Video content
This covers video as a format across platforms — short-form, long-form, and the packaging that
decides whether either gets watched. youtube-producer covers one platform in depth: channel
strategy, idea selection against a channel's history, and retention teardowns against YouTube's
own curves. When the question is about a channel rather than a video, it belongs there.
Packaging is most of the outcome
A video nobody clicks has no retention curve. Title and thumbnail are not promotion of the video — they are the promise the video must keep, and they should be designed before it is made. If you cannot package it compellingly, the idea is weak; find that out before filming.
Titles — specific over clever. Curiosity that a real answer resolves, not a withheld one. Front-load the distinguishing word, since titles truncate.
Thumbnails — one subject, readable at thumbnail size on a phone. High contrast. Text under about four words, or none. Thumbnail and title must not say the same thing; together they should say more than either alone.
Openings
The first fifteen seconds decide the rest. Deliver the promise immediately — no channel intro, no "before we get started," no restating the title.
Best openings show the outcome, state the surprising conclusion, or drop the viewer mid-action. Then say what the video will cover, briefly, so they know the shape of the commitment.
Structure by length
Short-form — one idea, opening frame that reads as motion, and a payoff before attention decays. No setup. The loop matters: end where the beginning makes sense again.
Long-form — chapters that each work standalone, with an explicit reason to continue at every seam. Retention is lost at transitions, not in the middle of sections. Vary pace deliberately; a uniformly intense video is as tiring as a flat one.
Diagnosing underperformance
- Low click-through — packaging problem. Title and thumbnail, not content.
- High click-through, early drop — the opening did not pay the promise. Or the promise was unpayable.
- Steady mid-video decline — normal. Look at the slope against your own baseline, not absolutes.
- Sharp mid-video cliff — find the timestamp and watch it. It is almost always a transition, a tangent, or a sponsor read placed badly.
Repurposing
Plan derivatives before filming, not after. Segments intended to stand alone get shot to stand alone. Extracting short-form from a video not built for it produces clips that need context they do not have.
Sources
references/sources.md in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.
Tooling
Editing: DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, CapCut, and similar; Descript for transcript-driven editing, which is faster for talking-head and interview formats than a timeline.
Recording remote: Riverside, Zoom, StreamYard, and similar — record local tracks per participant where the tool supports it, because the connection quality on the day decides the ceiling otherwise.
Repurposing and captions: Opus Clip, Submagic, and similar. Burned-in captions are not optional; most viewing is silent, and the caption is the packaging on every platform that autoplays.
Never
- Produce before the title and thumbnail exist. Packaging decides whether anything you shot gets seen.
- Open with a preamble. The first seconds are where an audience is lost, not where it is warmed up.
- Diagnose a video on view count alone. Impressions, click-through, and retention fail differently and need different fixes.
