SellerThink Vertical on YouTube
SellerThink Vertical (AKA STV) is a new second YouTube channel where the videos will be produced for Smartphones and Devices in 1920X1080p Vertical High Definition. The original and most popular SellerThink channel will continue to serve traditional High Definition videos for online sellers and small business owners.
Producing production value Vertical Videos is a very new concept being pushed by Instagram's IGTV and of course YouTube isn't willing to let that easily happen, so YouTube introduced a new version of Vertical Video Format made for mobile viewers.
SellerThink's main HD Channel receives about 70% of its views from mobile devices. That's around 25,000 to 35,000 mobile viewers every three days. For that reason, it just made sense to offer SellerThink in a Vertical Platform too.
Creating Vertical Videos takes new creativity, especially for some of the videos that will cross-over from the Wide Screen HD SellerThink Channel.
Challenges include editing in vertical format using new software. Starting off, the SellerThink Vertical channels videos are being edited in HitFilm Express. Other challenges include squeezing viewable text information into a vertically limited width, limitations with framing the shots and creating animated graphics that work and look great in a vertical space.
HitFilm Express tends to be a bit processor and memory needy. Our four-core processor running HitFilm express is reminiscent of the Powerful G5 Quad Core Macintosh Computers with maxed out RAM that could barely run Apples Final Cut Studio Pro. So, its a slow experience. That being said, on a positive note, HitFilm Express has a lot of interesting add on's that can be purchased. As for traditional editing, it lacks a lot of what film and television video editors need, like the ability to layer massive multiples of video and audio tracks, an easy method to slowly or quickly advance or back up specific frames of video to make a splice or check the scene. It feels a bit like a step backward compared to Apple Final Cut or Sony Vegas or Movie Vegas, but it does the job, and rendering time into an uploaded video is actual impressive, taking a fraction of the time that Final Cut and Sony Movie Vegas take for traditional wide screen HD video. That fact that it can format and edit Vertical Video at all is great, neither our $1,000 Final Cut Editing Software or lower end Sony Movie Vegas editing software can do it. No one was rendering or creating videos in those formats a few years ago.
HitFilm Express makes it easy to set-up a template. For the SellerThink Vertical Videos, and those that will appear on IGTV too, we are rendering videos at the absolute highest rendering abilities in 1920x1080 to help maintain the quality on all vertical devices.
STV (aka SellerThink Vertical) will have some videos that are only going to be available in a Vertical Perspective. Those videos will not be available on the main SellerThink channel.
One the more interesting tools were are using for the SellerThink Vertical Channel is a unique one of a kind video camera created by Oregon Scientific called the ATC Chameleon Dual Lens Action video camera.
The ATC Chameleon Dual Lens, as it's name implies, has to different cameras built into it that share a 1080P video stream and each shooting in sync at 720P with a single audio stream. Other oddities of this camera is its ability to rotate the lenses 180 degrees. One side rotates up and down, the other side rotates side to side. Even though technically the video streams are recording separately, they are recording in a split screen format. Even one familiar with yesteryears cassette tape recordings may understand the concept better. On a cassette tape, the audio is recording on two different channels independently, but in synch. If you have a device cable of reading the tracks separately, you can listen to each track individually, usually this is left track and right track. Otherwise, your audio device plays both tracks back together as a single sound. The same principal works with a four-track cassette recorder in which four individual tracks are recorded at the same time, and when played back on a regular cassette player sound like they are merged, but played back on a four-track cassette recorder and they are independent.
This is the same principal that the ATC Chameleon works on, recording three tracks at a time, Two independent video tracks and a single audio track. With the right software, you can view the video tracks independently, but no software seems to exist to make it possible to export each video separately, instead the two video recordings appear in split screen, either side by side or stacked vertically.
The key here is in the previous last sentence, "Stacked Vertically". Flip a switch and the ATC Chameleon films vertically in split screen, creating a unique filming possibility since the camera can be mounted and the lenses adjusted to show the subject at hand. No other action camera or HD video camera is made like it with the ability to shoot vertically or wide screen with the flip of the switch. Being able to mount a video camera makes the video more stable, able to be used in more rugged environments and frees up the cinematographer's hands.
SellerThink is a pioneer of the ATC Chameleon for reimagining its use into the upcoming SellerThink Vertical videos, but even more so, because SellerThink actually used to sell these video cameras brand new on eBay. It was quite a few years ago now when this camera came to market at $250 or more each, and SellerThink was selling them for $190.00 on eBay. A total of 5 or 6 brand new cameras were sold, and we kept the last one for our film production tool kit. Up until 2018, the Camera was only used for three videos, the rest of the time being kept new in its case. In 2018, before the Vertical concept was introduced by Facebooks Instagram as IGTV and the ability to upload edited videos, SellerThink has already began using the ATC Chameleon for some of its weekly vlogs mounted within a vehicle in wide screen HD.
Instagram later launched IGTV as a vertical video specific part of instagram and that is where the first Vertical Videos by SellerThink were started. The idea to launch Vertically on YouTube came a while later after a few videos had already been created. It didn't seem like a great idea at the time, but an interesting challenge to say the least, and SellerThink is known for both successfully and unsuccessfully exploring new possibilities in its videos.
The idea was solidified after a re-edit from horizontal video to a vertical format for IGTV worked out well. This was a product review of the Power Joy game console which is a clone of the old Nintendo UK Japan Famicom game system. The Famicom is what everyone else outside of the USA had available in the 1980's when in the USA everyone was playing the NES Nintendo Entertainment System.
The video had been originally filmed in 2016 but never released online. It has Written Text on across some aspects of the video which means that changing the videos size to fit full screen is not possible since the text would be cut off. Other parts of the video are exclusively made for wide screen formatted video, while other aspects of the video are shot in a format that easily fit vertical.
It was going to be a make it or break it video edit. If the video edit could be cut and edited with minimal work, creativity and maintain the ability to easily view the need text information, then it would be a success and vertical videos would take on a new appreciation. If it failed any of those criteria, then creating new vertical videos would be dropped leaving only the original test video edits available publically and on IGTV.
Since it worked out well, and since YouTube announced its support of vertical videos with its new layout, a test video was uploaded to the original and main SellerThink YouTube Channel. It immediately received enough views to make it worth exploring on YouTube.
SellerThink S'mores had been launched three months prior on a YouTube channel that was forced to close down due to YouTube changing its policies. The channel SellerThink S'mores replaced had been a thriving year old channel, reaching hundreds of thousands of views, but only having 168 subscribers.
YouTube didn't care how many views a channel was receiving, even if they were all organic. They set a cap requirement of having at least 1,000 subscribers. As a result, YouTube demonetized the channel and began throttling video suggestions for the videos preventing the channel from growing.
SellerThink S'mores relaunched in its dust after a year break, but still faced the same issue, People couldn't find the videos in the search results, and videos that somehow reached people never peaked over 30 views. After twenty videos of 5 to 10 views the newly redeveloped S'mores channel was looking pretty weak. A channel really has to drum up some enthusiasm for whoever is producing it and creating videos for it or its going to die in a few months. That is now a continual happening on YouTube. Visit a relatively unknown channel trying to launch and you'll see new videos every day or several times a week for about three to six months, and then they just stop. Revisit it a year later, and it's still dead with a pocket full of views.
SellerThink is hopeful that its Vertical channel will reach a different audience that its main channel does.
It's entirely a Niche. As a reseller on multiple marketplaces, SellerThink has its roots in establishing itself and in Niche marketplaces. It will be interesting to see if that trend carries over to the new channel also.
To succeed in a Niche, you have to be a pioneer of the Niche and that is the goal. Search for Vertical Videos on YouTube and they pretty much do not exist. Instead you find a bunch of Horizontal Wide Format videos talking about Vertical videos, how to make them, how IGTV started them. Those YouTube creators are topic exploiters, not pioneers. They make videos to get paid for any trending topic they can find. SellerThink Vertical will be one of the first fully vertical channels once it reaches its potential. There will be some of the original SellerThink S'mores horizontal videos that remain, but all new videos will be filmed or at least edited vertically, even if they are the the same video from SellerThink reedited vertically.
Whatever the case, the new channel is completely demonetized until it reaches 4000 views and 1,000 subscribers. Even then, its very possible that YouTube will not allow it through its proposed review process without additional hurdles. One of the worst cons YouTube did to its creators between 2015 to 2018 is put up fake promises. For instance, YouTube will often demonitize a video that in no way violates any of its policies as "Advertiser Unfriendly". Why? Because it wants more views and monetized visits to its larger channels that have similar content or even identical content. Those larger channels could be in violation of multiple YouTube policies and be monetized, while a smaller channel targeted as "Advertiser Unfriendly". Why is it Advertiser Unfriendly? Because the channel is to small to make those advertisers any money.
The point is, YouTube created a review process. Get 1,000 views on the video and YouTube's amazingly unbias and completely fair review team will reevaluate it. Sounds great until you reach 1,000 views and then go back and request a review only to be informed that the 1,000 views rule is bogus. Now it's going to take an additional 9,000 more views, because hey, we're busy.
So SellerThink Vertical may not even exist a year from now on August 20, 2019, even if the channel meets all the advertised requirements. But the hopes are high. The anticipation is high. Most importantly working in a new video format, launching an entirely new and never tried channel, and if nothing else, gaining new skills in vertical film production are enough to make SellerThink Vertical a worth while project to explore.
If you sell online, or like to watch vertical videos, then give it a shot and subscribe to the channel. Unlike SellerThink's main channel, and despite focusing on the Vertical niche, the decision was made to not focus or limit the channel in any way to any specific formula of videos. That means, reselling videos, music videos, vlogs, trending videos, are all open game. There are no monetary obligations, restrictions, advertisers or view counts to affect STV. That may make it more inclined to be kept out of YouTube's advertisers program, but it also removes the barriers that the main SellerThink channel has experienced.
If YouTube, its advertisers, or the videos broke away from the Niche topics of selling online, reselling and making money, YouTube either demonitized them or throttled them so they only received under 100 views over the life time of years. We know that its not because of the video. While VidMe's video channel was still around, we moved those videos penalized by YouTube over to Vidme, and the same videos that YouTube Throttled to under 100 views, exploded into the thousands. That's ironic. That's control. That's manipulation by YouTube to force creators to make videos with their niche. SellerThink Vertical has none of those factors, other than the possibility that YouTube will throttle the videos or channel, So expect a wide range of videos to be released.
Wish us Luck!
You can find STV on YouTube at this link:https://www.youtube.com/