u/ThickD769

When I started grading, learning a look was mostly just “f*ck around and find out.” You'd see a frame you loved and spend hours trying to figure out how the h*ll they got there. Now I can grab a frame I like, use AI to understand what I’m actually looking at, and then try to recreate it myself in resolve.

Obviously, you still need the fundamentals. AI cant replace actually understanding colour. But that gap between “I love this look” and “I know how to approach it” feels so much smaller now.

I’m ready to jump into content creation but starting from scratch in a crowded space is tough.

I’m genuinely excited about how AI can help tools for scripting, editing, and brainstorming hooks seem like a game changer for solo creators trying to keep up. But I also notice a lot of generic, automated accounts getting completely buried because they lack a real personal touch.

Has anyone here actually tested AI tools to grow their reach from scratch? Did it work out for you or is raw human effort still the only way to break through?

I’ve been sticking to traditional grading workflows forever, but I keep seeing AI tools popping up everywhere lately.

For anyone who’s actually tried them in real projects, what’s your raw take? Are they genuinely saving you time, or are they just a gimmick you end up having to fix manually anyway?

So many creators are turning to tools like ChatGPT or Claude to figure out how to get more reach and views. But honestly, most of the growth strategies they give feel totally generic, copy paste, and completely out of touch with what actually gets people to care.

It creates this endless loop where AI suggests high volume, generic content, creators make it, and the feed just gets flooded with robotic scripts and automated voiceovers that nobody wants to watch.

Do you think AI tools can actually give useful growth advice that works, or are we just heading toward a future where content is entirely created, posted and delivered by AI?

I realised today I spent more than 45 minutes on the app and didn't see a single post from an actual friend. It’s just suggested reels, sponsored posts, and influencers.

Are we all just collectively hanging on out of habit or is anyone genuinely getting value out of it right now? If you quit, what did you replace it with?

Is anyone getting exhausted by the 90s retro, grainy aesthetic on every single project? Don't get me wrong, I love the vintage vibe but only when it fits the story. But lately, it feels like people are just overusing grain and halation to call it vintage.

What's your biggest color grading pet peeve right now?

Is anyone getting exhausted by the 90s retro, grainy aesthetic on every single project? Don't get me wrong, I love the vintage vibe but only when it fits the story. But lately, it feels like people are just overusing grain and halation to call it vintage.

What's your biggest color grading pet peeve right now?

AI is touching new heights everyday. Vibe coding has got good enough to compete in the market but the rapid growth in the building market has led to a distribution nightmare.

And in all this, the real winners are the AI teachers. They show everything is easy build, create an app with this or use this github repo and so much more.

As a developer myself I would recommend you to start distribution before writing your first prompt or first line of code and avoid becoming like me:)

I wasted months polishing openers that sounded smart wordplay, dramatic pauses, fancy text on screen. Retention graphs stayed ugly. What finally clicked: a hook has exactly one job, earning the next second. Not summarizing the video, not being clever, not looking professional. Just making the next second feel non optional.

Once I reframed it that way, my openers got dumber and worked better. "Watch this" energy beats "let me explain" energy every time. The mid video stuff barely mattered until the first two seconds stopped leaking people.

A test that helped me: watch only the first second of your last ten uploads and honestly ask "would I stay?" for each one. Not "is this good" would YOU, thumb hovering, stay. The answer is usually no on exactly the videos that flopped, and that's weirdly comforting, because it's fixable at the edit level. No new gear, no niche change.

Curious about the smallest hook change anyone here made that visibly moved retention cut the intro? cold open on the result? text change?

For the longest time, I would upload a Short or Reel, refresh analytics every five minutes, and somehow end up more confused than when I started.

So I started building GrowCreator.

The idea is simple: Instead of making creators stare at graphs, why not have artificial intelligence actually watch the video and point out what might be hurting its performance?

It's built for both YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, and you can try it for free.

I would genuinely love feedback from this community. Tear it apart if you have to as I would rather build something creators actually want than assume I know best.

Every time someone asks why they’re not growing, the answers are always the same -

“Better thumbnails.”
“Better editing.”
“Better titles.”

And those things do matter.

But I’ve seen plenty of small channels with great thumbnails, solid editing, decent ideas, and they still get nowhere.

Meanwhile some guy uploads a video with a thumbnail that looks like it was made in MS Paint and gets 300k views.

The older I get, the more I think topic selection matters way more than creators want to admit.
Most of us spend 10 hours trying to improve a video idea that was never interesting enough in the first place.

I’d rather have an average video on a great idea than an amazing video on something nobody cares about.
Am I wrong?

Maybe I am just being impatient, but it feels like YouTube is way less forgiving now than it used to be.

A video can be decent, edited fine, thumbnail okay, title okay, and still basically go nowhere. Then you see some random upload with shaky audio and a weird thumbnail doing numbers for no reason. It makes the whole thing feel kind of random sometimes.

I get that quality matters. I really do. But at a certain point it also feels like timing, topic, and plain luck matter just as much, if not more, than the actual video.

I am not even saying this to complain, just wondering if anyone else feels the same. Do you think YouTube is actually harder now, or are people just expecting growth too fast?

I spent way too long posting Shorts consistently, telling myself the algorithm just hadn't "found me" yet. Reader, it found me. It looked at my stuff and quietly walked away.

What finally helped was when I stopped staring at one video going "why you no views" and started checking every Short against three gates. A Short has to clear all three, and almost everyone is jammed on the same one without realizing it.

Gate 1, the first 2 seconds (the swipe). If people swipe before your hook lands, the algorithm caps how far it pushes you. The tell: your retention graph opens with a cliff in the first second or two. If that's you, editing the middle is like rearranging furniture in a house that's on fire. The real problem is you're opening on the setup instead of the payoff. Start on the result, explain after.

Gate 2, the mid video drop. Most Shorts have one moment where a clump of people leave all at once. Usually a slow line, a buried punchline, or a "wait let me explain" that nobody waited for. One bad dip caps an otherwise fine video. You can normally feel the exact second you'd have bailed yourself, because you almost did while editing it. Cut TO the good part, don't talk your way toward it.

Gate 3, no breakout even though retention is fine. If you hold attention but never beat your usual view count, your hook and retention are good, the video just isn't forwardable. Nothing in it makes someone go "ha, sending this to one specific friend." Breakouts get retested because people loop or share them. Retain but never spike, and this is your gap, not your hook.

The actual exercise: pull your last 10 Shorts and look at them as a set, not one sad video at a time. Cliff in the first 2 seconds on most of them, that's Gate 1. Hold then drop, Gate 2. Hold fine but never pop, Gate 3. The pattern across 10 is the signal. Any single video is just noise (and occasionally your mom).

Genuinely curious what's most common here. Does your retention usually faceplant in the first 2 seconds, or quietly bleed out in the middle?