I'm so sorry for the absolute BOMBARDMENT of updates recently I'm just fully in the zone with my thoughts and whatnot. Uhh so anyway what about my thoughts in the last 24 hours since I updated? I woke up this morning dying to get my thoughts out about my youtube subtitles. It's been bugging me for a while but put simply, I hate doing subtitles for my videos, I truly don't have the patience for it. My plan has always been to get them professionally captioned once I could afford to pay someone to do it, but obviously that time may never come. I started doing subtitles when at some point while watching back one of my videos I realised how hard I found it to understand what I had said, which sucked because I was the one to say them, so if even I couldn't understand it how was anyone else supposed to? So at that point I decided to to try and do them myself just to see how I went, and it felt good. So then I kept trying until I made a habit of doing them all the time at which point it became just another part of the video making process (which when you think about it is exactly what it should be).
Now I'm no professional, so again, I planned to get all my subtitles re-done as proper closed captions when I could afford to, and still that may never happen. But what I've particularly noticed recently is how much it's affected other parts of my process. When I go to start a video my immediate thought is "but wont the subs be such a pain?" and then as I record I focus on keeping it short and how much I talk to make it easier for me to subtitle later. I cant make any complicated weird sounds to express emotion because I don't know how to describe them. I have to control my stutter and racing thoughts from coming out of my mouth. In my portal series recently I try my hardest to not talk over voice lines knowing otherwise I cant fit every word in time on screen. Then in editing, again I try to cut out as much as possible. Oh now my video's too short? I'll have to pad it out with breaks of silence but not so long that the video gets boring. I remember when heavily editing a video down to 20 minutes used to be such a bother for me (I cant describe it, its not so much the recording length that determines how easy I get through it but the final product length and how much editing actually goes into it??), now that seems like nothing compared to subtitling even just five minutes of a video. But I find myself procrastinating, not just the subtitles themselves, but every single part of making a video because all I can focus on is how long it'll take to get the subtitles done.
For a while I blamed it on a lack of patience to get videos out. I've struggled in the past with this need to get videos out asap. Last video didn't do so well? Gotta get a new one out to get that momentum going again. Last video did average or good? Gotta keep that momentum going with a new video. Obviously I don't think this is healthy and so often deliberately force myself to take breaks to not feed into it. But some part of me just wants to make lots of videos, and I can't do that when I'm constantly put off making any videos. I'm also trying my hardest to keep doing subtitles because obviously some people need them! I've proven to myself that I am capable of getting videos out consistently while writing their subtitles. I thought I was going to quit doing them multiple times and still continued on anyway, usually chalking it up to having been in a bad mood at the time. But again and again I feel held back by them and it's becoming so draining.
Uploading a video without subtitles now feels like a crime, I feel so guilty because I know not only could people benefit from them but I also know people do use them. Like seriously, at one point 80% (to my memory) of my viewers were using my subtitles and I'm worried people in my audience genuinely wouldn't be able to keep watching if I stop adding them. If its even only one person, sometimes that thought alone is all that powers me through doing them, and I'm mad at myself when sometimes not even that is enough to give me the patience and motivation I need. Like even right now I'm sitting on a video that is practically finished apart from the subtitles simply because I cant bring myself to do them. I'm not even sure it so much has to do with the time it takes to write them, but simply how monotonous of a task it is. At least when I'm editing I have creative control, subtitling is just hours of transcribing and timing words to a video.
Truly I am torn and have no idea what to do. It breaks my heart at the thought of taking away something that could be so helpful simply because "I can't be bothered" but equally I'm sick of feeling frustrated over my motivation (which is often already lacking) being stunted in something that I'm otherwise making a constant effort to enjoy doing.
If I do stop doing subtitles consistently, it'll be exactly that. Its not a "I'll never do subtitles again" just I won't do them consistently like I'm currently doing. That being said though without the routine I doubt it'll ever be something I want to do or look forward to doing. Another idea I've been floating is of maybe introducing a "community captions" system where people can submit their captions by email for my videos, although this is obviously a massive ask, especially for a small audience like mine. Additionally the captions would have to be of a certain "standard". Again, I'm no professional so they wouldn't be to any official standard, but I would read through them and decide if it's to my standard I suppose. Potentially even take submitted captions and tweak them a little to help them pass. The person submitting them would obviously be credited in the description and such. The other downside of this is, as mentioned above, if I can pay to get them done properly all my old videos would potentially get re-done as well, which means viewers' hard work may later get erased (although acknowledgements would still remain, and this does depend on the if I can ever afford it which is honestly rather unlikely).
Now obviously all this information will probably be more helpful if given to the people who actually watch my videos, so I might turn this into a video of its own, or at the very least post a community tab post directing them here to have a read. And if you're from the future and are reading this, thank you for reading all the way through. This has been something weighing on me heavily for several months now, and this is the first time I feel I have been able to accurately articulate exactly what I'm feeling. I'm not sure I should finish this on the note of "tell me what you think" because I believe the decision is ultimately up to me if I wanna stop doing subtitles or not. Consider this more of an explanation or apology if I do decide to stop, and a promise that if I'm ever financially able, I will be getting my captions professionally done.
Uhh... now I don't know how to end this... New video hopefully coming soon? I guess I'll see you then!