"So I Want To Run An LP" or "So What's A Good (Free) Recording Program?"

[Seil]

So I was thinking that I could do an LP on Silent Hill 3 what with the Youtubes and such, but I would first need a little preperation. Like buying the PC game and getting a good video recording program and a half-decent mic.

I could call it... what was that name?


Screw 2 Best Friends Play, Screw game grumps, screw AVGN!

Nuklear Power Steam Stream Team!

The one Gaming show on the web where the more they play less likely it is for someone to be able to say the name of the show. Or their own name.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[mauve]

Nuklear Power Steam Stream Dream Team. Fixed.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Good free recording programs are rare. There are various possibilities, though.

1. CamStudio: It's free, but never really worked for me, others swear on it.
2. An old version of Debut Video. (Because the old version is free, I guess, but I'm not really using that either)
3. OBS. Yeah, OBS is a streaming software. But like most streaming softwares it offers the option to record whatever you're streaming. In this case even without streaming. Just be sure to ramp up the bitrate and set it to CBR. The quality won't be superb, but it's fairly lightweight, which is the reason I'm using it sometimes. Despite it not being able to record lossless.
4. There's Hypercam 2, I guess. But be sure to get an unregistered version for the shiggles.

If you're gonna record lossless though you'll wanna google Lagarith. It's a codec, not a recording program. But a good codec.

[synkr0nized]

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) (http://obsproject.com/)

Fraps (registered to get rid of watermarks/time limits)

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Oh yeah, as far as mics go I highly recommend a Blue Snowball. If you can afford it definitely give it a try. Good quality for the bucks you pay.

Also, you might wanna familiarize yourself with the basic possibilities Audacity offers. Mostly noise removal, equalizers, the compressor and normalization.
At least those are what I use on my LP Commentary.

[akaSM]

Nuklear Power Steam Stream Drunk Dream Team. Fixed.

Fixeder.

[synkr0nized]

Test yourself a few times, too. Play some game, record it, do your commentary, edit your video and audio, merge them into something, add any on-screen text or displays, add any music, etc. Give it a listen. See how it flows. Consider different approaches.

After getting more comfortable with the editing for audio levels or choosing a good codec or familiarity with video editing, then you probably have a better idea of the time requirement and how it will play out for you.



Alternatively, if you just want to do a YouTube LP, record that sumbitch and slap it online.

[Magus]

Camstudio, the first one A Zarkin' Frood mentions, is the most common one for PC games/emulators. From what I have experienced with it is it's a very bare bones basic one, though. But probably reliable.

Your commentary I guess you would record with Audacity, it's a free one and pretty decent, though your mileage may vary depending on your settings and the microphone you're using.

[greed]

Check out the big LP hotspots like SomethingAwful's LP sub forum too, most of them will have big stickied topics full of advice.

[Seil]

I've just ordered the PC copy of SH3 off of Amazon. So here's the thing, all totes serious now and junk:

1) Do the mods/Brian have any problems with me doing an LP called NPF Rainbow Sparkle Adventure and directly linking to the forums?

2) Silent Hill is one of the big four game series I know about, in terms of development and games (both in game history and gameplay) but I don't know how to be funny, and/or I don't have a wacky side-kick. Suggestions?

3) Does anyone mind if I get hammered and stammer my way through a Silent Hill 3 play through?

[Aerozord]

keep in mind one rule of video capturing. Typically the less resource intensive programs (like frapps) also have poor compression. So you will need either a good processor or alot of harddrive space.

[Bells]

i find it easier to spend more time treating the video after recording than having a machine that can do it all in a single pass... so, more HDD space is best and just use something else to work the video and compress to the proper ratio of quality and sizes...

[A Zarkin' Frood]

MeGUI is what the cool kids use for encoding. Personally I don't but I'm not cool. You also need aviSynth to get MeGUI running, but it's free, so what does it matter. Generally, record lossless, use Lagarith for that. The thing that compresses isn't the program, it's the codec. So be free to use whatever program supports good codecs.

[Sifright]

Fraps is a totally rad recording tool and it's free as well! (for a given value of free)

[Arhra]

So I was thinking that I could do an LP on Silent Hill 3 what with the Youtubes and such, but I would first need a little preperation. Like buying the PC game and getting a good video recording program and a half-decent mic.

I could call it... what was that name?



Anyone have any suggestions?

Shift + Prnt Scrn!

It worked for me!

[Japan]

Fraps does a body good.

I believe you can even film stuff with it?

I suggest you pull out all the stops, buy some expensive software and stream it live to a pre-written script you narrate in an episodic format however.