Jyro
Channel link- http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBlocksandBlawks
One Random Video - 9/10
Video picked - "
60 Seconds or Less Creations - Ep. 3 (Fireplaces)"
Video Quality - 8/10
Quality is good, framerate is good. Only thing I can mention is a white bar at the bottom and a black bar at the side, simple cropping on whatever editing program you use will fix this problem (unsure of windows movie maker, might not be possible). There are plenty of tutorials on how to crop them out. Other then that it's good from what I can tell.
Audio Quality - 9/10
Good standard quality mic by the sounds of things. The only thing I will say is that the levels need changing a bit, as the music seemed to empower your voice at times, simply turning down the music or turning up your voice should fix this, otherwise, really good quality good job.
Commentary Consistency - 9/10
Great, a couple of stumbles here and there, looked like due to on screen action, but you knew what you were saying and were very prepared with what you wanted to do and say (obviously due to the type of video it is). Nice Job.
Voice Type and Pitch - 9/10
Can't quite get a grasp of where you're specifically from, sound kind of similar to direwolf20 (hope you can take that as a compliment ). Your accent is pretty cool though, obviously somewhere in America and the pitch is perfectly fine, you're not monotone and sound like you are enjoying yourself which is good. Another one I can't say a whole lot about.
Video Content - 8/10
An interesting idea, giving simple and quick ideas for people to use in their MineCraft worlds. It's good to see you offer several options, and the fact that you do it in less than 60 seconds is very good. Short, sweet and to the point. The music seems to suit the onscreen action. The only thing I will mention is the texture pack. Especially for what you are doing, you're trying to show people how to make things look good, there is a big indifference in texture packs where while it looks good on your texture pack, it might not look nearly as good in the default texture pack. The majority of MineCraft users stick to the default texture pack, so it would be best, just for these types of videos to do the same. You can use your texture pack in other bits and pieces like let's plays and such.
Background - 8/10
A decent background, one thing I will mention is brand strengthening, which I will go into on the thumbnails section, but you're doing a good job of it. It seems you have used two MineCraft skins (I'm guessing are yours and your partners?). With a few twists in the graphics sides of things, with various MineCraft creatures around the place. It's simple, good quality and as much as it needs to be (with the 1MB filesize restriction). One thing I will mention is how the pattern overlay (striped lines) and the background hill type thing cut off (little and picky that doesn't really matter, but still). Try and fade them into the background. A great job with it otherwise.
Thumbnails - 8/10
Okay, onto brand strengthening, you do a great job of it on your channel here, with the font that you use and the two characters that you feature in your background, eventually when more and more people get to know you, they will associate a mixture of this font and display as your "brand". So if they see a video of yours in the suggested column then they will realize it's you straight away. Your thumnails are obviously a great custom to this, as they (for the most part) feature the same font, and one of the thumbnails has your two characters on it. A great job here. A couple things to mention though, for your 60 second videos, the "EP.#" is cut off at the bottom, the only other thing I can think of is that they are a tad boring, but still get the point across and represent a series, using different colours for each episode, a very common and good technique.
Metadata - 7/10
Based off the selected random video I picked earlier, the title is good, the only thing I would include is the game you are playing somewhere in the title. That's a personal preference as I think viewers that have searched for similar videos who might not know what MineCraft is by picture might be confused. Just a simple "MC" or Minecraft somewhere in the title would do the trick. Otherwise I like how you've included what you're doing, and the title of the series of course. Good Job.
The description is okay, features a brief description which is great, all you need. However, where you have told the viewers what the music and texture pack are, you haven't provided links. For these creators it helps them out a lot if you provide a link, as a few viewers will decide "I cba to search that" where they would have simply clicked before hand. It's not difficult to do, and for the texture pack especially you can use the "Defaults" feature in YouTube settings and always have the link. Try use a link shrinker too, like bitly or tinyurl.
Final thoughtsOverall View - 8/10
A good channel. My only final thought is the worry that uploading will not be frequent. Looking at the dates for your last videos it's slightly concerning, in the sense that in three weeks or so I predict you'll lose motivation to carry on making videos and be back in a month or two. I hope you can prove me wrong for the sake of your fan base and yourselves, as taking large breaks creates a dead sub base. Something which is nice as a number, but doesn't add up to the amount of comments or views that you get. Other then that I have to admit it's a good channel, you have some good ideas with it and assuming it's a partnership channel (you and another person), there will be lots of content you guys can create to get a bigger fan base. Good luck to the future man. Hope you enjoyed the review.
