So a few of us on them there Tweetzers were talkin' video content production. Things like hardware for game capture and such. I promised I'd make a thread dedicated to the topic, and in my natural fashion I've done it several weeks after I promised.
For the most part those of us discussing were trying to figure out what we needed first, but I figured this would be a great place to share other information. Plus, maybe folks would like to team up and work on projects together. Or maybe people just want to share their own projects or the latest thing they've posted.
GamersWithVideos
ccesarano - RamblePak64
EverythingsTentative - Everything's Tentative
ParallaxAbstraction - Retro Flashback/All Together Now
tanstaafl - The Paleogamer
MysticViolet - Valhalla Playground/Valhalla Historia
The Conformist - Comedy!
Baron of Hell - BaronSquared
bombsfall - Toh Kay "With Any Sort of Creativity" Music Video (animation)
Hardware for video capture
For those of us console gamers looking to capture video, there's a few hardware options to make things easier.
Avermedia seems to have a few options available. A month ago their GameCapture HD was about $130 off of Amazon and more available, but it doesn't seem to be available directly through Amazon at the moment. The primary advantage is if your consoles are away from your computer then this device will still work. You just slap a 2.5" hard drive in there and record onto it. Uses Component cable and USB.
Roxio also has their own Game Capture HD as well, which seems to focus on connectivity between the game system and the computer. Allows for HDMI or Component.
Elgato and Hauppauge both seem to require HDMI for Xbox 360, which is silly to me as any older Xbox doesn't have an HDMI Output.
Diamond Multimedia does Component and comes in version 1000 and 500.
EZGamer lacks user reviews, which makes me iffy.
There are also a bunch of video capture cards, but that seems beyond my area of expertise (because clearly I know so much about these options).
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Video capture software
This is something I started experimenting with myself. I'm not sure if the quality of video captured is more dependent on your hardware or how well the software is programmed. If it's the former I'm probably screwed.
In any event, I started with CamStudio Recorder and was not pleased. It didn't run well at all, and when I started messing around with settings to try and capture just a single window instead of my entire desktop, or trying to capture sound "from my speakers" (as opposed to "microphone" and "no sound") it had issues running a function.
It didn't seem to do its job well when I finally did get around to recording something.
I've heard folks mention FRAPS, but I have no knowledge of its quality. I'll probably try it out next.
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OTHER
Since a lot of older consoles are probably a Female Doggo and two halves to record from I decided to try Cloud Emulator Console Classix, which I'm hoping is legal. I pay $6 a month to get access to a whole slew of systems. I experimented with Mega Man X today.
The GUI isn't always intuitive. I had to restart the software to find where to change controls so I could map out my wired 360 game pad, then I had to figure out how things worked in the cloud ZSNES emulator. Once you figure that out, though, it works pretty well. So if I want to do a more retro game, this will be my go-to source.
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So if anyone has any suggestions, any links to share, or any questions, feel free to comment and discuss.
Thanks for the thread! Now we can get to planning and discussion.
I'm using Camtasia Studio 8. It works well enough. There's a trial version.
So besides video capture, my friend and I are also wanting to record our conversation while we play. Any suggestions to what we should use?
Camtasia supports audio input from the mic on the device being used. If you're on the same device, I think it'll capture both audio inputs, though I can't be sure. If nothing else, you can simply capture the audio later as a commentary and layer it over the video in the editing mode.
Sorry about the cost, ccesarano, but you do get what you pay for. No messing around. Just works. I don't know why but the Mac version is just $99. Might want to check out if you can get the same price for the PC version somehow.
Awesome! This all sounds great, so I'm glad to hear this is something to look in to for a future purchase.
I make a lot of youtube videos pretty regularly in Windows Movie Maker. They changed a lot from 2.6 to the newest iteration. Like the timeline portion is gone... But I like it a lot more than the other video editors I've tried.
My only gripe with 2.6 is that it does freeze. And in the case of one friend, it did corrupt her file entirely, making the whole video useless. So I would be careful. I just use Windows Live Movie Maker for all the stuff I do.
Awesome! Free is hard to turn down, and making vids is fuuun.
I've been meaning to post in this thread for a long time but I've been so busy that I haven't had time to do it until now. Before I post my own thing, ccesarano, if that's your first attempt at a video, well bloody done sir! You've got a great foundation there. I fear that the video I'm about to post will look horrendous in comparison.
So I've been pondering doing a retro gaming themed YouTube show for quite a while now. My idea is that an entire generation of kids are growing up not knowing anything about older games and how they have contributed to the games we see today. My idea was to do a show like Giant Bomb Quick Looks or TotalBiscuit's WTF Is... but focused exclusively on retro games. I'd largely play whatever game I feel like in no particular order but talk about what made the game good, unique or even what made it bad. It would be just me commentating over game play but it would be talking about the history and underlying details of the games rather than just being a Let's Play. Giant Bomb has been kind of doing something like this with Encyclopedia Bombastica (though I've been gestating this idea since well before they started that) and while I like what they're doing, I'm hoping to approach it a little bit differently.
So this afternoon, I did a test video to try out my recording settings and see how well I could do it. I chose to do a video of Code Name: Viper for the NES. I've posted it publicly on my YouTube channel and I'm looking for honest feedback. I'll take anything you can throw at me. I don't expect this to get high praise so my feelings won't be hurt. A few things about this, some of which I'd love suggestions for if anyone can offer them:
1. I recorded this with my headset mic. It actually sounds way better than I thought it would but it does still sound like a headset. If I start doing this seriously, I will invest in a proper recording mic.
2. I know there's a lot of "Umm" and "Uhh" in my commentary. For all those people who say the Giant Bomb guys are "bad at games", seriously try playing something while live commentating it. It's bloody hard to talk and play well at the same time! This is something I know I have to work on and I will. It may just involve a lot of practice or it may mean that I have to capture in advance and talk over it later. I'm going to keep practising my speaking ability and try to make it more engaging with time.
3. I have no intro and outro for the video. If I start doing this proper, I want to have both but honestly, I haven't the foggiest clue where to put something together. I have no artistic abilities and I tried out a couple of motion graphic applications and got completely lost right away. Does anyone know the best way to create a simple intro with some titling, effects and whatnot? I know you can find royalty-free music to use which I can do but I'm at a loss as to what else to do. I know a big thing on YouTube is also to put in-line links to previous videos at the end but again, I don't have any art to wrap that in.
4. This is just raw capture for the most part. I re-rendered it and uploaded it to YouTube using the trial version of Sony Vegas 12 Platinum which is probably what I'll end up buying if I start doing this frequently, simply because it's inexpensive and does a great job in spite of that. If I can figure out how to put together an intro and outro, I'll have no problem stitching it all together. I actually am fairly familiar with video editing thanks to a client of mine but motion graphics and such are where I fall apart.
5. I recorded the video in 720p but thanks to my sh*tty 1Mbps upload speed (hopefully improving soon), it takes forever and a day to upload. Since it's an NES game, HD might not be necessary so I may try another pass at 480p and see if people can notice a major drop in quality.
6. I was saying before on a live stream I did that I wasn't sure it was possible to do this due to copyright nonsense since I would eventually like to get partnership and monetise these videos. The good news is that after some research, I found out doing this kind of thing is perfectly legal indeed. If you're providing commentary, analysis, review, parody or something else, it's considered an "educational video" and therefore falls under Fair Use, at least in the US. I believe we have similar provisions in Canada but I think it's US copyright law that YouTube adheres to. Basically, you can't just put up video of the game playing on its own but if there's commentary, it's fair game! I don't think YouTube will offer partnership in these cases so if you want to monetise videos like this, you may have to try to get accepted into a network like The Game Station.
7. The tentative title for my show is Retro Flashback. If anyone has other suggestions, feel free to toss them at me. I'm not great at naming things cleverly.
So yeah, here it is. Feel free to be honest but try to be constructive.
You're correct, most retro focused shows are done from the point of view of making fun of bad games. I actually spent hours trying to find a YouTube show that does what I'm planning to do and couldn't find one which frankly shocked me. I don't intend to focus exclusively on obscure titles, just whatever I feel like playing on a given day. I'll probably do staples like Super Mario Bros. and the like too if this thing takes off but I figure to start, this is a good way to showcase stuff that retro enthusiasts may not have played but would be interested in. I may take another crack at recording it again tonight as I'm still not pleased with the quality of my commentary.
Both of your videos were pretty good!
Parallax: For a first attempt, you're already remarkably close to being on par with Encyclopedia Bombastica. The choice of game was good, as Code Name: Viper looks like a lot of fun to play. I might be able to speak to your gripe in the lack of high score counter in that it would have required the cartridges to have batteries inside to save data. Adding that material cost wouldn't have made sense for a game that wouldn't otherwise have any reason to save anything between attempts.
ccesarano: I haven't come across too many videos that set out to argue a point about a video game other than "this game is better than people think" (or perhaps the opposite). I think you did a good job of backing up your thesis both in writing and in the video editing, and I know from experience how much work it is editing that much footage. When it comes to your reading, I agree the enunciation is an area to work on, and your mic sounds like it is clipping a bit. See if you can bring the level down while you're recording and then boost the volume later in the mix.
Re: Jon Tron
If you're not watching Game Grumps, you should be.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm actually trying to get a second video up where I re-recorded the commentary. I also did it in 480p, simply because an NES game doesn't benefit from 720p and my horribly slow upload at home means a 480p video uploads in half an hour whereas 720 takes 6 hours. I'm curious what you think of the differences. A comparison of the two would help me decide a lot. Here's "beta 2":
Unfortunately, I just noticed after posting this that the game play looks squished as Hell. Vegas for some reason forces everything into 4:3 when you encode at 480p but not 360p which makes no sense to me. Even though the capture is 4:3 because it's an NES game, when you encode in 16:9, the game play size in the video increases some. However, the 16:9 game play is also kind of motion blurry, whereas this doesn't appear to be. Do you think the massive black bars on the side detract from things?
Also ccesarano, if you're looking to capture stuff, I use a fantastic program called Dxtory that's not very expensive and does an amazing job. It's got kind of a horrible UI and can be a process to configure initially but I'm happy to help out with that. It works great for recording emulators and it will put things like commentary into its own audio track which makes editing a snap but there's one caveat: Dxtory uses DirectX hooks to record so the emulator must support DirectX video modes which not all of them do. I ended up using FCEUX as my NES emulator but I do have concerns that I won't be able to find emulators for every platform I want to cover that use DirectX. If not, I might be able to use XSplit's screen region mode for that, though it won't look as good or be as elegant a process.
I also fell down the rabbit hole of figuring how to to make a motion graphic intro last night. The trial of Sony Vegas Platinum I'm using includes HitFilm Express which is a lighter version of a product that's designed to be a cheaper version of Adobe After Effects. It's complicated but the developer has a boatload of really easy to follow tutorial videos on their web site, including all the project files and assets needed to follow along with them. I did a couple of lessons last night and have the basics down. It won't look like anything from Industrial Light & Magic but I think I might be able to put something passable together in a few hours. I ended up spending like 2 hours on various stock media sites trying to find a fitting chiptune track I could use as backing for it but came up short. There aren't a lot of options out there on stock sites and all the ones that are freely downloadable are for non-commercial purposes, meaning I'd be in violation of their licenses if I ever achieved partner status with YouTube. A lot of these stock sites also have a ton of pre-created motion graphic intros that looks really nice but they all require After Effects and I'm not really interested in paying $50/month of $1,000 once to own After Effects yet.
If you know anyone who has some good, beaty chiptunes, I'd be interested in talking to them. Credit ain't no problem at all.
I was about to save the day by suggesting you look around 8bitcollective.org, but then I found out that they got hacked and entirely deleted from existence a couple of years ago.
There seems to be some remnants available here.
Aside from that, I'll just throw out some of my favorites: roboctopus (local to me!), smiletron (almost local), spamtron, tettix, and there's a lot more where that came from
Thanks for the shout out Ces. When we video, which is not as often as we would like, Tech Guy does all the capture and editing. I have no idea what he uses but I'll get the info and post it.
I know we have issues with audio sync on longer videos, which is why we haven't posted many (we talk a lot).
Since we are taking down the personal site, expect to see more YouTube videos. We would love subscribes and likes.
I believe she's aware of it but she's been super busy lately. I've been considering some kind of co-op focused endeavour as well. Potentially YouTube but I was thinking more of a live stream thing, though at least on my side, that would have to wait until my home Internet is finally able to get its upgrade. This is the problem with how my head works, I get a million ideas and want to do them all!
If you are planning something of your own ccesarano and need some co-op partners, hit me up. I'd be happy to participate.
I signed up for a trial of Adobe Creative Cloud this past weekend so I could alter a stock template intro video I bought in After Effects. Creative Cloud also includes Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Audition and a boatload of other stuff. I haven't done anything with Premiere for quite a while and hooooooly crap it's changed! Photoshop too for that matter (the last time I used that was before CS1). That said, I got a ton done this weekend. I managed to make some significant modifications to the stock After Effects intro I purchased and it looks fantastic. I also used a template for an outro screen (one of the ones that you link to other videos with) and managed to personalise that quite a bit in Photoshop. Everything I did would have been unquestionably dead simple for anyone with actual experience in these applications but man, if it doesn't feel like an epic victory when I figure out something I've been stuck on, especially given my lack of artistic talent and how intimidating the After Effects interface is. Can't wait to get the new prototype up!
Premiere Pro is definitely a better and more flexible video editing product than Sony Movie Studio Platinum. One of the things I've learned about MSP is that is doesn't allow project templating, meaning that every time I make a new Retro Flashback episode, I'll have to re-do most of the timeline from scratch, including transitions, overlays and whatnot. For relatively simple videos like those, it's not a deal breaker at all, it's just more inefficient and time consuming. That said, Movie Studio Platinum costs $129 once whereas you either pay $50/month with a 1 year contract for Creative Cloud or...about $1,000 each to buy the applications at standalones. Maybe if I actually manage to attain partnership with this thing some day, I can justify going to the Adobe camp but I figure after a few episodes, I'll be able to go through the motion in MSP by muscle memory.
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