This has arguably been the most frustrating editing session I've had for a long, long time!

I'm editing two short social videos on the latest version of FCP and for one reason or another, the transcoding is taking absolutely ages!

Hardware

M1 16" Macbook Pro - 16GB ram, 512GB SSD
1050mbps WD external SSD

Camera settings / Project settings

Videos shot in 30FPS in 4K

With DJI Osmo Action 4

And Samsung S22 plus

No clips are more than 1 minute in length.

Things I've tried so far

Deleting all rendered files
Reimporting clips in brand new project
Creating a new library and importing the clips
Closing every single other program on my Mac
Moving closer to the Wi-fi (Although I'm sure this doesn't really make a difference to this process)
Trying it with the codec set as H.264 rather than pro res

And probably some other stuff I'm missing.

Why this is annoying

Because why does this always happen when I have a deadline to hit?
My Macbook handles a fairly decent amount of editing every week so why tf is it suddenly giving me issues. I have no idea.
I stay organised with my files to make sure the external drive and the FCP libaries are clear
Each week I delete a lot of junk or even just start a brand new project/event/libary just in case.

Anyway. A screenshot is attached in the hope that somebody knows the fix.

And YES, I asked Gemini AND Claude...

https://preview.redd.it/0qmbuti55j2h1.png?width=1371&format=png&auto=webp&s=2aa74dfdfa8ed107d7d327ed67ad0a0a117aa0b7

If anyone is interested in keeping this sub clean and helping it grow, let me know!

If you're doing outreach for Tech UGC but you're sending long, AI written messages each time, you're defo going to get ghosted.

Uncommon advice.

People building apps and tech companies are busy, trust me. I've worked with Start ups for the last 6 years and they're almost always a bunch of people doing 4 jobs at once.

You'll almost always have a higher reply rate if you just send them a simple one liner, and an open question about whether they are hiring or not. AND you aren't going to spend 20 minutes crafting a perfect pitch just to get ghosted.

Slightly unhinged.

We're content creators, we should be good at hooking peoples attention. So be different if you want to stand out.

Send a completely obscure first line in the message. Tell a joke or give them a riddle. This is just to catch their attention.

Send a meme, or a gif, just something simple. And use that same energy in follow ups.

Here's an example

"Hey Guys, I was wondering, if the earth really is flat, then how comes cats haven't pushed everything off the edge yet?"

Every brand is so used to getting compliments about the business because all the advice is the same so therefore the formats people send are the same.

I'd follow this with a second line to say something like:

"Anyway, now I have your attention, I can see you're making some amazing UGC content and wondered if you're still looking for creators?"

Nothing over complicated, not trying too hard to sell yourself, just opening a conversation.

That's the way it should be.

Remember it's a numbers game

This is one piece of advice I do agree with. It absolutely is a numbers game!

• But sending 200 random emails and wondering why you're only getting 3 responses is borderline insane.
• Not understanding your ICP before sending a message is why most people don't land clients .
• It's better to send 10 highly accurate messages to brands you actually would enjoy working with than 200 to a bunch of random people without even knowing what the product is.

Oh, and don't forget to use your brain. Reverse engineer it.

If you truly understand your ICP, you'll be able to reverse engineer the way they think and what's going to get their attention.

What kind of creator are they likely to hire?

How easy is it for them to hire you?

How do they communicate?

And are you able to be exactly in line with those things?

Aside from being a full time UGC creator, I've always worked in start ups along with product design, paid ads, marketing, web design, UI and CRO.

So I'm building something specifically for Tech UGC.

Mostly because I see a mix of different UGC types on all the main platforms but I haven't really seen anything that specialises in Tech UGC.

The goal is to help everyone get hired and actually build connections with brands.

Built so far:

Creator/Brand matching system
Viral hook database with over 10k viral hooks & links to videos you can use for inspiration
Normal UGC stuff, portfolio upload etc
Live public facing portfolio page - Free forever (So you can replace your Canva site)
Direct messaging between Brand & Creator (Obviously)

Coming soon:

Onboarding creators and brands officially
AI powered Assistant to help rewrite those viral scripts for your campaign
Ability to add your custom domain to your portfolio page
More portfolio page templates to choose from
Payout systems
Advanced tracking and analytics
Maybe an App!

Sharing this with the community in the hope that some of you will check it out and share some ideas below of what will make it into an amazing platform!

So tell me, what are your main frustrations with UGC platforms and with Tech UGC in general and what can I do to make OttoUGC the one you always come back to?

Go to ottougc.com to join the waitlist

I've been messing around with openclaw for a while now but messed up the first time I installed it, so now I think I've understood things better, I want to actually let it act properly as my personal assistant.

And because I am terrible at staying organised in such a robotic way, I get the feeling this is going to be tough.

The game plan is to let it run and organise my calendar to make sure I maintain focus on all the important things in my life. I want to document it on Youtube and across short form channels.

Starting with one agent but I have 2 others for specific tasks I can use - These 3 are on a server, the others I might set up would be locally.

Questions I have would be:

Agent vs Sub agent?

For tasks like Meal planning, running & workout coach, content planning and writing?

I don't feel like I want/need a team of 20 agents, I want to actually keep things as simple as possible for now.

Any tips from the pros here?

I know this is a little vague but that's kind of my whole point as I'm wiping the slate clean to start again.