How to "Let's Play!"
Posted: June 15th, 2013, 13:41
Okay guys, it was mentioned last night that it would be good if a snappy guide to screen-casting was made available to 5punkers.
I can only really give advice on my software setup, but if anyone wants to add their own stuff please feel free!
Also if I talk out of my bum, please do correct me. I'm kinda winging things.
Equipment
You will need
Video
I use Fraps, so that's what I'll be basing this tutorial off, but if anyone else wants to add their own bit of software as a comment then please feel free! It'd be great to have a single thread full of resources. I chose Fraps because it seemed like the easiest solution, and cheap enough considering how much I've been using it recently. The license lets you record movies over 30 seconds, which is probably useful unless you want to make really short Lets Play videos.
Once in the software, head on over to the FPS tab and hide the overlay, this will stop the little frames-per-second number popping up in your video. It's pretty much just good for benchmarking your system.
In the Movies tab you've got some proper options.
Going clockwise
Recording at the first three will either be perfect for 720p exporting, or will scale down nicely to 720p. The last will be perfect for 1080p exporting - if you have higher resolution 16:9 monitors then YouTube's not really going to get much benefit out of what you're uploading to it, seeing as it desires 1920x1080p.
If like me you're a screen real-estate whore and got a 16:10 ratio monitor (1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200) Then you'll be wanting to play your game in a window at a 16:9 ratio resolution. You can do this just by setting the game to 1920x1080 and playing in a window. I recorded my Unreal 2 videos at 1920x1200 and when it came to exporting it it sheared 60px off the top and bottom. No great loss, but I'll try and remember to record 1920x1080 in future.
It's worth mentioning that you might want to turn off stuff in the background that's going to pop-up. Raptr and Steam notifications, or IM sounds. Most of these can be done by setting yourself to Busy though.
Audio
If you're going to be recording your microphone separately (and let's face it, you totally should) then you're going to want to have another recording program open. I have Audacity sitting to one side on my second monitor and start recording audio before I open my game. I then count down to pressing my Fraps record button like a sort of audio clapper board, so I know where I'm syncing my audio and video when it comes to editing.
The advantages are that:
I use Premiere, which is kinda fiddly, but great once you have your head around a few simple concepts. This is probably where other people's contributions to this tutorial is going to come in handy though, as Premiere's something I got a license from work for. It's otherwise pretty expensive.
Premiere asks if I'm providing DV (standard definition) or HDV (high definition) video. HDV, naturally. I then get a list of video types I can set my timeline to, which looks like this: http://imgur.com/k90JAL6
It doesn't matter much as Premiere's smart enough to change the sequence type when you start dragging video on to the timeline, but it's informative. Notice this format is for recordings at 1920x1080, and lists the frame rate as 29.97 (as mentioned earlier in the Fraps section).
Grab (import) your tasty 4GB chunks and slap them on to the timeline. Premiere's smart enough to put them in alphabetical order, and Fraps timestamps video.
I pop my entire audio track in to Adobe Audition and sample the background noise, then remove it. It just gets rid of that annoying microphone hiss that you get with cheaper microphones, and also any disc drive whirring, or fan hums. Audition's pretty good at this, but I can't vouch for other editors. I'm sure yours will have something similar though.
Here's what my editing looks like - I gather Lightroom's pretty similar. Click for biggerer/clearer!
Use audio and video transitions between the intro and outro. Speaking of..
5punk Intro: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vscscvmi17fjz ... 0Intro.mp4 (13mb)
5punk outro: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sapdj2wfk1xi7 ... 47s107.png (1.6mb)
I use ReclusiveLemming's chiptune compilation for my intros.
Download through: Dropbox, files indivudually or as a pack
Mr J is using https://www.extrememusic.com/ for free music tracks, but there are tons more of artists out there trying to get their royalty-free audio out there to an audience. Be kind, provide a credit to them in your YouTube video description, and a link if possible.
Exporting
Goddamn check your whole video first. You wouldn't want to have to do this twice. (Like Tandino and I had to.)
I export all my junk through Adobe Media Encoder (it's what Premiere uses to export stuff). Here are the settings I use.
Click for biggerer/clearer!
Exporting will take a while, and will push your computer (probably), so best do it while you have an hour or two to spare.
Uploading
If you reckon exporting takes a while, unless you have a nice broadband upload speed (most residential connections don't, sadly) you're gonna be uploading to YouTube for even longer. Once you've previewed your masterpiece upload it to the 5punk YouTube channel (username and password in the Waugh Room in the "YouTube details" thread. I've stickied it for convenience. If you're not allowed in the Waugh Room, ask an old-timer to hold your hand.)
Put a brief explaination of what you're playing in the video description, and credit people like so:
Played by: {5punk username}
Music: {Track - Artist - Link}
When you're done you could set the video to "Unlisted" and show it around a few 5punkers for a second opinion. If you're happy swap it to "Public" and go advertise! 5punky Twitterers will be happy to put it on there, and people that can modify the 5punk.co.uk front page will help you upload it there too. Facebook seems to be a pretty good platform for sharing if you have nerdy friends.
Legalities
Pick royalty free music, unless you want to go commission somebody to make us a sweet as heck song.
One thing to consider is the legal grey area around Lets Play videos - some game publishers don't like their games on YouTube at all. Here are a couple of things you can do to avoid the video being town down under a copyright claim
I think that's pretty much all of my knowledge on Lets Plays, so do feel free to contribute below, and I'll update the post above with more information. Happy playing!
I can only really give advice on my software setup, but if anyone wants to add their own stuff please feel free!
Also if I talk out of my bum, please do correct me. I'm kinda winging things.
Equipment
You will need
- Screen capture software
- Video editing software
- Adobe Premiere
- Sony Vegas
- Lightworks (free!)
- Audio recording/editing software
- A fairly good computer (if you're recording HD)
- Many Gigabytes of hard drive space (especially if you're recording HD)
- A microphone
Video
I use Fraps, so that's what I'll be basing this tutorial off, but if anyone else wants to add their own bit of software as a comment then please feel free! It'd be great to have a single thread full of resources. I chose Fraps because it seemed like the easiest solution, and cheap enough considering how much I've been using it recently. The license lets you record movies over 30 seconds, which is probably useful unless you want to make really short Lets Play videos.
Once in the software, head on over to the FPS tab and hide the overlay, this will stop the little frames-per-second number popping up in your video. It's pretty much just good for benchmarking your system.
In the Movies tab you've got some proper options.
Going clockwise
- Set a hotkey to record
- Pick a capture speed, 30fps is plenty (Adobe Premiere prefers 29.97fps for exporting with my chosen codec, so I've set it to that)
- Pick whether you're recording a full or half size. The latter will be faster if you have a poopy machine, but obviously you won't be exporting at 1080p unless you have a 2160 pixel high monitor. Which you don't. Don't be silly.
- Choose to split the movie every 4GB, this'll stop you from losing your video if something crashes, and also cuts your video into manageable chunks when you come to process it in your editing software. If I record for thirty minutes at full resolution I usually end up with 10-20 chunks, so 40 gigs to 80 gigs of hard drive space. Voluminous!
- Record Windows sound - that's your game audio. If you have a swanky sound set up I think you can experiment with Multichannel too.
- Record external input - That's your microphone. You can do this, but it'll all be in the same audio layer, so you won't be able to edit out umms, ahhs, coughs or farts (or belches, Pete).
Recording at the first three will either be perfect for 720p exporting, or will scale down nicely to 720p. The last will be perfect for 1080p exporting - if you have higher resolution 16:9 monitors then YouTube's not really going to get much benefit out of what you're uploading to it, seeing as it desires 1920x1080p.
If like me you're a screen real-estate whore and got a 16:10 ratio monitor (1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200) Then you'll be wanting to play your game in a window at a 16:9 ratio resolution. You can do this just by setting the game to 1920x1080 and playing in a window. I recorded my Unreal 2 videos at 1920x1200 and when it came to exporting it it sheared 60px off the top and bottom. No great loss, but I'll try and remember to record 1920x1080 in future.
It's worth mentioning that you might want to turn off stuff in the background that's going to pop-up. Raptr and Steam notifications, or IM sounds. Most of these can be done by setting yourself to Busy though.
Audio
If you're going to be recording your microphone separately (and let's face it, you totally should) then you're going to want to have another recording program open. I have Audacity sitting to one side on my second monitor and start recording audio before I open my game. I then count down to pressing my Fraps record button like a sort of audio clapper board, so I know where I'm syncing my audio and video when it comes to editing.
The advantages are that:
- I really like BBCode Lists
- You can cut out any unwanted noises from your speech track independent to your game
- You can dip your speech track and raise the game track when something important is happening, like a cutscene
- You can independently raise or lower volume of the whole track, if your microphone's rubbish (like mine)
I use Premiere, which is kinda fiddly, but great once you have your head around a few simple concepts. This is probably where other people's contributions to this tutorial is going to come in handy though, as Premiere's something I got a license from work for. It's otherwise pretty expensive.
Premiere asks if I'm providing DV (standard definition) or HDV (high definition) video. HDV, naturally. I then get a list of video types I can set my timeline to, which looks like this: http://imgur.com/k90JAL6
It doesn't matter much as Premiere's smart enough to change the sequence type when you start dragging video on to the timeline, but it's informative. Notice this format is for recordings at 1920x1080, and lists the frame rate as 29.97 (as mentioned earlier in the Fraps section).
Grab (import) your tasty 4GB chunks and slap them on to the timeline. Premiere's smart enough to put them in alphabetical order, and Fraps timestamps video.
I pop my entire audio track in to Adobe Audition and sample the background noise, then remove it. It just gets rid of that annoying microphone hiss that you get with cheaper microphones, and also any disc drive whirring, or fan hums. Audition's pretty good at this, but I can't vouch for other editors. I'm sure yours will have something similar though.
Here's what my editing looks like - I gather Lightroom's pretty similar. Click for biggerer/clearer!
Use audio and video transitions between the intro and outro. Speaking of..
5punk Intro: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vscscvmi17fjz ... 0Intro.mp4 (13mb)
5punk outro: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sapdj2wfk1xi7 ... 47s107.png (1.6mb)
I use ReclusiveLemming's chiptune compilation for my intros.
Download through: Dropbox, files indivudually or as a pack
Mr J is using https://www.extrememusic.com/ for free music tracks, but there are tons more of artists out there trying to get their royalty-free audio out there to an audience. Be kind, provide a credit to them in your YouTube video description, and a link if possible.
Exporting
Goddamn check your whole video first. You wouldn't want to have to do this twice. (Like Tandino and I had to.)
I export all my junk through Adobe Media Encoder (it's what Premiere uses to export stuff). Here are the settings I use.
Click for biggerer/clearer!
Exporting will take a while, and will push your computer (probably), so best do it while you have an hour or two to spare.
Uploading
If you reckon exporting takes a while, unless you have a nice broadband upload speed (most residential connections don't, sadly) you're gonna be uploading to YouTube for even longer. Once you've previewed your masterpiece upload it to the 5punk YouTube channel (username and password in the Waugh Room in the "YouTube details" thread. I've stickied it for convenience. If you're not allowed in the Waugh Room, ask an old-timer to hold your hand.)
Put a brief explaination of what you're playing in the video description, and credit people like so:
Played by: {5punk username}
Music: {Track - Artist - Link}
When you're done you could set the video to "Unlisted" and show it around a few 5punkers for a second opinion. If you're happy swap it to "Public" and go advertise! 5punky Twitterers will be happy to put it on there, and people that can modify the 5punk.co.uk front page will help you upload it there too. Facebook seems to be a pretty good platform for sharing if you have nerdy friends.
Legalities
Pick royalty free music, unless you want to go commission somebody to make us a sweet as heck song.
One thing to consider is the legal grey area around Lets Play videos - some game publishers don't like their games on YouTube at all. Here are a couple of things you can do to avoid the video being town down under a copyright claim
- Play older games, publishers tend to care more if you're recording a game that's just been released. It might cut in to their profits.
- Always, always, always record some sort of commentary. The big fair-use claim is that if you're providing some sort of educational commentary for the majority of the video then it's A-OK. This could be "Here's how to play the game and not die" or "Here's how to complete X level", or "Here are the guns in the game". The number one thing that's probably going to get your video kicked off is if you upload something that's essentially "Here's me playing the game silently, so you can watch it and not buy it". Pretty much all Lets Play forums recommend this course of action.
I think that's pretty much all of my knowledge on Lets Plays, so do feel free to contribute below, and I'll update the post above with more information. Happy playing!
Absolutely this.
