I love long-form videos that tell information and stories. Documentaries about most any topics, especially ones that last an hour or more, are my bread and butter. But when I’m using YouTube on my TV, I can’t tell from thumbnails what the quality of a channel is. Sometimes I find gold, but other times it’s obvious they’re using an AI voice over or AI imagery and I immediately turn it off. I’m so tired of trudging through the slop, even though it’s just beginning.

So for now, I figure I’ll check with y’all - do you have any preferred/recommended channels that make the sort of video I’m looking for, that are still human-made? I’d love to hear about them.

  • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
    2·
    54 minutes ago

    PBS and Nova are good. Science Channel as well. Most vids are short but they put out some banger full length documentaries every so often.

    History Time is also really good. The length of the vids can be hella long.

    The History Channel has some cool stuff too.

  • dustycups@aussie.zone
    5·
    7 hours ago

    No one seems to have mentioned Steve Mould.
    Super specific topics, interesting (to me anyway) and definitely no slop.
    Edit:mentionded?

    • anon6789@lemmy.world
      11·
      23 hours ago

      I’m on a Nebula guest pass this week someone generously gave me when I talked about having a hard time finding AI things.

      It’s a very stark contrast scrolling through the 2 feeds next to each other!

      Nebula has a more Fediverse feel. I don’t believe it has any kind of real recommendation algorithm, it just has a few suggested categories, like this is Women’s Month, so they highlight female creators. Less people contributing, but every video looks watchable even if it’s not something I have interest in. The main issue I’ve had is getting used to a more Netflix looking system to find videos, and just the fact since everything looks interesting, I haven’t actually watched much since it’s stuff I want to watch when I can actually pay attention instead of it just being moreso background noise. For the $60 a year or whatever it is, it is looking quite tempting.

      Scrolling YouTube next to it feels much more like looking at Facebook. Clear algorithm based feed. Lots of mental junk food type recommendations. Real content looks the same as AI. I’m on premium and still have to hear the in-video ad reads. Much more variety (almost no electronic music production or synth type stuff I could find on Nebula, not much on animation, for example) but you have to wade through a lot of crud to find the good stuff.

  • Bricked@feddit.org
    29·
    1 day ago

    Even if you can’t afford Nebula, I recommend browsing its explore section, because many of its high quality creators and videos are also on YouTube. The following are some of my favourite creators on YouTube.

    30 minute animated documentary-style videos: LEMMiNO, melodysheep, fern, Hoog, neo, PolyMatter, Imperial, Cipher, Real Engineering, Mustard

    Shorter explainer videos: Posy, Kurzgesagt, PBS Space Time, Sciencephile the AI, minutephysics, Steve Mould, Half as Interesting

    • glimse@lemmy.world
      16·
      24 hours ago

      Sad to see no love for one of the coolest dudes in Nebula, Grady from Practical Engineering.

      If you like seeing how civil engineering projects happen, there’s no better channel. It reminds me of PBS shows I watched as a kid

        • glimse@lemmy.world
          2·
          20 hours ago

          I love that he’s established enough in the niche that he gets access to film civil construction projects, too. Great stuff

    • CMLVI@lemmy.world
      4·
      23 hours ago

      LEMMiNO is my favorite bi-annual creator.

      Nexpo does some really good stuff too, but I think recently he’s just been doing like Reddit deep dives, and that is only so interesting.

    • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      23 hours ago

      It’s pretty funny that Sciencephile the AI can be recommended as a good non-AI source of info now that more capable AI is real and not just scifi.

  • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialEnglish
    12·
    1 day ago

    Veritasium

    Fren

    Johnny Harris

    Compterphile

    3blue1brown

    tldrNews (several channel each for different region)

    RealLifeLore

    Money and Macro (actual economist, not finance bro)

      • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        19 hours ago

        Unlike fern and tldrnews, I don’t think they declared no AI, but I feel most of there animation seems to involve a lot of human labors, at least on top of AI.

        They have also never declared the use of AI either, so I guess I don’t know for sure.

  • snoons@lemmy.caEnglish
    10·
    22 hours ago

    Not sure if these are what you’re looking for, but:

    • Dr. Becky [professional commentary on astronomy and astrophysics]

    • Anton Petrov [professional commentary on astronomy and astrophysics]

    • What’s Going On With Shipping? [videos about the ins and outs of international maritime shipping]

    • Not Just Bikes [focuses on the many ways urban infrastructure can be improved]

    • Sampson Boat Co. [~seven years worth of videos where Leo rebuilds a 1910 gaff cutter from the keel up. Currently sailing it back to London to participate in race the same boat won a century ago]

    • Primitive Technology [builds cool things with sticks, mud, water and pond scum]

    • Bad Obsession Motorsport [bought an old mini-cooper and shoved an engine from a Celica GT-Four into it]

    • Practical Engineering [a practical look at engineering projects that most people ignore, mostly because they're underground]

    • B1M [videos focusing on large mega projects like tunnels and nuclear reactors]

    • Jay and Mark [map guys that rightfully complain about Londons infrastructure]

    • Florian Gadsby [skilled (practised) potter that makes really satisfying pieces]

    There are also channels that are focused on the war in Ukraine and related international shenanigans (in order of avg. video length):

    • Perun

    • Denys Davydov

    • Reporting from Ukraine

    • Suchomimus (poor chap made a channel to nerd out about dinosaurs, then the Russians attacked…)

    Also check out ytch.xyz; It serves videos from a curated list of channels such that it behaves like cable television.

    Also also check out nebula.tv if you can afford it.

  • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
    1·
    16 hours ago

    Curious Archive is really good if you’re into media and story analysis and exploration. I’ve also been hooked on KBash for deep dive video game retrospectives.