Wait, books are better for learning after all?
I grew up in a time when we didn't have computers in the classroom, just books, notebooks, a teacher, and a chalkboard. On special days, an overhead projector would make its appearance too. At the time, it didn't feel like the best way to learn; I remember vivid discussions about how outdated the school system was. But after watching thousands of hours of tutorial videos, I'm starting to think that it might actually have been something to this old-school method.
Let's start from the beginning of my rediscovery. I've worked as a video producer for 12 years, and during that time I've been using been a slave to Adobe. To properly learn anything, one must do it; no one is going to argue about that, and it's how I learned Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Lightroom. I never watched a full course, just random videos on specific things when needed. I made it work, as in, I still have a job, but my workflow is far from optimal. I'm missing some basic knowledge, for example, in After Effects, I sometimes hit something that crops the image, only it doesn't. It's just a white square over my footage that I have to reset to be able to see whatever is in the viewer. No idea what it is, never bothered to Google it. And I also don't know why their programs crash so often. Is it something I'm doing? Premiere and After Effects have become more stable over the last couple of years, but Lightroom is still an unstable mess. It's time to leave this shitty company.
Doing it properly this time
Quitting Adobe isn't a new idea. Last year I bought DaVinci Resolve with the Speed Editor and proceeded to watch a four-hour course on YouTube. Twice. And yeah, I can edit a video using DaVinci, but I'm slow, and I'm not utilizing it to even a tenth of its potential. With no confidence using DaVinci, I went back to Adobe. I don't hate Adobe, but I kinda hate Adobe. It's actually gotten to the point where it's embarrassing as a professional to say that you're still their slave. While browsing Blackmagic's website (the company that makes DaVinci), I learned that they actually have several tutorial books. Intrigued, I decided to do the Beginner's Guide "old school"-style: taking notes and doing the exercises. Not with the project files they supply, that shit gets boring real quick, but with a short video essay I filmed in an evening. At the end of the book, I felt like Neo in The Matrix. "I know the fundamentals of DaVinci Resolve". Finally, I can use it with confidence.
It's 2026, what about AI?
AI could, in theory, be the best way to learn. After all, It's like your personal all-knowing teacher. I have three problems.
- The technology is still a slot machine. I hate the feeling of not being able to trust what it says.
- I hate the voice. It can't stop itself from telling me I'm awesome no matter how many times I ask it to stop. Also, LLMs have been trained on articles I've trained myself to skim through for over twenty years. If I get a response that is over 2 sentences, it will be skimmed.
- It's too tempting to copy/paste from the answers instead of typing out the notes manually.
Book learning > Video learning always?
Of course not, it depends on the subject, and I also believe it's highly individual. My problem is that I'm watching hours of videos almost every day. It's ridiculous. Today, while editing photos, I had random compilations of QI in the background, glancing over from time to time. While eating lunch, I watched Fred and Harry Borden's latest video. Awesome photography channel. Then back to whatever caught my fancy in the feed. The goal is to learn more than just being entertained, but the truth is that I barely remember anything. I'm just an addict with lots of shallow, useless knowledge.
Shallow knowledge, by the way, is worse than a lack of knowledge. I don't mind not knowing stuff; I hate the feeling of believing that I should know. You know?
So I'm not saying that video tutorials are a waste of time; I just find it too easy to zone out. It's inherently passive compared to reading a book. It's also more of a hassle to take notes, as you have to pause and restart the video. Books keep me more honest, which is why going forward, I'm going old-school.