upload one video a day and had to give that up when I lost wifi. Now I have limited wifi back again so I am trying again for the last few weeks. My result are spotty as you can read about below.
Here are My Successes
- Delegation
I got an anonymous delegation from from blocktrades in the neighborhood of 777 sp. I believe this is from @nathanmars as part of his dtubefamily777 initiative. I am so grateful for that help and try to spread my bigger small vote where it will make a difference.
I’m thrilled to be a part of this program and believe it is just what we need to succeed. I have believed from the start that we need more small fish to succeed here. Smaller help spread more widely is better than big help to just a few.
Note: Nathan is looking for more participants on this post which also gives more details of what he is doing. You can see how many people he is already helping and you are most welcome to join in too. So follow directions and get active. Nathan will notice you. This is not an exclusive club. It is an inclusive club.
- Comments
I now seek, comment, and vote on on dtube videos as part of the dtubefamily777 initiative. This has opened my world to many new topics and ideas I had not heard of before.
- New Connections
I’ve met many steemers I would not have otherwise seen and made a number of new friends in just these last few weeks. I’m always on the hunt for new friends, and now I have a good boost going on. A lot of people here mostly post on dtube, so I was not seeing them before this time.
- New Skills
I’m learning so many new skills to be able to post my videos and make them succeed. You will see below that I am not on target will all my technical goals, but I am not deterred.
- More Exposure for My Work
As a weight loss coach specializing in helping obese people lose weight naturally, I seek people who need my help, will follow my health posts, or need individual weight loss coaching. Now I am in new place with new chances for that. 80% of American are now obese or overweight, so I throw a wide net.
- Great Comments on My Videos
My videos are not that good, but they get wonderful comments and interest. As I improve, I believe this interaction will improve too.
Currently I am posting mostly about my SE Asia travels since that is the material I have at hand. This is an interesting topic for many, and I am glad for the feedback and questions.
And now for the Bad News
- Eating WIFI Time
I have had a lot of failure in my attempts to upload videos to dtube. I can use half of my allotted time for a day in one hour of trying to upload and have nothing to show for it. Currently long videos over one minute will not usually upload, and even short ones are failing.
I often get a variety of errors messages I do not understand, and then video will not upload at all.
Me watching for something that is not going to happen
My uploading problems are partially due to my wifi. Recently I enrolled in a wifi program here in Kuala Lumpur called Yes This gives me a little gadget that provides wifi, but it seems not to be reliable enough to upload videos to dtube in a consistent manner.
I'm thinking that both rain and other people on the network cause some of my problems related to the wifi. I tried uploading in the morning when people are at work. No go. Next I will try in the middle of the night and see if that helps.
As far as the problems of dtube itself, I reached out for help in discord and get this message from the very helpful @nannal:
The "upload a video before submitting" error comes from the source field of the post in the advance tab not being filled out, why that hasn't occurred is hard to say, typically it's a browser extension causing some issues, so uploading in incognito mode can be a fix.
So based on that advice, I use incognito mode to try to upload videos now. I have turned off my extentions for incognito mode too. Further, I completely reboot and start fresh before uploading so that at least my laptop is not doing other things.
@nannal also told me:
For IPFS issues this is typically a failure to connect to or maintain connection to the server during upload, unstable networks connections (wifi, 4G, any packet drops etc) can be the cause here but again it's hard to diagnose especially if it happens infrequently or sporadically.
I was having the problem infrequently or sporadically, but now the problem occurs much more frequently than the success.
I do know that the wifi drops off at times. I see this issue in some things I use that constantly update, such as steemnow. As I am working, that page will “freeze.” Back when I had “normal” wifi, this never happened.
My wifi is a limited plan, and I am blowing out the time by trying to upload and failing. I have 25 gigs a month, so that is about 800 mbs a day. Sometimes trying and failing with dtube takes half of my allotted time, and I am using the time too fast right now. I’m currently about 1.5 days over my time. This means I will not have wifi at the end of the month until it renews.
Somehow, I need to do better with uploading.
- I have bad looking thumbnails
One of my videos has the wrong thumbnail due to uploading issues. None of my videos a has good thumbnail. I know how important thumbnails are, and I try to create good ones for my steemit posts.
For dtube, I have been taking the best snap I could from my videos and uploading that. This is a big fail and attracts no one to my videos.
I tried using Canva like I do for my other posts, but then the thumbnail was too big and would not upload.
Today I found an answer to my questions about thumbnails by @kawaiicrush with her comment on this post. She says to use Canva and:
Use the custom dimensions and create a thumb that is 1280 * 720. Then use MS Paint that comes with your laptop and choose 'Image Resize' option at which point you will need to shrink the image by 50% but keep your proportions equal.
So I will try that and hope the thumbnail problem will soon be history.
- My dtube posts look awful on steemit
I have two answers for this problem.
@iamjadeline told me to use the “advanced” tab on dtube. I am afraid to switch screens when uploading, but that might not be a problem.
@xcountytravelers told me to create my post in a steemit window and then cut and paste it into dtube. If you do this on the “basic” tab, it comes through fine on steemit and looks bad on dtube.
- I’m not in my videos
I am not in my videos because I do not like how I look. When I first started on You Tube in 2013, I read the advice that if you do not like to see yourself just record the scene instead. This is what I have been doing for all of these years. Out of 500 videos I have posted, I might be in 10 of them.
I don’t look at you when you are in your videos either. It makes me uncomfortable to stare at you. I scroll down and listen instead.
I know I am not alone in this quirk and many people have told me they were inspired to make videos like mine as they are too scared to film themselves.
The good news for this section, is that at least I can film videos at all. I finished losing weight in 2011 and it took two years to get up the courage to make and post videos. I know I need them in order to reach people, but it is not my easiest path.
- I’m not recording new videos
Many people find it easy to use their phones to take photos and videos. I am not one of those people. I find my phone difficult to use. I lost my camera a few months ago and have not filmed or photographed much since. A big goal I have is to learn how to use my phone better and I am trying as best I can.
My hands are shaky, and the phone videos I have filmed so far are sub-par even with my low standards.
- I’m running out of good, shorter videos to post.
I do have a lot of videos on my hard drive and I have sorted out the short ones. It’s just amazing how many are blurry, cut off or otherwise unusable.
- I do not know how to edit videos
All of my videos are in one take and what you see is what I filmed.
I have a Windows Video Editor and Sony Vegas Pro on my laptop, but I do not know who to use either one of those programs. I need to learn so I can edit. I think text and cuts will help. If I can improve what I have already filmed, I can post better videos.
I know that "rendering" can shrink video size. Would this help me uploading problems?
- Low upvoting on my crappy videos
Yes, I know that this is not about the money. But my videos are dependably my lowest paying posts. This is discouraging based on how hard I have to work to get them uploaded and how much of my wifi they eat up.
- I am not sure what tags to use
Here are the popular tags on dtube now:
Here is @nathanmars definition of various tags:
Currently I am using dtubefamily777, a dtubesnap tag, and fitinfun. Then dtube adds the dtube tag. Then I go to steemit and add a tag about the video such as the country location.
My Steps for the Future on dtube
I want to continue the good things I am doing and improve the bad. That’s it! If you see this post and have any ideas at all to help me, please chime in. As you see, I can use all the help I can get!
Are you worried about gaining weight over the holidays?
December 2011 is the month when my weight loss efforts really took off. Please follow my blog for weight loss information, or contact me directly if you would like some individual help.