Possible Content: Let's Play...s

[kamakaziplumber]

Hey everyone.

So, in the past year my girlfriend and I have played through quite a few games together. Paper Mario, Paper Mario 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc. We have a lot of fun doing this.

Two of the games we've beaten have been Majora's Mask and A Link to the Past (I still couldn't beat Ganon's Tower :/ She had to do it). Next on our list, among other games, is The Wind Waker.

I'd like to know if any of you would be interested in us recording ourselves playing through the game. I'd have to know in the next few weeks, because we'll probably start playing it as soon as the semester starts. This is something she and I would do at least once a week (barring midterm and finals weeks, probably), so it would make for pretty consistent content. We have a lot of fun playing, and we think it would transfer well to film. I already suggested it to her, and she got really excited, and I know these kinds of videos are popular on YouTube.


... the thing is, I really don't have the equipment to do this kind of thing at my dorm. The best I could do right now is set up a Flip to record us over-the-shoulder as we play the game, but I'd REALLY prefer to have a legitimate recording setup where we pipe the Wii through my PC to record its video and audio and then mic ourselves. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done, especially considering we'd be playing the game as we're recording it.

tl;dr Would you all watch a Let's Play of The Wind Waker? Is that interesting at all? Worth me maybe having to buy some equipment and figure out how to streamline it? Would you still watch it if it was recorded over-the-shoulder, lamely?

[MagmarFire]

The Wind Waker? The only thing I see that would make me feel against it is because there have been a lot of Let's Plays about it already (turns out I'm in the middle of NintendoCapriSun's LP of it at this time). In general, I'm not against it, though. It would be the perfect opportunity to add more content to our new YouTue channel, after all!

Having special equipment would be best, I think--and in the grand scheme of things, let me warn you that I recommend against using Dazzle. It's good, but it only really works well with the software that it's packaged with, and the software itself is pretty sucky, allowing only one kind of output format that turns out to be really freaking huge and not being open source. I'm not sure how well it works with Vegas, though. Typically, its sound channel refuses to work when different software is used.

[kamakaziplumber]

I wasn't planning to use a Dazzle, I found something cheaper with decent reviews on Newegg. Not sure how great it would be with latency, though, and that's the kicker; the best solutions for the latency problem are pretty expensive.

I'm sure there are a lot of Let's Plays about everything. It just so happens that the Wind Waker is the next Zelda game we wanted to play, so, that's happening regardless. Whether or not we record us playing it is what's up to you guys.

I forgot to mention, it would be great if, upon deciding to do this, one of you guys offered to watch the videos and transpose them into a walkthrough for TDC. Not the smallest request, I know, and to be honest I'm not too attached to the idea. I always felt like it was a waste of time to write walkthroughs for games that have more than enough available on GameFAQs.

[DW]

Do it. Latency isn't too big of an issue, if all else fails you can just seperate the audio from the video and move it forward in one quick edit.

[kamakaziplumber]

Actually, the latency isn't an issue with the recording so much as it makes the game unplayable unless I pipe video to both the TV and the recording device. It's possible to just use the recording device and then play through the preview in the software, but then things are seriously delayed. I know this from experience.

Then there are A/V splitters that run $60 and up to solve that issue. I have other solutions to explore, though.

[kamakaziplumber]

Heh hey look at this double post, heh.

Anyways, today I tested splitting the composite line with just a Y-cable and it seemed to work. This means ACTUALLY GOOD LET'S PLAYS. When I say "actually good" I mean the signal may suffer some degradation, but it should be ok. So... yeah. We'll start that when the semester officially starts. Yay!

[MagmarFire]

Awesome! Do you plan on uploading them to our official YouTube channel?

[kamakaziplumber]

Yeah, most likely.

[MagmarFire]

Awesome! Just let me know as soon as you're ready, and I'll give you the account info.

[Pale Dim]

Yay! I support of the idea!

[kamakaziplumber]

Uh... so we finished our first session of playing Wind Waker, but the video turned out to be about an hour long... and I forgot to insert breaks where a usual YouTube video would end. Is TDC's YouTube account cleared for uploading videos that are longer than 15 min? If not, I guess I have some major editing to do It's a shame that the audio we recorded simultaneously will have suffer.

[Keaton]

You should edit it for length in any case, I recommend Sony Vegas for editing software.  Most people just don't have the time to sit down and watch an hour long LP.

[kamakaziplumber]

Haha expensive editing software.

No, but actually the file is a wmv.  Believe it or not, even though the capture thing I'm using can record just as easily to avi or mpeg, for some reason wmv was the only file type that produced a video without noticeable lag. I'm also against converting files when I can avoid it; I actually did convert this first file to avi, but it took a pretty long time (as expected) and doesn't seem very worth it on the whole.

I'll just settle for Windows Movie Maker (ugh) because all I have to do is lay an audio track over the video and, in this case, edit it down to 15 min chunks. All I really need to do that is a timeline, I don't need anything fancier.

[Keaton]

If you have too much trouble with *shudder* WMM, send the original file to me and I'll splice it up with my copy of Vegas.

[kamakaziplumber]

HEY remember that Let's Play? Well it's up on YouTube now.

I hesitated forever because I didn't want to cut the video up into 15 minute chunks since I didn't have any kind of transitions between those chunks in the video itself. It turns out, though, that YouTube now allows uploads of unlimited length as long as you link your account to a phone number, so the full hour-long episode is up on my YouTube account now.

I realize an hour might be a lot, but if you can find the time to watch this first one, I promise we'll organize future videos into 15 minute chunks natively. As it stands, we haven't been able to play Wind Waker again since this video was recorded... although most of that was because I felt guilty continuing to play the game when the first Let's Play hadn't gone up yet.

tl;dr GO WATCH NOW.