There are things that can only really reasonably be done in video. [email protected] has clips of attacks being shown, for example. For those, I’m fine.
I almost always dislike things that could be done in text being in video. It’s faster to read than to watch, and much easier to skip around. It’s easily searchable, can be viewed on any kind of Internet connection, and consumes less battery on low-power systems. I think that a lot of the content that shows up in this form exists only because YouTube provides an easy way for people to monetize content, and there isn’t really a terribly effective analog for text.
There are a very, very small handful of things that I can think of where one could use both forms, and I’ve seen someone use video to legitimately get information across more-quickly. Maybe Montemayor’s military history videos.
I’ve read a bunch of material about the Battle of Midway, and while you can find more-detailed material out there, and if you put an hour-and-a-half into watching those three videos, you’ll probably get more out of it relative to the time invested than you would from the other sources I’ve gone through. Some of that is because of his heavy use of maps. Annoyingly, a lot of text sources don’t stick maps showing the state of a battle inline, but put them in separate sections or rely on a single map with tracks containing timestamps that one has to keep referring back to. Much easier to get a sense of what’s going on spatially to have “current state of things” maps thrown onscreen as one walks through the events.
But that sort of thing is really the exception that proves the rule. I’d guess that the great majority of videos I’ve seen could (a) be done in text and (b) be much more-condensed and I could pick up all the relevant material with much less time investment.
There are things that can only really reasonably be done in video. [email protected] has clips of attacks being shown, for example. For those, I’m fine.
I almost always dislike things that could be done in text being in video. It’s faster to read than to watch, and much easier to skip around. It’s easily searchable, can be viewed on any kind of Internet connection, and consumes less battery on low-power systems. I think that a lot of the content that shows up in this form exists only because YouTube provides an easy way for people to monetize content, and there isn’t really a terribly effective analog for text.
There are a very, very small handful of things that I can think of where one could use both forms, and I’ve seen someone use video to legitimately get information across more-quickly. Maybe Montemayor’s military history videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjydKPcX60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHO6xrSF7Sw
I’ve read a bunch of material about the Battle of Midway, and while you can find more-detailed material out there, and if you put an hour-and-a-half into watching those three videos, you’ll probably get more out of it relative to the time invested than you would from the other sources I’ve gone through. Some of that is because of his heavy use of maps. Annoyingly, a lot of text sources don’t stick maps showing the state of a battle inline, but put them in separate sections or rely on a single map with tracks containing timestamps that one has to keep referring back to. Much easier to get a sense of what’s going on spatially to have “current state of things” maps thrown onscreen as one walks through the events.
But that sort of thing is really the exception that proves the rule. I’d guess that the great majority of videos I’ve seen could (a) be done in text and (b) be much more-condensed and I could pick up all the relevant material with much less time investment.