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Recording a game with commentary
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As some of you may be aware, I have to record myself playing a game while providing commentary. I do not know the best way to do this.
I assume something like fraps would work? for the commentary I have an sm 58 I can use if I can find an appropriate adapter, but I don't know what program would be suitable for recording the commentary
I assume something like fraps would work? for the commentary I have an sm 58 I can use if I can find an appropriate adapter, but I don't know what program would be suitable for recording the commentary
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Looking forward to this!
The best option IMO is Audacity - set that recording your mic before firing the game up, and then say something when you press the hotkey to start recording with Fraps to know where to sync up.
EDIT; there probably is some way to get Fraps to record mic and game audio at the same time, but I messed around with it for days before giving up and going this route, so this is at least the less complicated way. ;D
Also be aware that Fraps can be a resource hog (but Audacity doesn't compound it too much :P) so close everything else before you begin. Also the raw recorded footage files are massive. Something like 3GB a minute, IIRC, so accomodate that with external HDDs, or just stop and edit/format the footage regularly.
And I am looking forward to this too. >:3
There's always the option of streaming straight to Youtube, Own3D or similar, but that removes all editing possibilities.
There's XSplit which is currently free while it's in beta - it can stream to Own3D/Youtube etc, but also record locally - I think it records in whatever format Flash prefers, but I haven't tried local recording myself. Downside is that AFAIK it only works with games that can run in windowed mode.
I think in windows sound control you have to set your mic to go through the same sound device as your regular audio?
Some of this depends on what sort of microphone you've got and so on.
For example, on Windows XP you need a 3.5mm jack microphone to be able to record your voice input and game sound separately. If you have a USB microphone, you will have to turn on stereo mix, and then record both gamesound and your voice at once using Fraps.
On Windows 7 (and I believe Vista) it doesn't matter what input your microphone uses, as you should be able to split them quite nicely.
For recording voice audio, I second Dark Raven X's recommendation of Audacity. It's free, I use it without any hassle, and it produces good quality output.
For recording gamesound and visuals, I use Fraps but I know a guy who uses Hypercam. Fraps is fairly straightforward; you don't want to record at higher than 30 fps if possible for file size limitations. As to resolution, it depends on if you want to upload in HD or not. Half-screen size provides 480p content at best unless you've got amazing normal resolution; full-screen quadruples the filesize but you get to upload in 720/1080p which is cool.
Some in-game cutscenes will occasionally show the FRAPS fps counter (dunno about Hitman, happened in my last PoP LP), so while having the counter is useful to let you know you're recording you can hide it with F12. Rebind F9 (for record) and F12 (for moving the counter) to something else if you're playing on Steam.
If you choose to record audio and video separately, this gives you the option of rebalancing them afterwards so that you're not drowned out by sudden increases in noise in gameplay, or equally drowning out gameplay noises when they're quiet. I use Sony Vegas which makes this very easy to do. I haven't used Windows Media Maker, but I know Helloween and Klyka have (though I think they're now both on Sony Vegas too), so you could probably PM them for advice on sound balance etc. if you plan to use that.
As for compression, I use sound quality of 128kbps and a variable bit rate (sometimes abbreviated to vbr; you can use constant bit rate [cbr] but this will sometimes create artifacts if there's rapid camera movement) of 1mbps average with a max of 2.5mbps. This is easy to set in Sony Vegas, but I've no idea how easy it is to manipulate in WMM. File format, I use .mp4, Klyka, Helloween and Kikoskia all use .wmv without issue. YouTube claims it prefers .mp4s if you're planning on uploading there, but none of us have ever noticed any serious issues.
I know Helloween is fine with you hitting him up for more information, I would imagine surrealitycheck is as well since he's a friendly dude and can give a lot of good advice about setting this stuff up.
It depends a lot on what's going on. Most LPs I've enjoyed watching are live commentary, but it does take a fair bit of practice to get a flow going where your commentary isn't disrupting the game and vice versa.
Oh, and yes, make sure you have a lot of free gigabytes for the uncompressed FRAPs footage, it is pretty damn big. If you have a secondary hard drive, it is better to record to the non-boot hard drive as well (ideally to a solid state drive, but I assume you don't have an SSD that isn't the boot drive).
I think for this particular Let's Play, it's going to be the best and funniest strategy.
It's the only way it's going to be even slightly entertaining to watch
The prospect of this scenario is why I donated, in fact.
If you have more than 1 hdd then record the video to the one you're not running the game from.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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For recording, you can either record video and sound separately, or together. FRAPS can do both together nicely, and it can do just video nicely. I have heard good things about Playclaw and moderately good things about DXTory for video. If you don't use FRAPS for the audio, use Audacity.
For editing/compressing/uploading, I use VirtualDub with x264 encoding. This guide looks basically right, as does this one. You'll either need to chop it into 15 minute chunks if you want it to go on YouTube, or find some other place to host it, because YouTube accounts by default don't allow long videos until you've posted some stuff and gotten some hits.
I believe it's related primarily to how much stress you're putting on your system RAM (since FRAPS basically says "how big is your RAM? OK, that's the size of each individual file I'll make") and whether you're recording to your boot disk (ideally, you are not, since you want to be accessing your game and your OS from the boot disk, and recording onto a separate disk).
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/capture-dropped-frames.htm
You need XSplit and a place to send the stream, probably twitch.tv. Plus, twitch records all your broadcasts for you and archives them. You don't even have to do that part.
I would say a live stream is best, to cut out the gear requirements and save yourself some hard drive space. A site like own3d allows you to sign up for free and stream live, and afterwards it will automatically archive your video under your account.
Here's their help site: http://www.own3d.tv/content/19/#help_xsplit
There are video tutorials as well:
A common Let's Play format uses both a large main screen and a picture-in-picture smaller view to capture the reactions of the gamer.
Hitman 2
The greatest game of all time, ever.
Actually, I've never played the game, or any Hitman game actually.
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.