Editing Youtube Videos is Hard

Certified 100% No AI Slop

Context & Channel Creation

I don’t really plan youtube videos, I plan projects to leran nerw stuff.

At first I did youtube videos as a resume thing. And I always tried to add some memes on top of it because editing was something I genuinely enjoyed. It’s a way to add jokes that make me laugh + I do enjoyed the process.

In fact, I already did editing in the past, especially during covid. I was like 16 and we played Fortnite & Warzone all day long. I would clip the best moments automatically using that neat NVIDIA shadow whatever software, and I would edit private video clips for me and my friends with cuts per second and obniouxious memes (.exe / MLG style edits, the OGs will know).

Editing was a real blast.

My style was and still is chaotic, memes everywhere, private jokes etc..

But I grew older now I’m about to graduate and I’m starting a youtube channel to post some portfolio projects and tutorials to share beginner knowledge this very weird FPGA / Hardware design field.

At the time, I figured copying the “fireship” style would be a great start to put my basic portfolio projects out there under the form of tutorials and still have something to edit by adding some memes and zooms (just… like fireship !).

Unexpected Success

And then came the “AI to FPGA” project. It intrigued and quickly “blew” at 10K views in under a week or something like that. which for me was enormous (still is lol).

I was feeling very happy and at this moment I knew that somehting could be done to realize an old forgotten dream : Work on my own stupidly deep tech projects, and get paid for it via youtube.

I franckly did not really expect that but to be honnest, I strecretly wished a video got real some traction one day one day, but making tutorials and project reviews made it unexcpected as this is not your typical performing youtube content.

I wanna do stupidly complex projects, supposedly out of reach for the common human, but still do them, alone, to prove that, the technology around us is whithin reach if you dedicate enough time and effort to it.

And most importantly, working on some youtube projects would allow me to work at my own house, near my familly, which is something that is impossible in a normal FPGA job as you have to go in big cities, often in other countries, which is great but… yeah, I like my homeland and if I can get to work there + enjoy familly time, that would mean the world to me.

So this ambition was born. I still made a technical video on AI to FPGA becaus eI kinda had to as that was a protfolio project at first and everything was prepared fo it. And it unexpectedly also worked kinda well despite being a technical tutorial.

And after the AI to FPGA ARC, came the HOLY CORE ARC, this video had and still has a huge success. RISC-V is really getting trendy so more and more linearly discvoer my video over time, so it nevers stppped getting views.

To this day it’s at almost 60K views.

I was so euphoric, For me I was doing it, youtube became a serious thing and I pushed the HOLY CORE to its limit by runnning doom.

But I also pushed my youtube style to its limits.

From the second HOLY CORE video to today, I never reproduced any success like I had before.

The projects are good (I think) but somehow, the way I frame them do not interest people.

Framing a subject is the way you will talk about this specific subject. i.e. if I build a car, I can make a series of videos “how does a car works” or like “the engineering screts behind the modern car”, thus adopting more “educational” angle. Or I can adopt another angle, antoher framing method, like “OMG I uilt This Car in 30day and RACED IT” which is more “entertainement” oriented . Both these exmaple are talking about the same topic and could be edited using the same materials, but editing will differ and people may like one more than the other depending on the subject you are trying to talk about. These a two extremes exmaples but this is the part I just cannot get right and my current editing style makes it hard to position myself well. More on that below.

Speculations, Problems and Future Video Adjustments / Fixes.

Okay so now, we are “today” (as in the 31st of march 2026).

My last videos did not perform as well as I though they would, espcially the DOOM video and the ethernet video (the PCB video being more of a fun little video just for the love of the game):

• The DOOM video was an insane project imo (not to be cocky or anything, like I ran DOOM on my custom CPU, even I can’t fucking believe it), but it was too short and a bit technical. Being technical is not a problem if its well framed and if the editing matches that frame. But when you try being technical with my chaotic editing style and lack of framing skills, it get pretty confusing pretty fast for the viewer. (more on that in an instant).
• The ethernet video was also pretty nice but very technical. Connecting my own CPU to ethernet if definitly a thing, but the video was short and the pre-intro clearly nuked the perfomances. Because As The catual video started, retention became much better due to effort in bringing explanation value and actual project visuals.

So a quick analysis of these two videos and why they probably “failed” (even though they did not really “fail” but I though they would get more traction):

• The DOOM video is an exmaple of a bad frame imo. Did not think too much about the script, which is good when you still have the mind of a beginner (e.g. holy core video) but if not, you get lost in deep and half baked technical explanations, as well as worthless parts that does not help the projects overview at all. In a nutshell, I confuse my audience and only remains the people who like me as a creator or the very few that really do enjoy my style (love you guys).
• The ethenet video was a big editing effort on my side and it even got an insane start, making me hope a lot ! I was vey happy (best start EVER) and I think it tanslated an appreciated effort amongst the interrested audience but this audience turned out to be small as the video instatly plateaued after 12 hours, leaving me in shock. It probably failed because of the pre-intro, lack of projects visuals / real struggles footages (which adds life + story to a project video) and the “second” intro was good, but I could’ve put a face cam to put an emphasis ont he “talk to the ouside world” and insiting on the “crazy” part of the project.

And most importantly, I think my editing style carries 1 fatal flaw : too chaotic which drives people away. Think about it, people look at technical projects content, They enjoy the project, they enjoy the high level explainations, but its just too chaotic, too many meme, private jokes. There is a fundamental mismatch between the editing and the frame, which itself is probably off.

This became obvious as I started looking for more than “cool editing effects” tutorials online, and I discovered than the editing effort i not all about fancy effects, but also choosing and planning that’s where most of the efforrts goes actually.

Some of your favorite youtubers may look like they are doing low efforts videos, just casually reviewing stuff or some random project report. But trust me, when you start realizing it, they really optimize their edits its just than their effort goes mostly into choosing what and when things appears on screen to fit a video frame and a specific (already established) audience. Especially when the said effect are know to scare you audience away !

So back to my case: for dumbly complex projects such as mine, I think people want the actual value : be surprised, find out about the actual project beyond its “cliackbait” headline, see the real struggles, see the solution emerge + a nice visually impressive result and maybe learn a ting or two along the way.

I lost track of that, trying my best to add fancy cuts, some fancy edits and focused on having a fast style to keep retention, but I failed to realize this was probaly not serving me as well as I though, my sujbect was still poorly framed, and the audience was scraed away by the memes, which only seduced youngsters like me (love you guys) who enjoy tech and memes… but let’s be real, we are very few to enjoy tech and meme in the REAL hardware low level community.

In fact, most of of would prefer a video where you are surprised, wher you find out about the actual project, see the real struggles, and see the solutions alongside fancy, but well managed visuals.

Because captivating visuals are not an enmy, in fact they are a great tool, it’s just that I have to put more effort into the structure and the thinking that goes BEHIND and BEFORE making a video, instead of ust yapping in front of my microphone and hopiping to fx everything once I start editing.

Let that be a lesson for my future self.

I am currently preparing a very complex video topic : Creating a trading chip on FPGA (Nasdaq ITCH Parser).

This is a big and challenging project.

There are many ways to fail this as a video, people will not know what an FPGA is, but knowing it’s used to be the fastest trader is fascinating. There IS a whole STORY behind it.

That’s gonna be a hard one, As it lacks visuals, it is very deeply technical, so explainantion may be boring, and it’s also rich in history and intriguing lore (finance lol) so finding a balnce beteen the technical side, the projects story, and the historical facts WILL BE VERY HARD and the framing will be essetial, yet so easy to fail to be honest.

But it’s a challencge worth taking: as finance applications, as boring as they can be, can really intrigue people.

(E.g. look at “I made an AI for Trading” videos for exmaple AI Algos are boring, finance in titself is boring, yet these technical videos are intriguing and high level tech enjoyers do appreciate whatching these, even tough they don’t really get it)

Anyway, I’ve got a little strategy for this next challenge

• To put all chances on my side, I will record daily video report using my phine, This will cature real struggle moments and add real materials for the video.
• I will switch my editing efforts from “delivering effets” to “thinking ahead about what goes on screen*. By that I mean, good editing visual effects can still be an excellent tool, but the main effort will be to create a flow thourgh the problem I faced so the viewer really gets into the (truely fascinating project) instead of being constantly interrupted by memes and all that jazz.
• No “filling”. To be honest, sometime I keep useless parts in my video, or add useless parts, becaus I lack the baslls to tell my self “who cares about that, delete this part”.
• Try to nail the frame bofore even writting a single line of the script.
• Try to break from the technical side of the project, become a beginer again, so technical explanations do feel smooth from a high level tech enjoyer perspective.

Motivation and objective.

I think the recent performances brought me back to earth though. But I still believe this can become something real, even if I’m far from there yet and maybe I’ll ever get there. I am okay with that and always has been, your support is enough for me and the gratification I get from my small existing community is priceless.

And I still really do enjoy the process of reporting my projects by spraking people’s interrest in very low level technologies, so i will not stop doing it, and I will thrive to improve my reach by understanding what people really want to see.

TBut this is a painful process, and chances are my next video will fail. Maybe my execution will be off, maybe the subject will turn out to be boring.

Maybe all the point I mentionned in the technical part above are wrong, or maybe they are but maybe I missed some other ciriticals. I don’t know, But I will improve and I will try to fiw what I know I have to fix.

But that also means I may get discouraged at some point. I hope I will not tough, I still enjoy it, no matter the performances and this post was just to give you a tour of the self reflections and though process that goes through my head my preparing a future video.

Another important factor are your messages and comments: Even tough my editing is a bit off, my framining is genuinely bad and I don’t make “many views”, people still appreciate my work and take time to show it. Which is a really nice feeling tbh.

Hope my futures video will be even MORE enjoyable, as I’ll try my best to improve.

Godspeed

-BRH