Quality videos - no viewers...yet? (EDIT: growing thanks to this forum!)

Does my FTB series look interesting / funny enough to want to watch more?


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Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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ep. #8 is now up:


The next is recorded, but won't be edited before next weekend now I expect, unless I really rattle through it tomorrow evening. Still no word from Apple with an ETA to address the crashing I'm having with Final Cut - there seems to be an incompatibility with FCPX and the iMac i7 if you've upgraded to the GTX680 graphics card, which is a pain! When it's not crashing, it flies, but I'm wasting so much time rebooting and having to create new titles which crash less etc that it's really slowed down how quickly I can turn around videos. On the plus side, BT will hopefully have my broadband upload speed increased to approx 13Mbs soon, and I've had an invite to join a FTB server which promises to be lots of fun as I've never played even vanilla Minecraft online with others before....and I'm very flattered by the number of people who are now watching my videos - I hope they keep you all entertained in the future too.
 
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Tyler Moore

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Jul 29, 2019
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ep. #8 is now up:

The next is recorded, but won't be edited before next weekend now I expect, unless I really rattle through it tomorrow evening. Still no word from Apple with an ETA to address the crashing I'm having with Final Cut - there seems to be an incompatibility with FCPX and the iMac i7 if you've upgraded to the GTX680 graphics card, which is a pain! When it's not crashing, it flies, but I'm wasting so much time rebooting and having to create new titles which crash less etc that it's really slowed down how quickly I can turn around videos. On the plus side, BT will hopefully have my broadband upload speed increased to approx 13Mbs soon, and I've had an invite to join a FTB server which promises to be lots of fun as I've never played even vanilla Minecraft online with others before....and I'm very flattered by the number of people who are now watching my videos - I hope they keep you all entertained in the future too.

Dude you'll be one with Spitty-Craft ill make sure to add your channel and everything to all my descriptions. Cya soon =D
 

Freakscar

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Jul 29, 2019
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As I just finished watching it: Sputuk obviously decided to "rattle through" things today - as Episode. #9 is up already.
(drop me a board-pm if you want to have this hotlink removed and post it here yourself)

[..] and I've had an invite to join a FTB server which promises to be lots of fun as I've never played even vanilla Minecraft online with others before....and I'm very flattered by the number of people who are now watching my videos - I hope they keep you all entertained in the future too.
Aww.. and here I was thinking about asking you to come join you someday. :D Oh, (you probably already have read up on that one yourself, but here's it anyway) the stone-gear-iron wrench (from buildcraft) works for your (railcraft-)steam engine - as long as there's a pipe the machine can connect to already in place. I half expected you ("..after the aborded effort to get diamonds in the last episode...") to go diamond'ing this episode - but machinery and pipes are just as much fun as hunting for gems.

Are you planning to go down more to the BuildCraft-MJ energy route, or the IndustrialCraft-EU way? And I went strolling a bit in your videos - that framevator in one of your tekkit videos was quite an impressive construction. *shameless praising*
 
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Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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...that framevator in one of your tekkit videos was quite an impressive construction. *shameless praising*

Thanks - I was very pleased with how optimised a design I managed to get it down to eventually while still having it work flawlessly.

I've not had much time to record/edit with other things in life, but will hope to get something recorded/editing in both the single play let's play FTB and the Spitty Craft server series, but also really excited to have Karucifer join me for a co-op series now too. So many different worlds, so little time to play them and edit the videos though now!
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Just to explain, as well as the initial FTB series, and playing on the Spitty Craft server, I got invited by Karucifer to start a 2 player series on the DireWolf20 FTB mod pack where we'll be aiming to record both PoV and play co-op. The first episode of that was recorded this weekend and is now edited and up here:

 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Next episodes should be the Spitty craft series - enough recorded for 2 episodes. If only Apple sorted the problems with Final Cut Pro X I have then I could get them edited quickly. As it is, it might be mid week for for the next upload.
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yikes - recorded enough footage on the Howling server for that series to make at least 3 episodes! Only part edited the Spitty Craft episode from the weekend yet! I've ended up behind due to working on a last minute report needed for work until 3am one night this week so sorry things aren't ready to publish as I'd planned. If FCPX let's me work without crashing too often, I hope to get the Spitty Craft episode out tomorrow night now.
 

nethervvoid

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Jul 29, 2019
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I can back up the statement after 1.5 years of youtube that it is definitely a long term investment. For rendering I bought a copy of PowerDirector10 for $99. Cheap and easy to use. Hardly ever has given me any issues.

Also for mic I use a logitech H390 headset. For some reason the mic on this thing is grade A even though the headset is only $40. I also have blu snowball and yeti mics, and I like the sound of the headset better. No room echo.
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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I can back up the statement after 1.5 years of youtube that it is definitely a long term investment. For rendering I bought a copy of PowerDirector10 for $99. Cheap and easy to use. Hardly ever has given me any issues.

Also for mic I use a logitech H390 headset. For some reason the mic on this thing is grade A even though the headset is only $40. I also have blu snowball and yeti mics, and I like the sound of the headset better. No room echo.

Thanks for the comments. For info, with the latest recording using the Yeti (combined with a make shift stand using bungie cords to secure it) I seem to have cracked the audio issue...I need to confirm once the footage is edited, but it certainly sounds MUCH better initially. The background low frequency "thuds" from the keyboard have gone, no hiss, sounds a full rich sound I think.

And once the specific issue with FCPX and the gfx card on my mac is solved, its a joy to work with for the editing, well worth me sticking with. It's just a temporary frustration (I hope!)[DOUBLEPOST=1360933601][/DOUBLEPOST]A new Spitty Craft server episode went up this morning. Didn't quite get it finished to be up last night, but only just behind schedule :)

 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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The next Howling Online episode is rendering now. I also have the footage for another 2 episodes recorded for that series which I hope to edit and get up over the weekend - but I have to work on Saturday (talking to lots of potential new students all day) so I may run out of time, particularly as I have decided to set aside Sundays for creating new content for the Spitty Craft series. I'm going to try to establish a bit of a routine - Wed to create new content for the Howling Series, aiming to publish those on Thu or Fridays, and Sunday for new Spitty Craft content, aiming to publish on Mon or Tue. The single player FTB Bestie series will be added to as and when in between and I'm going to wrap up the Tekkit series as that has reached a dead end sadly.

And quickly - thanks to everyone who has started watching now. It's great to feel that people are watching and enjoying the videos. The number of likes and positive feedback is really appreciated - although I play and make the videos for fun, it's even more fun sharing it with others :)
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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So, two more Howling Online episodes are now up with the next one in progress too.


and just finished uploading now:


(I think the last quote in this episode sums up Feed the Beast "It's red, it's shiny, I want it" :D )

Let me know what you think. This last one has taken so long editing that I didn't get to actually play any new content on the Spitty Craft server this weekend, although I have been planning things to do with turtles quite a bit while offline - reminding myself of the circle drawing algorithm I learned in the computer graphics module I took at Uni back in the late 80s! The idea being that I want to create a generic "Build me a castle" program eventually. I hope to get some playing done on that server tomorrow evening as watching Dendrophillia's footage with Mr Spits brought home how quickly things are developing there, and especially Denrophillia's building on his spot at spawn is inspirational. I need to up my game on there!

Let me know which series you prefer either here or in the comments on the videos too. I'm enjoying all 3 Feed the Beast worlds but as they lead to very different style videos, I'd be fascinated to know if other people prefer one style over the others. Also - any feedback on if the sound quality etc has improved now would be great. I've invested in a new quality mike and I have now cracked how to prevent too much keyboard clatter I think, and a lot more effort into getting the sound levels consistent etc, so let me know if you can tell the difference :)
 
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Freakscar

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Jul 29, 2019
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So, two more Howling Online episodes are now up with the next one in progress too.
[...]
Let me know what you think. This last one has taken so long editing that I didn't get to actually play any new content on the Spitty Craft server this weekend, although I have been planning things to do with turtles quite a bit while offline - reminding myself of the circle drawing algorithm I learned in the computer graphics module I took at Uni back in the late 80s! The idea being that I want to create a generic "Build me a castle" program eventually. I hope to get some playing done on that server tomorrow evening as watching Dendrophillia's footage with Mr Spits brought home how quickly things are developing there, and especially Denrophillia's building on his spot at spawn is inspirational. I need to up my game on there!
Okay, here goes. First off, the new mike makes a remarkable difference. But the ingame sounds are a tad on the quiet side (for my taste - I prefer to actually hear the pickaxe and not just a tiny "plock" whenever something is mined^^) which in turn is difficult so solve, as the MC sounds are either "everything MAKES AWESOME NOISES!" or "shhsh... everything has to be ..shhshh .. absolutely silent...". So skip that, as it's not noticable. Second, both your voices are in excellent quality, that's a +1 for you two. Next, the editing itself. It was, as it has been since ep01, top notch in technical terms. Image Quality, readability, everything was on the expected high level. But. (You saw that one coming^^)

I was utterly confused about why you made so awful many cuts in "Just a flesh wound" - that is, until I noticed that it wasn't nearly as many cuts as I had thought, but rather perspective changes between your view and Karucifer. So, in order to makes these switches more feasible, get him a symbol like the one that is displayed in the upper left corner of your screen. (btw, where did you get that avatar drawn? I like the style its done in) That way, viewers will know what's going on a bit better. In the same vein: Don't do it too often (cutting and switching views). I'd go on a limb and claim it the new toy (or an old toy, used the first times in this series) for the video editor. There have been scenes not longer than about ten seconds before the next switch/cut happened - several times in a row. That made it really difficult to follow along; and yes, this stayed true even after I noticed it was two views. So.. use it a bit less frequent. Or record longer scenes. Just about anyone watching your video will definitely understand that there always are times in Minecraft when "stuff" gets a bit slow. Y'know, stripmining. Even short episodes of that are, let's face it, boring. But everybody that actually ever played MC knows, going mining is the only way to get to the good stuff (until you get an IC2 miner or a BC quarry up and running, that is^^) and things can take a while before it gets lively. But I do not see that as a problem: You're doing a LPT with Karucifer, so at least I am perfectly fine with slower parts. In the end, I'm watching the two of you playing Minecraft and am therefore not looking for a Call of Duty headshot collection.
While I'm at it: Karucifer's inventory/gui scenes seem a tad on the VERY bright side. Normal view into the world is alright, but as soon as he opened his inventory, it went all "White? HERE I AM!" on me. This could've been my youtube, though. And finally.. an arrow to the knee? Please. ;)

Let me know which series you prefer either here or in the comments on the videos too. I'm enjoying all 3 Feed the Beast worlds but as they lead to very different style videos, I'd be fascinated to know if other people prefer one style over the others. Also - any feedback on if the sound quality etc has improved now would be great. I've invested in a new quality mike and I have now cracked how to prevent too much keyboard clatter I think, and a lot more effort into getting the sound levels consistent etc, so let me know if you can tell the difference :)
Same here, I do enjoy all three - but the solo one and the duo with Karucifer are both a tad more enjoyable than the Spitty Craft series. I can't really explain why - it's probably some kind of personal preference. The single one is funny because you DO indeed create some hilarious derps yourself and the duo with Karucifer makes puns like "The mine is this way - oh cr*beeb*p a creeper! >boom<" possible (which had me "lol irl"), so if I had to choose a two out of three, I'd say keep those. As said above, the new mike is several tons better in terms of quality, that combined with your again-tweaked sound settings make bg noises a thing of the past.

I'm looking forward to your videos, more so than I had thought in the beginning. Apart of all the scribbling here, I'll get in touch with you via PM someday in the near future. And as always: Keep up the good work.

F.
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Thanks for the feedback - excellently thought out as always.

Yep, I expected comments that I'd made too many PoV cuts - some of them were necessitated by glitches in one stream or the other and it seemed the right view to "tell the story" at key points was always the opposite to the one I was already on. I think I just need to put up with that though to avoid making it too disorientating for the viewer. I think it's worst where Karucifer and I are looking at roughly the same area and the cut isn't as obvious as a result. Like 3d in many movies, it was a bit of a new toy too - spot on with that assessment :)

I created my avatar a few years back using a little online app on a web site I can't remember right now but if there's a real interest, I know I wrote a blog post for work about the possible use of cartoon strips in education that I could dig out and see if the site is still up. I added that to the "Minecraft" grass block in Photoshop using the 3d tools in that when I needed one for the Minecraft video "brand". Apparently Karucifer has an avatar I could use too but I didn't have that while editing this episode and I'm not sure it's in a similar enough style to "fit" so we might each need to create new ones to use going forward. We'll see.

Really glad the new mike has been worth it :) not cheap (£100+) although it really needs a proper shock mount and arm mounted stand rather than being bungie tied to the top of a camera tripod which I bodged together quickly for this recording session (there are a few bits where I got a bit close and the P's managed to pop which I need to sort too).

Karucifers video was recorded with Minecraft set to the darkest setting, and mine at the brightest (I set it to that after a YouTuber tip that it just makes it much more watchable but I forgot to tell him to do the same) so I had to drastically adjust the gamma and colour balance to get most of the footage to look even remotely similar, but it did make the top end bright elements white out. I /could/ have gone through and separately adjusted the settings for those bits, but I'd already spent /way/ to long on this episode. Unfortunately, we played a good long session doing lots of things which are all like that which I'm editing now, so the fix won't come in straight away.

Arrow to the knee - a bit much? Hey, I noticed it, I found it funny and thought "if I don't mention it, someone else might comment on it anyhow so I'll save them the trouble" ;)

I can relate to the Spitty Craft series being "weakest", but I'm hoping that will change if/when I get time to do more on there properly. I'm watching the videos from the other guys on that server and they are all WAY ahead of me...but, being a community server, I think there's potential to get into collaborative builds on a larger scale, and I can learn from what they're doing too - and I'll need to do that to stay ahead of Karucifer and at least seem like I have things I can teach in that series - like in school, as long as the teacher is one page ahead of the pupils in the text book, they can seem like they know what they're talking about :)

If it wasn't for the day job, if love to keep a vanilla MC series going too - have you looked back at any of my early "creative world" (almost) vanilla videos? I'm quite pleased with the designs for buildings etc I'd managed, and I'd love to wrap up some of the ideas I'd had for things to do in the tekkit series, although I'll still be able to do them in FTB, its just I'm 100's of hours game time away from getting enough things together, especially with EE nerfed in comparison (which did make Tekkit almost a creative world).

Anyhow, thanks again for the excellent feedback. As always, it will be taken on board and hope you keep enjoying watching :)
 

Freakscar

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Jul 29, 2019
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Karucifers video was recorded with Minecraft set to the darkest setting, and mine at the brightest (I set it to that after a YouTuber tip that it just makes it much more watchable but I forgot to tell him to do the same) so I had to drastically adjust the gamma and colour balance to get most of the footage to look even remotely similar, but it did make the top end bright elements white out.
Aye that is a (more or less well known "problem") with all uploads to youtube: Their internal compression codec abolutey hates brightness. I watched an 'Amnesia: Dark Descent" playthrough lately - at times, the screen was literally pitch black. Unintended of course. I wonder if there's an artificial recording way to record in a brighter fashion than the monitor display is set to - I could not play with an allbright screen. ;)
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Aye that is a (more or less well known "problem") with all uploads to youtube: Their internal compression codec abolutey hates brightness. I watched an 'Amnesia: Dark Descent" playthrough lately - at times, the screen was literally pitch black. Unintended of course. I wonder if there's an artificial recording way to record in a brighter fashion than the monitor display is set to - I could not play with an allbright screen. ;)

With MineCraft, you can set the game to full brightness and then turn the monitor brightness down to an acceptable level - that way the recorded video is watchable and the game is not overly bright while playing.

I should also mention, the next ep. from the Howling series went up recently too:


A bit different style this time - very few PoV cuts but a lot of picture in picture showing both of us. I've kept Karucifer's PoV smaller much of the time due to the loss in quality from having to adjust the brightness, and because I'd read the comment above about the GUI being over bright, the one time it's shown full screen I did take the time to cut to an "unbrightend" shot to avoid the dazzle.

We've already recorded the footage for I think, 2 more episodes worth which I'll hope to get up soon too - this time, NOT underground, so things are a bit different.
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Another Howling online episode is now up. This time I've implemented what I hope is a clearer indication of who's PoV is displayed. NB this will be the last episode which will suffer from the difference in settings between mine and Karucifer's video streams. After this, the next episode will be be a while as we haven't recorded any more footage yet :)


I'll be fascinated to know if anyone takes the time to read all the corrections at the end of the video and if they get all the references :)
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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I've added a couple of Spitty Craft server episodes...


and

[DOUBLEPOST=1362222435][/DOUBLEPOST]
...I'll be fascinated to know if anyone takes the time to read all the corrections at the end of the video and if they get all the references :)

Since one viewer misunderstood, I'll point out that the "fact checkers" and the corrections is intended to poke fun at the number of mistakes I'm making in explaining FTB to Karucifer and is a reference to another comedy show which is a mock news programme which then has to have lots of facts corrected. I certainly appreciate any comments pointing out other things I've gotten wrong too :)
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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With work being hectic and running out of disk space on my dedicated 4TB raid for YouTube projects, this new episode of the Howling Online series has taken almost a week to get edited and uploaded. I hadn't realised the obvious point that with 2 people's points of view, you have twice the size for each project from having 2x the video files and audio streams, so I've been burning through disk space since starting this series without realising. Anyhow, besides having to get more ruthless about throwing away the raw screen capture files (which are after 80-100GB each) and the project files and intermediate files, I should be fine now I've cleared some space again.

This episode was cut a little shorter than we'd first planned because we were sorting new software for Karucifer's screen recording and had had to spend about 90mins setting up, checking everything was working etc - although we then went on playing for a while after I'd ended the episode, so we've already progressed a fair bit further now.


I have my own ideas for which mods and items I thought I'd introduce Karucifer to next in FTB but do any of you have suggestions? I'm thinking Thaumcraft and Mystcraft are next up now we have the basic resource gathering sorted using turtles, but what would you like to see next?

I'd also welcome any suggestions for designs for my spawn base on the SpittyCraft server. So far, I've "cobbled" together some towers and I have a vague plan to turn it into a castle of some sort, but do you have any cool castle designs I could use for inspiration? Remember, I'm aiming to use turtles to do as much of the "boring" repetitive block placing, so anything too convoluted might be a real challenge, but I wouldn't rule anything out. :)
 

Sputuk

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Jul 29, 2019
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Wow, it's been a while since the last new video but at last, I have new things to share. This is another Howling Online episode - at the moment, the Spitty Craft series is having to take a break as I can't get into the server due to it being updated to a version of the Mindcrack pack which doesn't seem to play nicely on the Mac - at least, not for me. I've had a lot of time to be on the Howling server but I've not been recording until Karucifer has been available at the same time...our schedules finally allowed us to record again recently, and here's the first part of that time:


If you enjoy it, please leave a comment and a like :)