I finally got around to putting up my first “Design It” video.With the 3rd season of Game of Thrones starting this weekend, I needed to hurry and get these up.
These are different than the regular game play videos.I do not have the ability, yet, to record my desktop (Windows 8) with FRAPS.Therefore, I have to download all the images from the sites and add them to the Windows Live Movie Maker Project as stills.Then, I can adjust their timed length, add transitions and animations bridging two images together.After that, I can add in the music and save the video.Then I have to go back and record the commentary with Sound Recorder in chunks and splice them into a new project with the saved video as a clip.
Because of the time constraints, I have to somewhat plan my commentary in order to hit my marks and not go over on time.
In all, a three minute video can take an hour or two to produce.
It might be a great way to reach your audiences but there are some manual hang-ups I have work through.
In any case, here is my first effort at the “Design It” series.I am also going to post this on the Store blog as well.
The Design It Series - The Westeros League #1 The Storm's End Baratheons
The last part of the Beacon Shrine build is now up on YouTube.
It took forever to edit and post.Here’s the breakdown of how that worked.
I recorded all of the footage President’s Day weekend using FRAPS, which I purchased.
Then, I edited each episode down to length using Windows Live Movie Maker.The first was about five minutes and the next two clocked in at 14 minutes and change.
Then, I added in narration using Windows Sound Recorder.After that was done, I saved it all into WMV format and then opened a new Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) project and dropped music in from MachinimaSound.
Total financial burden to produce YouTube videos to date:$37.
Pros:
Cheap
Fun
Creative
Cons:
Cheap
Time Consuming
Frustrating
Resource heavy
I used cheap twice because for some reason, my videos don’t have the same quality as others I’ve seen.I haven’t figured out if it’s my FRAPS record settings or me continually making the project into a video file in order to add another layer of audio.In any given project, WLMM only lets you add in one separate audio track.
I know a lot of other YouTubers use FRAPS to record Minecraft but not sure if they use WLMM to edit and post.I just saw Sony Vegas 12 on Amazon for $60.That would push my budget for an unproven venture to just about $100.May have to mull that one over.
The other frustrating thing is that it takes forever to work in WLMM.Sometimes it gets hung up and I have to wait for it to stop idling.The conversion to a video file is also tedious and posting to YouTube could take a couple of hours at least.I’ve been up late, set a video to publish and went to bed.Then, finished off annotations and descriptions in the morning.
Now, my biggest problem is doing the actual content.In my previous post, I stated I had a backlog of footage to edit and post.I have three episodes done and won’t have to record new ones to work on until almost April.I left off after recording for one day and now I have to look at the footage to see where the hell I was when I was playing.I did some stuff on my own and recorded it for another video and I don’t remember the narrative I was working on at this point.
Also, it seems that the server I was playing on is possibly shutting down.I can understand.It takes money and time to run a server.From what I gathered these were high school kids, so as the weather gets nicer, they probably have less time to devote to it.Sucks that I donated $10 to the server and then they started experiencing issues and possibly shutting down a month later.I’ll remember that next time I’m on one.
Until then, I will keep going, tweaking the process and letting you know because I know you’re all just at the edge of your seats on this stuff.;)
