I have recently started producing gameplay videos with my commentary added to them. This activity is commonly known as creating a Let's Play (LP) video. People record their gameplay and themselves commenting on this playthrough of any given game.
Before I started making videos I thought it would be an easy thing to do and I wanted to give it a try myself. It took me two weeks to realize that making good Let's Play videos (with an emphasis on good) is really a profession on it's own.
I started by purchasing Fraps which took care of the video aspect of the production. It records your gameplay and has the option to record the ingame audio and your microphone input as well. The only downside to the latter is that it records the ingame audio and your commentary to one track. This means you are not able to change their levels individually. That is why I downloaded a free program called Audacity, which comes highly recommended by other people and now also by me. You record your commentary in Audacity and can alter it in any possible way afterwards using that same program. You finally export it as a .wav file which you can then import into your editing program.
I choose to work with Sony Vegas Pro for my videos. I have worked with Adobe Premiere before, but Sony Vegas Pro came so highly recommended (like Audacity) that I was swayed in that direction. I have not regretted it for a single moment. It is user friendly, does everything you need it to do and there are loads of (video)tutorials out there if you need it. I have used a couple of those tutorials myself and they are of great help. The only downside to either Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Pro are their hefty pricetags. Although I prefer to work with legitimate sources for my work I can certainly understand fellow LPers who prefer different ways of attaining these particular programs. "Although I can not officially condone it, Your Honor".
The above outlines the recording part of the entire process, but before you get to recording you have to consider your hardware. You need a microphone to record your voice, a computer that can handle the game and record at the same time while still keeping the footage nice and smooth and is also suited for editing (harddrive space and rendering power). - I choose to use one computer for all of this. This does not mean it's a requirement. You could have one desktop to record and another to edit. - The microphone component of this process kept me busy and guessing for the better part of two weeks. I started out with the microphone on a cheap headset just to get acquinted with the recording and more important commenting and playing at the same time. You don't realize it until you actually do it; playing and still providing your audience with intelligible commentary takes effort and practise to get good at. Enfin, I had already made up my mind that, if I liked doing Let's Plays, I would purchase a serious microphone. And so I did by purchasing the Blue Microphones Snowball.
I practised and recorded a lot with the Snowball, but in the end there was too much background noise for my purposes and I could not get the sound quality anywhere near the bar I had set for myself. There was still too much echo and bass in the audio which made it sound like I was in my room talking into a microphone instead of being present in the game I was commenting on (which is the effect I was aiming for). That's why I started using the Samson C01U microphone; it picks up less background noise than the Snowball. However, my problems with the echo and bass did not seem to be solved since I still sounded too far away, which meant back to the drawing board.
By then I started looking at other LP videos to compare them and see what I was missing. You will quickly see the huge quality differences between them and that was when it hit me: you do not just record yourself talking and playing a video game. There is actually an entire production behind it.
Having to edit the gameplay and then pasting the commentary under it is only the obvious part of the labor involved. Making it sound good and enjoyable to watch for your viewers is an entirely different matter. I have spent hours and hours experimenting with different microphones and their settings, effects in Audacity and watching tutorials on audio engineering and in the end the sound quality still only came up to what you can hear in my latest video Far Cry 3 - Snake Bite. If you compare it to the first video I ever uploaded The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Part 1 you can hear the immense difference in clarity, but it's still nowhere near the sparkling audio you hear while watching for example Markiplier or ReformistTM. Although a big part of that are their incredible voices which unfortunately cannot be emulated.
- Compare the video of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Part 1, my first ever uploaded video, to my latest video Far Cry 3 - Snake Bite down below and pay attention to the audio quality.
After the sudden realization that I had quite some work ahead of me something positive happened: I reached out to a fellow LPer (YouTube user) via private message and within a couple of hours I received a response. Not only that, the response was a detailed message with tips and tricks. I was flabbergasted by this helpful feedback as you only have to glimpse any comment section on YouTube and you will understand why my expectations were low. But OdinVodans was the LPer who restored my faith in humanity, so do make sure to check him out. He deserves it.
As for the tips and instructions OdinVodans gave me; I have yet to try them out and that strikes at the heart of this article. You are never done learning and improving when it comes to creating LP videos. I strive to raise the bar for myself when it comes to my content and this will be a process that is going to take me years to get good at. But I'm hoping that the interaction with my fellow LPers will be as positive as the first one and make the learning process go that much faster.
In closing I would like to mention a Facebook page that I will be keeping my eye on under the name The Lets Play Community. LPers go there and promote themselves and each other and give out advice. I'm hoping it will grow out into a healthy community where every member can benefit. So do make sure to check it out. For now, I want to thank you all for reading and I will see you... next time. Take care.
U.A.
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