Monday, July 27, 2009

Podcast Terror

So here's my beef. Jake and I spent quite a bit of money in the prospects of beginning a podcast. We got a capture-card to get gameplay for reviews, purchased a Flip HD, recorded a buuunch of stuff and keep. hitting. rock. walls. It's pretty outrageous.

Our first podcast was with Jason Bosch, and all in all it was pretty good. Avid wouldn't edit the file, so we worked tirelessly with Windows Movie Maker to scrounge up a semi-adequate episode. That took about 5 days. SCORE! We're finished! Ohh no, no, no.

1. Vimeo won't let you upload videos with gameplay (We played L4D)
2. Youtube only allows up to 10min videos (ours was 20 min)
3. Megavideo is just a bitch and won't show our video (it's been 2 weeks and it's still not up)

It is then that we bought a Flip HD because we figured that as long as we didn't include gameplay in the longer episodes, we could post them to vimeo and if we want to post gameplay just do it on youtube. We got a full 2nd episode done aaaand couldn't edit it. Nothing we have will edit HD. What? Are you kidding? The Flip came with a program but it's literally MORE basic than WMM was...you can't even have credits more than 5 lines long. We saved all the video, but still have no way of posting it yet.

THEN there was Warped Tour. An overall effed-up series of events that somehow transferred into a practically flawless (compared to the previous episodes) podcast. By flawless I merely mean that there was not a lot that needed to be cut out or altered; we merely had to put all the pieces together. Which was great, because that's literally ALL the Flip program does. So I spent the evening editing, saving, and being genuinely excited. And it's 2.13gb. Not just 2...2.13. So now, we are on a search for a compression program to make it so our (so far) ONLY successfull episode can be uploaded.

Some might say "take the hint..it's not meant to be" but that's what they said about flying and electricity. And now we've got light bulbs IN airplanes...so suck it. Just kidding, that was uncalled for, but if anyone is willing to help out and knows of a good video compression program for PC (Vista). At this juncture it's more important than finding a new editing program, but suggestions for those would also be appreciated.

4 comments:

  1. Have you tried using Viddler for the longer gameplay video?

    For the video compression, what if you just import your raw video, add it to the timeline, and then save it out in a low enough kbps? I dunno, that's just the first thing that comes to mind.

    Good luck!!

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  2. You may want to give Adobe Premiere Elements a try? Here's a link with system requirements and you can download a demo: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/systemreqs/

    Also: Is there a way for the Flip HD to NOT do High Def? You'll save your-self lots of processing and storage space, and some grief.

    Do not give up. This is solvable. :)

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  3. Try and get your hands on ProShow Producer video editing suite.

    I use it at work for making tutorial videos, etc. Pretty good and way, way better than windows movie maker. Pretty sure it can handle HD (although don't quote me on that) and it'll compress video footage for upload to YouTube, etc.

    http://www.photodex.com/products/producer

    I’m sure there are some bad sites out there where you could get your hands on it for nada.

    Good luck!

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  4. Thanks for all the help guys. The problem with saving it in lower kbps is that it doesn't give any options. The Flip program literally just saves it.

    The camera also will not shoot in anything BUT HD. I thought that was a good thing, but apparently it's just becoming a pain.

    I'll look up ProShow and Adobe Premier (though I believe we already tried Premier and failed :( ) and see how that goes.

    Thanks again!!

    ReplyDelete