So I have been thinking that a nice companion to my book would be a series of relatively short tutorials on intermediate/advanced Dwarf Fortress topics and now I’m fishing around for advice.
(erm, I should probably check of someone has done this already!)
I was thinking of doing ten or twenty minutes on topics like setting up minecart routes, dwarven reactors, setting up a danger room, setting up “live fire” training, etc.
I figure the two options for broadcasting are some live streaming service or YouTube. I am not sure which I should prefer. I am stuck on ADSL1 - which I think precludes decent streaming, leaving me with YouTube.
Thing is, I am unsure of the pipeline I would need to use to get good quality vids to YT without uploading multi-gig fraps (or is there a better capture system?) files. I mean, I would want the vids to be HD enough to see DF running clearly (with tile set), but i don’t want to kill the link for days.
So, anyone got any thoughts on a probable best route for me?
Xsplit can perform on-the-fly encoding. If your PC is beefy enough, you could run it in local recording mode (medium-to-high quality) and streaming mode (low-to-medium quality) simultaneously, actually.
Streaming to somewhere like Twitch.tv automatically creates VODs for you you can choose to save (they expire automatically after a few days unless you tell the site to keep them permanently), so that’s nice, but if your bw is really bad, then you might not be able to stream something high-def enough to be legiible. The local recording is encoded right there, so file sizes aren’t astronomical, and you have a lot of control over quality and the like.
Anything about the basic features requires a paid license, but you can at least monkey around with it for free to see if you like it.
Just as a warning, though, their site is running hella slow today.
Just to add, I have run into an issue when uploading any file made with xsplit to youtube. There is usually (but not always) about the first 15 seconds that looks like a gray screen before the picture kicks in, after that it’s OK. You can chop that bit off in the youtube editor but it adds another step to the process.
Yeah, it seems to lag on encoding video (sound is typically fine) for a short period of time–how long depends on your processor I suspect. I generally just treat the first 15 seconds as a buffer.
Calistas, I’ve been looking for a good solution to this problem as well for the last few days.
While xsplit will do the down conversion capture I’m looking for, 1080 to 720 to keep the raw files smaller, my computer doesn’t have the horse power to run games smooth while the downgrade desktop capture is occurring. Plus there’s that whole xsplit licensing pricing I’m not a fan of.
Has anyone had any experience using the Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 as a Screen capture tool?
Anyway for right now, it looks like I’m going to capture in Fraps at 1080. Then use Windows MM to shrink the file size, then upload the smaller file to youtube. If you care to look, here are my test results of the 1080 uploads. You’ll have to change the quality manually to 1080. I don’t know how to link the HD youtube links.
I took the 700 Meg Fraps file and saved it as “For high-definition display” 1080 in Windows Movie Maker and the file size was compressed to 88Meg wmv
After a short upload to youtube - Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knQkgdz7Oqw&feature=plcp
Eventually I’m going to have to get a dedicated capture pc machine and use a HDMI capture device like the Elgato device, though I’m unsure if my Pioneer receiver will play nice with a non HDCP device.
Wow, perfect advice - thanks a lot. It looks like your second file was quite effective and a hell of a lot smaller. I think that type of arrangement would work perfectly for DF. I’ll have to go try it out now.
