My Greatest YouTube Failure, First Computer, Gaming Phones - Ask Epos (July 2018)

**The Choice of Plex over Kodi: A Personal Preference**

What made me choose Plex over Kodi? Well, it's a time that I started with Plex. Cody was basically like an XBMC front end. It was just a front end for stuff, but it didn't have a whole lot of functionality built into it. And I just wanted something that organized my media files and let me stream on the different rigs and play on my Xbox. That's what Plex did. And so, I've just stuck with it. No reason to switch.

**Sponsored Content**

Full disclosure, I'm sponsored by Plex for content. Which is a bit of a confession, but I figure it's okay since you're reading this article. So, yeah, that's out in the open now.

**Gaming Phones: A Personal Opinion**

I think gaming phones are pretty stupid. But for certain people, they're probably great. Some people just want to be able to play games while they're on the bus or at a friend's house or at the doctor's office or whatever. They just have specific circumstances and that's all they really need for games. Mobile gaming is getting to a better point, even though the whole hand-walk tutorial push notifications advertisements and loot boxes honestly ruin the experience of games.

I would genuinely pay to play on a dedicated gaming phone for me, I don't see any point. Don't want a phone that's bigger and hotter and worse battery life just to play games every once in a while rather just play what games I can play on the phone that I have. We've had issues with that before. For example, we ran into issues with Pokémon Go.

**Smartphone Trends: A Skeptic's View**

I think a lot of smartphone trends are really stupid and people who get up in arms over something like a notch when you can just buy a phone with the actual bezel. I'd rather have front-facing speakers than an all-glass display or a notch. So, that's just me.

**Personal Experiences with Move Homes**

If you clean a vacuum cleaner... oh no, I gotta read this right. If you clean a vacuum cleaner are you the vacuum cleaner? That was a weird one. And then we got two more if you live in two houses. We've moved departments three times now so I've lived in two houses with my parents.

They moved when I was about seven or eight ish and then they had one house and then I moved out of that house into an apartment and we upgraded apartments, then our last apartment had flooding damage and we were forced to move and upgrade again. So this is now my third apartment more apartments than houses hopefully the next one will be an actual house instead of an apartment but we'll see.

**The Future of Q&A Sessions**

First episode now I guess I've trying to do this monthly although it took me a month to even get to this round of questions so we'll see. But I do want to do it more often if you do have more questions you would like to ask join our discord server and Evos voxcom slash the discord there is a special chat for that that is where I'm gonna prioritize getting questions from unless there's just something fantastic in the comments or I'm low on questions for the day go check that out.

**The Community**

We have a great community there talking about tech gaming lots of different stuff you can ask me questions if I'm around things like that. The like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more awesome tech content and things like that. And I'll see you next time

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right got my haircut we're gonna do a Q&A video today I had a capture card review originally in the works for today and a lot of stuff went wrong with it so they're sending me a new one before I go and make an angry video I want to give them a fair shot I believe something is actually wrong with my unit if I still recreate the problems then it's not gonna be a fun review but I asked you guys to submit questions over on the channel this light is not giving enough of my shadow here I have oh I can't see now have a light off screen there it's supposed to fill out my face I don't know what I'm doing I asked you guys over on the community tab of the channel to submit questions for a Q&A and then future ones future Q&A videos the questions will take priority from our discord server it's a group chat service kind of like slack or old Instant Messenger group tools things like that we have a discord link it's a post voxcom slash discord I had an issue where the invite link it kept going to the wrong room finally fixed that come join hangout with us there's a specific chat room for Q&A questions which I will then take note of and integrate in the future videos for this one we are addressing your questions from the community tab I just have them and a doc here on the chanter on my phone here we're just gonna go through I got a couple questions regarding motivation and specifically how I keep my drive going in terms of amid stress frustration or general lack of motivation and then some about like the most difficult time in my career what I thought was my greatest success so greatest failure things like that in terms of how I keep going in terms of immense stress frustration or lack of motivation the big thing is to keep your perspective intact to actually have like high tier goals and to take breaks when you need it self-care is extremely important the whole entrepreneur solopreneur Gary B style of success talks and motivational talks and stuff is very toxic I subscribe to most of those myself like I'm a huge fan of Gary Vee I'm a huge fan of the no bull crap you know hard truths kind of thing but the whole if you aren't spending every waking second working your hand to the bone then you don't deserve success mentality I am NOT okay with if you are not feeling capable of doing something you need to take a break or you will get burnt out and having one or two days in a week where you just work at like half speed or half efficiency or just half at all or a day in a week where you just take a full day off or you take weekends off and then still do work the rest of the time is nowhere near as big of a loss as a full-on depressed rut that you can get in when you get burned out and that is something I very much focus on I don't have a whole lot of time to play video games anymore but I make sure when I am feeling low energy or when I am NOT capable of working I take time to do the things I enjoy i binge watch YouTube content I am a content creator and unlike a lot of them I actually watch a crapload of YouTube content I used to comment a lot on videos and used to get a lot of replies of oh you're everywhere and I got a little annoying it's because I had the verified checkmark I watch a lot of content i binge watch shows there's some shows just for comfort that I've watched like 50 times like I've watched the well of house a few times I've watched it all of Dexter like 10 times things like that Game of Thrones quite a few times and I've recently built in my our new apartment a dedicated retro game room which both appeals to me in terms of things that I enjoy for fun but I also get to spin off into additional content so if you're just not enjoying the content you're making it's time to pivot a bit and reconsider the content strategy that you're approaching them find what you truly enjoy I've always struggled I was actually talking to my fiance about this earlier in the week I always struggle to answer like questions about what my motivations actually are because I haven't struggled with pure motivation in a long time I've struggled with like direct inspiration I've struggled with just not wanting to do stuff I've had some health issues that I'm finally going to the doctor on actually the day you're seeing this to hopefully start addressing because they're getting pretty major which have kept me very low energy the past couple years so I spend a lot of time being not very productive compared to how I used to be but this is what I do this is what I care about this is what I go like all in on this is all I've done for the past like five years actually I mean three full time and I enjoy it I live and breathe it I love playing with the new toys the new tech the new I love figuring things out I love the troubleshooting aspect that's the generation of computing I grew up in and I love showing it to other people and teaching you how to use it and I love improving my craft I love creating and building things and this is a way that I get to do it and it also involves the things I love video art creation gaming tech all blend it together and there's some things that I'm just good at that I get to indulge in in terms of what the most difficult time in my youtube career is there's two that I can think of the most actual difficult is probably around late 2013 all through 2014 and if you I doubt anyone is still around from that point in time but if you are you are a legend my youtube channel actually started as a gaming channel that's how I got my start was gameplay stuff I just got a text or something Oh Shh I'm supposed to leave to go pick my fiance up from work I'll be back three Allen's data and we're back I'm an idiot I just jumped I was doing some benchmarking and then jumped over to this didn't pay any attention to what time it was all right so yeah I started as a gameplay channel and eventually like I did well for a small growing gameplay channel for a few years I never really niched into a specific game I didn't want to do that I tried that hated it and so I you know I inevitably had slow growth as a variety Channel and then I was really trying to figure out what my full-time like concept would be and I wound up building out in my when I was still living with my parents so in my bedroom with my parents I want to building out this whole co-op gaming setup for my fiance at the time my girlfriend and I to record videos and make coop videos and that was some of the most enjoyable gaming content I ever made it was co-op let's plays goofy first impressions of videos things like that and it was very challenging as a format to actually produce and I had a lot of fun with it but the views plummeted the views weren't doing so great and had I stuck with it it was probably something I could mark it and maybe we'll return to it one day although that's mostly the way of streaming but that was a big struggle and so throughout 2013 in some of 2014 I had this weird existential crisis of going back and forth trying to figure out where my success was going to come from what I was actually going to focus on or do and so that was probably the most difficult time at the same time through much all of term like the middle chunk of 2016 was just really honestly crap content in my opinion from me I covered a lot of really interesting topics and really interesting approaches and my focus was trying to figure out a more efficient like recording and setup because I was using my t3i at the time I had trouble keeping it lit well and things like that and so I focused on this really efficient setup but the videos looked kind of bad and some of them were rushed and it just it wasn't great and so that that time wasn't all that great either how do you keep producing content to avoid burnout as you've been on YouTube there to spend time you know basically what I've explained my cat is trying to climb into the window next to me now I mean the thing is is I have I can't show it all for obvious reasons but I have a spreadsheet that I used to I've always used just like random lists in Google keep notepad sticky note notebooks have notebooks and notebooks full of ideas and details from videos and things like that will you stop kitty and I've recently finally gotten more organized and compiled it all into a spreadsheet and I have multiple tabs with hundreds and hundreds of video ideas topics and concepts that I would like to cover go more in depth onto expansion videos on and things like that so in terms of how do you keep making content it has always been my belief that if you truly find what you're actually like passionate about and what you wake up day in and day out wanting to do you're never going to run out of ideas because there's a never-ending list of topics about a subject you care that deeply about your only limitation will be your physical ability to keep producing the content you know how to produce it fast enough or more efficient enough and the time spent in order to be able to produce it better and so to me if you are struggling to have ideas or come up with things to work on you're not quite in the right position just yet and that's very common of smaller youtubers of those who are just starting out who are just kind of doing the videos I want to make which means you haven't really figured out what you actually want to make ironically but once you get to that point honestly even during burnout you have things you want to do you just may not have the energy to physically do it I visit my biggest success and failure in my youtube career I honestly don't know what I'd consider my biggest failure there have been a couple brands I've worked with where I didn't feel like I delivered properly actually ironically so you all know that I which some of you responded hilariously negative - which is funny since it's been a long-running thing and people have sticks up their butts but I have a long-running relationship over the past couple years with Intel I do sponsored Intel videos well I actually have been completely unable to even get review samples from AMD for the past six years when I was just starting out in 2012 so when I was still doing gaming videos but just starting to dip my toes into tech I sent out more review requests and the one of the very first actual like tech related review samples I got was one of the early ap use I think it was from the Trinity series I want to say and a motherboard from AMD they sent it out for review and my goal was to make a follow-up video from the video that I make but made but the video I made was super basic I like explained what an APU is I covered the specs I showed it physically being installed to a motherboard I had no clue what I was doing in terms of tech content whatsoever I was like one of my first camera produced tech videos it was bad honestly though if you go back and look at Linus's unboxing although that was probably an NCIX sample and not something he had an obligation to AMD to make it wasn't much better but my goal was to do more benchmarks and things like that and I just ran into trouble with him my production PC died at the time things like that I never followed up I sent that singular video and actually I had something wrong I wrote so actually it probably wasn't a Trinity APU because I think I said it wrong in the video which a line of APU was I'd immediately liked it had like two views that had just made it up or put it up and as I was sending an email I realized that was wrong took down the video re uploaded it and had to send them a second link I've never heard back from AMD I never got a reply on that video I never you know I've never been able to get samples or even a response about it since and I know a lot of those bigger companies now work very differently they worked with a lot of different PR firms things like that so there's probably not even necessarily a direct person at AMD who really even wants to handle sample requests but that's probably my biggest failure was that was a situation where I got handed an opportunity and I truly was not ready whatsoever for that opportunity and that's the big thing with growing channels whenever they say they wish they could just get a huge shout out with thousands of ton thousands of subscribers or a big company deal you are not ready those things usually come when you are ready when you are just starting out or young or frankly when you have the thoughts of wishing that what happened you were not at a point where you're ready to handle that and the same thing goes for every channel you get too many subs too quickly when you have no clue what you're doing it goes very south very poorly as far as my biggest success goes I would have to say it's my OBS master class does stay as many as that sounds I took what was me hating my job with my MCN at the early 2017 and late 2016 and I started streaming full-time for a little bit because I suddenly I just stopped working for them for a bit and I finally quit and I had this huge extra gap of time that I was spending stressing out over work that's something I felt more free I could do anything i didn't have content lined up to really fill those gaps yet and so i streamed full-time got up to affiliate status didn't make any money from it but you know I was doing eight-hour days and stuff and I was like I need to revamp my OBS multi-platform as it was called series from 2015 because there were a lot of mistakes in it I said the entire time megabytes per second or whatever and said bits it wasn't that I didn't know which was which I literally just said the wrong thing every time I just had it consistently switched there were you know it was outdated that they changed what the software was called so I was like I should change it and I started scripting because what I was doing for my MC and was designing an educational course for YouTube which I may still release at some point I just need to update it things change yada yada it's probably not worth it but that was what I really got into at that job and kind of enjoyed was designing this course I was like I should do that for obs and it took all year to produce but it turned out amazing in my opinion I sold good sponsored spots on it and it has led to other opportunities and it's a good piece that I can still show off and the OBS support discord they still link it as a relevant guide I think it turned out pretty well so that's probably my biggest success I would have to say and hopefully I can more quickly before this year is over turn around a stream Labs OBS Corps mini course and a OBS for Mac Mini course and at some point I want to do in OBS for Linux mini course haven't even started on those other than outlining I haven't actually scripted or anything I want to do a different approach my OBS masterclass was scripted ahead of time then spoken on camera and then got the screen capture which for the most part made it more polished but sometimes it's hard to match up for actions to what I'm saying when I'm not doing it real time so I want to try to have a more real-time format but still have the production quality having figured out the logistics of that yet did you ever think of getting one or two ultra wide monitors I've looked at ultra wide monitors a lot i've always laughed at the concept and the further I look into them the more I laugh at the concept for media consumption it kind of makes sense except for the fact that easily half to 75% of the content you watch is still going to be 16 by 9 be it on YouTube TV shows pretty much anything only movies are in scope 2.3 5 to 1 or whatever it's not even actually 21 by 9 only movies are in the wider aspect ratios and some of those are sticking to 16 by 9 like there was Dunkirk that did the like multi aspect ratio nonsense I think one of the Batman movies supposedly did one of the Transformers did at first I thought the Transformers one like it was unfinished and it was hilarious I didn't actually see the movie I just heard that it changed aspect ratios but then that became a thing for the Dunkirk movie and so that's gonna be really difficult to watch how that's 21 by 9 screen so for cunning consumption it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for desktop use my focus is on more screen real estate which means having more pixels per inch on the screen and that doesn't work out for ultra wide it sounds really cool if you're used to lower end monitors and you're sold this concept of oh it's twice as wide as a normal monitor it's grower actually it's 1.5 times as why doesn't know monitor it's great except it's still lower resolution than just the 4k panels I use I used to 4k panels on my main editing workstation one is a DCI 4k monitor which is 4 0 9 6 by 2160 and then the other is a standard UHD 4k monitor which is 3840 by 2160 there are no 2160 high ultra wide there is now a 38 40 by 1080 ultra wide which is just 2 1080p monitors stuck side by side but there's nothing that keeps the there's nothing there's no ultra wide that adds to 4k resolution only cuts away like I think there's now a 2560 know there's there's 16 by 10 at 2560 by 1600 and then there was a 38 40 by 1600 I want to say is the newest like high-res one and that's still chopping off for 560 pixels off of a 4k screen like there's no advantage there there's no gain productivity there's no gain screen space there's no gained windowed management it's literally slicing off vertical height from a 4k monitor and I'm someone who prefers more vertical height 3x2 displays on those surface books is amazing 16 by 10 displays are 8 by 5 displays for productivity 1440 by 900 1680 by 1050 or whatever the 2560 by 1600 I want more 4k 5k resolution specs 16 by 10s grants because that extra vertical height is all amazing for productivity wideness is not great for productivity the bowtie effects effect affects graphics work and timelines and things like that 16 by 10 way to go ultra it's not in the books for me especially with how much larger they are already have big enough monitors already how did I get the name he boasts Vox easy so I was trying to make a new name because my last handle for my original gaming channel was some leet speak garbage that will never speak up again and I was trying to come up with one and one of my buddies at the time Jake came up with the name or he was coming up with he wanted something playing off of epubs or off of epic voice because that's what I was known for at the time not necessarily conveyed through this microphone but I was known for my deeper voice on YouTube and things like that I was some people caught me like the golden voice that was a reference at the time to the homeless guy that got famous for doing radio stuff things like that and he wound up finding out that the Latin translation is Vox ebooks which is what he suggested except user names and handles to me are a little bit more catchy when it's two syllables one syllable so I flipped the Latin of Vox Evo's to ethos Vox and it's actually eat pastas probably closer to the actual Latin not that anyone speaks it but that's how I got the name and it stuck with me since and most people can't pronounce it still and it's probably not the best choice and doesn't convey anything about tech but I've had it for this long it's my brand I'm keeping it for now how do you find topics for your videos how long does it take to make one I kind of touched on this earlier I find topics by you guys asking questions people asking questions about things they need help with tech if there's ever a concept I mentioned in a video like that's that requires more learning about I want to make sure I have additional videos that explain that so if you don't know what something is in a video search my channel and you probably have a response now I need to fill that in more but that is I want to show people how to do things there's always new software updates there's new tools I want to show off there's new hardware to show off there's new you know I just never have I never run out of ideas and in terms of how long it takes the video it takes to make a video it could take anywhere from a couple hours like this one like this one will have taken like 45 minutes or so to actually shoot in total and then an hour or so to edit together with some super basic b-roll but then some complicated ones can take mmm days and days of non-stop work and then some I record put off for six months edit a little bit put off for six months and then finish and then some I have filmed in like 2015 that I've still never edited and they may go live or they may just be forgotten in the archives what was your first computer I don't know the first one that I used it was it would have been Windows 3.1 I played a game called balloons on an old computer that my parents had that I never remember extra scene they had a printer that had ribbon ink ribbon toner whatever was at the time and I remember oh I keep you always get told the story that when I was like it only a couple years old or a few months old I pulled the ribboning or toner or whatever out of the printer wrapped it around myself covering myself in ink and then got it all over the furniture carpet and my first videogame was a game called balloons for Dallas or Windows 3.1 when I was nine months old so that was cool but in terms of the first computer I actually owned who is the windows 95 hot wheels computer it was awesome had an awesome CRT that I later stupidly checkerboarded the front of using sharpie and whiteout and eventually got rid of unfortunately but we upgraded it to a four gigabyte hard drive which was amazing at the time came out the cool racing wheel and pedals I want to get another you know another unit of that at some point I know the hard to find but it was an awesome little computer until it died but those were some good times the Hot Wheels games are fun I still have most of my copies of those I want to go back to him at some point how often do you wash your hair I'm asking for a friend daily most of the time not really sure I understand question what got you into editing and recording YouTube videos friends curiosity curiosity um I had watched some youtubers at the time seananners making college before and world of war videos hutch made Call of Duty for videos and then I started getting into it bought my first capture card in 2010 I believe and by that point I had seen gameplay I believe of modern warfare 2 what's his name sandy ravaged or Randy Savage whichever sandy ravaged got a copy early and was doing gameplays of it and things like that they got me really interested in making gaming videos that always you know save the little clips if I could in games always wanted to make little like highlight montage things that got me into that and then eventually I transitioned into tech where are you from why do you make videos same line already answered it I'm from Kentucky there's nothing around here in terms of YouTube or media or tech so awful place to be for this job but I don't plan on leaving anytime soon this thing keeps scrolling on its own if you could instantly turn pro at one sport what would it be professional video editing I wouldn't want the commitment or the requirements of being professional out of sports so genuinely I don't want none is there a way to record a full 120fps within wink an egg or x264 smoothly yep you open up OBS you said at the fractional framerate mode 120 over 1 and you have good hardware and use anything and it works easy-peasy how many technical issues do you have when making a video some of them go flawlessly and then some of them like my live game or 4k review from last Monday it took hours upon hours of Adobe's stupid GPU render error that has virtually no fix stopping the render every few minutes and me having to start it over and keep it going and it took hours it I finished it I already took forever to make it I finished it at 6 p.m. on Monday it took me until 10 p.m. to actually start uploading it and then YouTube decided to drag its feet processing and I barely got it posted before midnight it was bad in terms of other technical issues I usually don't have a ton my cameras and audio equipment usually works all right I'm at the point where my setup is fairly confident sometimes videos would glitch out or the software will crash but overall like things run pretty smoothly in that regard in terms of the actual like creation like Windows 10 18:03 not installing on a build I'm trying to benchmark those can be pretty derailing what made you choose Plex over Kodi or anything else well it's a time that I started with Plex Cody was basically like an XBMC front end it was just a front end for stuff it didn't have a whole lot of functionality built into it and I just wanted something that organized my media files and let me stream on the different rigs and play on my xbox and that's what Plex did and so I've just stuck with it no reason to switch and now I'm full disclosure I'm sponsored by them for content so now oh I think that's it Oh legit that thumbnail you look like a clone of me a few years back referring to the picture of the community tab where I was asking for questions I guess brother what do you think about gaming phones and what phone do you use as your daily driver the one I'm currently using mine as my daily driver right here is the huawei mate 10 Pro which I did a gaming on the huawei mate 10 Pro a video it was sent for review I may have to send it back at some point but that's what I'm using right now because I can use the you we see out to record video where as my previous daily driver is my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 which is actually from my contract with my parents family plan with AT&T it does not have any actual video output capabilities whatsoever and at this point the battery life is pretty crap battery life currently on the may 10 Pro is fantastic so sticking with that I don't get a whole lot of phones through here because I don't cover a whole lot of mobile topics because of things like I'm about to say what I think about gaming phones I think they're pretty stupid but for certain people they're probably great because some people just want to be able to play games while they're on the bus or while they're you know at a friend's house or at the doctor's office or whatever like they just have specific circumstances and that's all they really need for games and that's fine mobile gaming is getting to a better point even though the whole hand-walk tutorial push notifications advertisements and loot boxes honestly ruin the experience of games I would genuinely pay to play in terms of a dedicated gaming phone for me I don't see any point I don't want a phone that's bigger and hotter and worse battery life just to play games every once in a while rather just play what games I can play on the phone that I have never really ran issue we ran into issues with that I've been playing the crap at a head ball too which is just a stupid little soccer game Pokemon quest which is not Pokemon go I'm not a huge fan of that but we've started it up again those are the only Tekken and Tekken on mobiles pretty good and then there's a new Dragon Ball Legends I want to play I haven't tried it out yet but I know I think a lot of the smartphone trends are really stupid and people who get up in arms over something like a notch when you can just buy a phone with the actual bezel I died I'd rather have front-facing speakers than an all-glass display or a notch so that's just me and then we got two more if you clean a vacuum cleaner oh no I gotta read this right if you clean a vacuum cleaner are you the vacuum cleaner and lastly how many houses have you changed I've posted about moving a few times because we've moved departments three times now so I've lived in two houses with my parents they moved when I was about seven or eight ish and then they had one house and then I moved out of that house into an apartment and we upgraded apartments then our last apartment had flooding damage and we were forced to move and upgrade again so this is now my third apartment more apartments than houses hopefully the next one will be an actual house instead of an apartment but we'll see so that's all the Q&A questions that's all the cues for the A's for this episode first episode now I guess I've trying to do this monthly although it took me a month to even get to this round of questions so we'll see but I do want to do it more often if you do have more questions you would like to ask join our discord server and Evos voxcom slash the discord there is a special chat for that that is where I'm gonna prioritize getting questions from unless there's just something fantastic in the comments or I'm low on questions for the day go check that out and we have a great community there talking about tech gaming lots of different stuff you can ask me questions if I'm around things like that the like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more awesome tech content and things like that and I'll see you next timeall right got my haircut we're gonna do a Q&A video today I had a capture card review originally in the works for today and a lot of stuff went wrong with it so they're sending me a new one before I go and make an angry video I want to give them a fair shot I believe something is actually wrong with my unit if I still recreate the problems then it's not gonna be a fun review but I asked you guys to submit questions over on the channel this light is not giving enough of my shadow here I have oh I can't see now have a light off screen there it's supposed to fill out my face I don't know what I'm doing I asked you guys over on the community tab of the channel to submit questions for a Q&A and then future ones future Q&A videos the questions will take priority from our discord server it's a group chat service kind of like slack or old Instant Messenger group tools things like that we have a discord link it's a post voxcom slash discord I had an issue where the invite link it kept going to the wrong room finally fixed that come join hangout with us there's a specific chat room for Q&A questions which I will then take note of and integrate in the future videos for this one we are addressing your questions from the community tab I just have them and a doc here on the chanter on my phone here we're just gonna go through I got a couple questions regarding motivation and specifically how I keep my drive going in terms of amid stress frustration or general lack of motivation and then some about like the most difficult time in my career what I thought was my greatest success so greatest failure things like that in terms of how I keep going in terms of immense stress frustration or lack of motivation the big thing is to keep your perspective intact to actually have like high tier goals and to take breaks when you need it self-care is extremely important the whole entrepreneur solopreneur Gary B style of success talks and motivational talks and stuff is very toxic I subscribe to most of those myself like I'm a huge fan of Gary Vee I'm a huge fan of the no bull crap you know hard truths kind of thing but the whole if you aren't spending every waking second working your hand to the bone then you don't deserve success mentality I am NOT okay with if you are not feeling capable of doing something you need to take a break or you will get burnt out and having one or two days in a week where you just work at like half speed or half efficiency or just half at all or a day in a week where you just take a full day off or you take weekends off and then still do work the rest of the time is nowhere near as big of a loss as a full-on depressed rut that you can get in when you get burned out and that is something I very much focus on I don't have a whole lot of time to play video games anymore but I make sure when I am feeling low energy or when I am NOT capable of working I take time to do the things I enjoy i binge watch YouTube content I am a content creator and unlike a lot of them I actually watch a crapload of YouTube content I used to comment a lot on videos and used to get a lot of replies of oh you're everywhere and I got a little annoying it's because I had the verified checkmark I watch a lot of content i binge watch shows there's some shows just for comfort that I've watched like 50 times like I've watched the well of house a few times I've watched it all of Dexter like 10 times things like that Game of Thrones quite a few times and I've recently built in my our new apartment a dedicated retro game room which both appeals to me in terms of things that I enjoy for fun but I also get to spin off into additional content so if you're just not enjoying the content you're making it's time to pivot a bit and reconsider the content strategy that you're approaching them find what you truly enjoy I've always struggled I was actually talking to my fiance about this earlier in the week I always struggle to answer like questions about what my motivations actually are because I haven't struggled with pure motivation in a long time I've struggled with like direct inspiration I've struggled with just not wanting to do stuff I've had some health issues that I'm finally going to the doctor on actually the day you're seeing this to hopefully start addressing because they're getting pretty major which have kept me very low energy the past couple years so I spend a lot of time being not very productive compared to how I used to be but this is what I do this is what I care about this is what I go like all in on this is all I've done for the past like five years actually I mean three full time and I enjoy it I live and breathe it I love playing with the new toys the new tech the new I love figuring things out I love the troubleshooting aspect that's the generation of computing I grew up in and I love showing it to other people and teaching you how to use it and I love improving my craft I love creating and building things and this is a way that I get to do it and it also involves the things I love video art creation gaming tech all blend it together and there's some things that I'm just good at that I get to indulge in in terms of what the most difficult time in my youtube career is there's two that I can think of the most actual difficult is probably around late 2013 all through 2014 and if you I doubt anyone is still around from that point in time but if you are you are a legend my youtube channel actually started as a gaming channel that's how I got my start was gameplay stuff I just got a text or something Oh Shh I'm supposed to leave to go pick my fiance up from work I'll be back three Allen's data and we're back I'm an idiot I just jumped I was doing some benchmarking and then jumped over to this didn't pay any attention to what time it was all right so yeah I started as a gameplay channel and eventually like I did well for a small growing gameplay channel for a few years I never really niched into a specific game I didn't want to do that I tried that hated it and so I you know I inevitably had slow growth as a variety Channel and then I was really trying to figure out what my full-time like concept would be and I wound up building out in my when I was still living with my parents so in my bedroom with my parents I want to building out this whole co-op gaming setup for my fiance at the time my girlfriend and I to record videos and make coop videos and that was some of the most enjoyable gaming content I ever made it was co-op let's plays goofy first impressions of videos things like that and it was very challenging as a format to actually produce and I had a lot of fun with it but the views plummeted the views weren't doing so great and had I stuck with it it was probably something I could mark it and maybe we'll return to it one day although that's mostly the way of streaming but that was a big struggle and so throughout 2013 in some of 2014 I had this weird existential crisis of going back and forth trying to figure out where my success was going to come from what I was actually going to focus on or do and so that was probably the most difficult time at the same time through much all of term like the middle chunk of 2016 was just really honestly crap content in my opinion from me I covered a lot of really interesting topics and really interesting approaches and my focus was trying to figure out a more efficient like recording and setup because I was using my t3i at the time I had trouble keeping it lit well and things like that and so I focused on this really efficient setup but the videos looked kind of bad and some of them were rushed and it just it wasn't great and so that that time wasn't all that great either how do you keep producing content to avoid burnout as you've been on YouTube there to spend time you know basically what I've explained my cat is trying to climb into the window next to me now I mean the thing is is I have I can't show it all for obvious reasons but I have a spreadsheet that I used to I've always used just like random lists in Google keep notepad sticky note notebooks have notebooks and notebooks full of ideas and details from videos and things like that will you stop kitty and I've recently finally gotten more organized and compiled it all into a spreadsheet and I have multiple tabs with hundreds and hundreds of video ideas topics and concepts that I would like to cover go more in depth onto expansion videos on and things like that so in terms of how do you keep making content it has always been my belief that if you truly find what you're actually like passionate about and what you wake up day in and day out wanting to do you're never going to run out of ideas because there's a never-ending list of topics about a subject you care that deeply about your only limitation will be your physical ability to keep producing the content you know how to produce it fast enough or more efficient enough and the time spent in order to be able to produce it better and so to me if you are struggling to have ideas or come up with things to work on you're not quite in the right position just yet and that's very common of smaller youtubers of those who are just starting out who are just kind of doing the videos I want to make which means you haven't really figured out what you actually want to make ironically but once you get to that point honestly even during burnout you have things you want to do you just may not have the energy to physically do it I visit my biggest success and failure in my youtube career I honestly don't know what I'd consider my biggest failure there have been a couple brands I've worked with where I didn't feel like I delivered properly actually ironically so you all know that I which some of you responded hilariously negative - which is funny since it's been a long-running thing and people have sticks up their butts but I have a long-running relationship over the past couple years with Intel I do sponsored Intel videos well I actually have been completely unable to even get review samples from AMD for the past six years when I was just starting out in 2012 so when I was still doing gaming videos but just starting to dip my toes into tech I sent out more review requests and the one of the very first actual like tech related review samples I got was one of the early ap use I think it was from the Trinity series I want to say and a motherboard from AMD they sent it out for review and my goal was to make a follow-up video from the video that I make but made but the video I made was super basic I like explained what an APU is I covered the specs I showed it physically being installed to a motherboard I had no clue what I was doing in terms of tech content whatsoever I was like one of my first camera produced tech videos it was bad honestly though if you go back and look at Linus's unboxing although that was probably an NCIX sample and not something he had an obligation to AMD to make it wasn't much better but my goal was to do more benchmarks and things like that and I just ran into trouble with him my production PC died at the time things like that I never followed up I sent that singular video and actually I had something wrong I wrote so actually it probably wasn't a Trinity APU because I think I said it wrong in the video which a line of APU was I'd immediately liked it had like two views that had just made it up or put it up and as I was sending an email I realized that was wrong took down the video re uploaded it and had to send them a second link I've never heard back from AMD I never got a reply on that video I never you know I've never been able to get samples or even a response about it since and I know a lot of those bigger companies now work very differently they worked with a lot of different PR firms things like that so there's probably not even necessarily a direct person at AMD who really even wants to handle sample requests but that's probably my biggest failure was that was a situation where I got handed an opportunity and I truly was not ready whatsoever for that opportunity and that's the big thing with growing channels whenever they say they wish they could just get a huge shout out with thousands of ton thousands of subscribers or a big company deal you are not ready those things usually come when you are ready when you are just starting out or young or frankly when you have the thoughts of wishing that what happened you were not at a point where you're ready to handle that and the same thing goes for every channel you get too many subs too quickly when you have no clue what you're doing it goes very south very poorly as far as my biggest success goes I would have to say it's my OBS master class does stay as many as that sounds I took what was me hating my job with my MCN at the early 2017 and late 2016 and I started streaming full-time for a little bit because I suddenly I just stopped working for them for a bit and I finally quit and I had this huge extra gap of time that I was spending stressing out over work that's something I felt more free I could do anything i didn't have content lined up to really fill those gaps yet and so i streamed full-time got up to affiliate status didn't make any money from it but you know I was doing eight-hour days and stuff and I was like I need to revamp my OBS multi-platform as it was called series from 2015 because there were a lot of mistakes in it I said the entire time megabytes per second or whatever and said bits it wasn't that I didn't know which was which I literally just said the wrong thing every time I just had it consistently switched there were you know it was outdated that they changed what the software was called so I was like I should change it and I started scripting because what I was doing for my MC and was designing an educational course for YouTube which I may still release at some point I just need to update it things change yada yada it's probably not worth it but that was what I really got into at that job and kind of enjoyed was designing this course I was like I should do that for obs and it took all year to produce but it turned out amazing in my opinion I sold good sponsored spots on it and it has led to other opportunities and it's a good piece that I can still show off and the OBS support discord they still link it as a relevant guide I think it turned out pretty well so that's probably my biggest success I would have to say and hopefully I can more quickly before this year is over turn around a stream Labs OBS Corps mini course and a OBS for Mac Mini course and at some point I want to do in OBS for Linux mini course haven't even started on those other than outlining I haven't actually scripted or anything I want to do a different approach my OBS masterclass was scripted ahead of time then spoken on camera and then got the screen capture which for the most part made it more polished but sometimes it's hard to match up for actions to what I'm saying when I'm not doing it real time so I want to try to have a more real-time format but still have the production quality having figured out the logistics of that yet did you ever think of getting one or two ultra wide monitors I've looked at ultra wide monitors a lot i've always laughed at the concept and the further I look into them the more I laugh at the concept for media consumption it kind of makes sense except for the fact that easily half to 75% of the content you watch is still going to be 16 by 9 be it on YouTube TV shows pretty much anything only movies are in scope 2.3 5 to 1 or whatever it's not even actually 21 by 9 only movies are in the wider aspect ratios and some of those are sticking to 16 by 9 like there was Dunkirk that did the like multi aspect ratio nonsense I think one of the Batman movies supposedly did one of the Transformers did at first I thought the Transformers one like it was unfinished and it was hilarious I didn't actually see the movie I just heard that it changed aspect ratios but then that became a thing for the Dunkirk movie and so that's gonna be really difficult to watch how that's 21 by 9 screen so for cunning consumption it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for desktop use my focus is on more screen real estate which means having more pixels per inch on the screen and that doesn't work out for ultra wide it sounds really cool if you're used to lower end monitors and you're sold this concept of oh it's twice as wide as a normal monitor it's grower actually it's 1.5 times as why doesn't know monitor it's great except it's still lower resolution than just the 4k panels I use I used to 4k panels on my main editing workstation one is a DCI 4k monitor which is 4 0 9 6 by 2160 and then the other is a standard UHD 4k monitor which is 3840 by 2160 there are no 2160 high ultra wide there is now a 38 40 by 1080 ultra wide which is just 2 1080p monitors stuck side by side but there's nothing that keeps the there's nothing there's no ultra wide that adds to 4k resolution only cuts away like I think there's now a 2560 know there's there's 16 by 10 at 2560 by 1600 and then there was a 38 40 by 1600 I want to say is the newest like high-res one and that's still chopping off for 560 pixels off of a 4k screen like there's no advantage there there's no gain productivity there's no gain screen space there's no gained windowed management it's literally slicing off vertical height from a 4k monitor and I'm someone who prefers more vertical height 3x2 displays on those surface books is amazing 16 by 10 displays are 8 by 5 displays for productivity 1440 by 900 1680 by 1050 or whatever the 2560 by 1600 I want more 4k 5k resolution specs 16 by 10s grants because that extra vertical height is all amazing for productivity wideness is not great for productivity the bowtie effects effect affects graphics work and timelines and things like that 16 by 10 way to go ultra it's not in the books for me especially with how much larger they are already have big enough monitors already how did I get the name he boasts Vox easy so I was trying to make a new name because my last handle for my original gaming channel was some leet speak garbage that will never speak up again and I was trying to come up with one and one of my buddies at the time Jake came up with the name or he was coming up with he wanted something playing off of epubs or off of epic voice because that's what I was known for at the time not necessarily conveyed through this microphone but I was known for my deeper voice on YouTube and things like that I was some people caught me like the golden voice that was a reference at the time to the homeless guy that got famous for doing radio stuff things like that and he wound up finding out that the Latin translation is Vox ebooks which is what he suggested except user names and handles to me are a little bit more catchy when it's two syllables one syllable so I flipped the Latin of Vox Evo's to ethos Vox and it's actually eat pastas probably closer to the actual Latin not that anyone speaks it but that's how I got the name and it stuck with me since and most people can't pronounce it still and it's probably not the best choice and doesn't convey anything about tech but I've had it for this long it's my brand I'm keeping it for now how do you find topics for your videos how long does it take to make one I kind of touched on this earlier I find topics by you guys asking questions people asking questions about things they need help with tech if there's ever a concept I mentioned in a video like that's that requires more learning about I want to make sure I have additional videos that explain that so if you don't know what something is in a video search my channel and you probably have a response now I need to fill that in more but that is I want to show people how to do things there's always new software updates there's new tools I want to show off there's new hardware to show off there's new you know I just never have I never run out of ideas and in terms of how long it takes the video it takes to make a video it could take anywhere from a couple hours like this one like this one will have taken like 45 minutes or so to actually shoot in total and then an hour or so to edit together with some super basic b-roll but then some complicated ones can take mmm days and days of non-stop work and then some I record put off for six months edit a little bit put off for six months and then finish and then some I have filmed in like 2015 that I've still never edited and they may go live or they may just be forgotten in the archives what was your first computer I don't know the first one that I used it was it would have been Windows 3.1 I played a game called balloons on an old computer that my parents had that I never remember extra scene they had a printer that had ribbon ink ribbon toner whatever was at the time and I remember oh I keep you always get told the story that when I was like it only a couple years old or a few months old I pulled the ribboning or toner or whatever out of the printer wrapped it around myself covering myself in ink and then got it all over the furniture carpet and my first videogame was a game called balloons for Dallas or Windows 3.1 when I was nine months old so that was cool but in terms of the first computer I actually owned who is the windows 95 hot wheels computer it was awesome had an awesome CRT that I later stupidly checkerboarded the front of using sharpie and whiteout and eventually got rid of unfortunately but we upgraded it to a four gigabyte hard drive which was amazing at the time came out the cool racing wheel and pedals I want to get another you know another unit of that at some point I know the hard to find but it was an awesome little computer until it died but those were some good times the Hot Wheels games are fun I still have most of my copies of those I want to go back to him at some point how often do you wash your hair I'm asking for a friend daily most of the time not really sure I understand question what got you into editing and recording YouTube videos friends curiosity curiosity um I had watched some youtubers at the time seananners making college before and world of war videos hutch made Call of Duty for videos and then I started getting into it bought my first capture card in 2010 I believe and by that point I had seen gameplay I believe of modern warfare 2 what's his name sandy ravaged or Randy Savage whichever sandy ravaged got a copy early and was doing gameplays of it and things like that they got me really interested in making gaming videos that always you know save the little clips if I could in games always wanted to make little like highlight montage things that got me into that and then eventually I transitioned into tech where are you from why do you make videos same line already answered it I'm from Kentucky there's nothing around here in terms of YouTube or media or tech so awful place to be for this job but I don't plan on leaving anytime soon this thing keeps scrolling on its own if you could instantly turn pro at one sport what would it be professional video editing I wouldn't want the commitment or the requirements of being professional out of sports so genuinely I don't want none is there a way to record a full 120fps within wink an egg or x264 smoothly yep you open up OBS you said at the fractional framerate mode 120 over 1 and you have good hardware and use anything and it works easy-peasy how many technical issues do you have when making a video some of them go flawlessly and then some of them like my live game or 4k review from last Monday it took hours upon hours of Adobe's stupid GPU render error that has virtually no fix stopping the render every few minutes and me having to start it over and keep it going and it took hours it I finished it I already took forever to make it I finished it at 6 p.m. on Monday it took me until 10 p.m. to actually start uploading it and then YouTube decided to drag its feet processing and I barely got it posted before midnight it was bad in terms of other technical issues I usually don't have a ton my cameras and audio equipment usually works all right I'm at the point where my setup is fairly confident sometimes videos would glitch out or the software will crash but overall like things run pretty smoothly in that regard in terms of the actual like creation like Windows 10 18:03 not installing on a build I'm trying to benchmark those can be pretty derailing what made you choose Plex over Kodi or anything else well it's a time that I started with Plex Cody was basically like an XBMC front end it was just a front end for stuff it didn't have a whole lot of functionality built into it and I just wanted something that organized my media files and let me stream on the different rigs and play on my xbox and that's what Plex did and so I've just stuck with it no reason to switch and now I'm full disclosure I'm sponsored by them for content so now oh I think that's it Oh legit that thumbnail you look like a clone of me a few years back referring to the picture of the community tab where I was asking for questions I guess brother what do you think about gaming phones and what phone do you use as your daily driver the one I'm currently using mine as my daily driver right here is the huawei mate 10 Pro which I did a gaming on the huawei mate 10 Pro a video it was sent for review I may have to send it back at some point but that's what I'm using right now because I can use the you we see out to record video where as my previous daily driver is my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 which is actually from my contract with my parents family plan with AT&T it does not have any actual video output capabilities whatsoever and at this point the battery life is pretty crap battery life currently on the may 10 Pro is fantastic so sticking with that I don't get a whole lot of phones through here because I don't cover a whole lot of mobile topics because of things like I'm about to say what I think about gaming phones I think they're pretty stupid but for certain people they're probably great because some people just want to be able to play games while they're on the bus or while they're you know at a friend's house or at the doctor's office or whatever like they just have specific circumstances and that's all they really need for games and that's fine mobile gaming is getting to a better point even though the whole hand-walk tutorial push notifications advertisements and loot boxes honestly ruin the experience of games I would genuinely pay to play in terms of a dedicated gaming phone for me I don't see any point I don't want a phone that's bigger and hotter and worse battery life just to play games every once in a while rather just play what games I can play on the phone that I have never really ran issue we ran into issues with that I've been playing the crap at a head ball too which is just a stupid little soccer game Pokemon quest which is not Pokemon go I'm not a huge fan of that but we've started it up again those are the only Tekken and Tekken on mobiles pretty good and then there's a new Dragon Ball Legends I want to play I haven't tried it out yet but I know I think a lot of the smartphone trends are really stupid and people who get up in arms over something like a notch when you can just buy a phone with the actual bezel I died I'd rather have front-facing speakers than an all-glass display or a notch so that's just me and then we got two more if you clean a vacuum cleaner oh no I gotta read this right if you clean a vacuum cleaner are you the vacuum cleaner and lastly how many houses have you changed I've posted about moving a few times because we've moved departments three times now so I've lived in two houses with my parents they moved when I was about seven or eight ish and then they had one house and then I moved out of that house into an apartment and we upgraded apartments then our last apartment had flooding damage and we were forced to move and upgrade again so this is now my third apartment more apartments than houses hopefully the next one will be an actual house instead of an apartment but we'll see so that's all the Q&A questions that's all the cues for the A's for this episode first episode now I guess I've trying to do this monthly although it took me a month to even get to this round of questions so we'll see but I do want to do it more often if you do have more questions you would like to ask join our discord server and Evos voxcom slash the discord there is a special chat for that that is where I'm gonna prioritize getting questions from unless there's just something fantastic in the comments or I'm low on questions for the day go check that out and we have a great community there talking about tech gaming lots of different stuff you can ask me questions if I'm around things like that the like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more awesome tech content and things like that and I'll see you next time\n"