Youtubin' & Streamin'

[-root]

Seems there are a few people that would like to know how to do the whole youtube/streaming thing.

Its really very easy. But to do it well it does take both time and money.

I'm not an expert so I can only cover the very basics.

Here are the steps:

• 1. Recording
  2.Post Processing
  3. Rendering
  4. Uploading
  5. Publishing

Recording

First things first, you need to record the stock footage. To do this you can do it many different ways. For most people FRAPS or OBS will do the trick. Record the raw footage.

Something really nice about OBS is it will stream direct to twitch. Obviously streaming its only the one step because everything is done live.

A note on settings, youtube can only handle 1080p@30fps.

Post Processing

Some people post process their videos. A higher quality can be achieved with editing. However many bigger youtubers (Arumba is probably the most famous) don't as it does take time to post process.

In a post processing setup most people record their sound through Audacity. Its very good open source software that improves sound quality dramatically.

Rendering

After you have finished post processing or if you have recorded phat from FRAPS, you'll need to encode the footage into a manageable file that you can upload in a resonable time period. The encoding should match up with your targetted end settings and should be as good as you can make it. youtube will encode again when it hits their servers and it chops up the footage pretty good. The better your encoding the better it will look.

Uploading

Once the encoding has finished, upload the video to youtube or your platform of choice.

Publishing

Uploading can take some time. Generally you want to publish the video at a good time that coincides as best as it can with your target audience. If you're doing lots of videos, it makes sense to space them out evenly so that your viewers have regular content they can view. Some people will binge through 3 hrs of videos once a week. But most people would prefer to watch smaller amounts once a day.

Obviously this isn't an extensive guide. Just a very rough and basic outline. I'm keen to see how other people manage their channels. There are a fair few other people here that are uploading and streaming videos.

[n9103]

Not to be a Don Downer, but it doesn't take money for any of those steps. Money can help though, particularly if you add another step called Marketing.

[FishSandwich]

Not to be a Don Downer, but it doesn't take money for any of those steps.

But to do it well it does take both time and money.

Licenses for fraps and Sony Vegas alone come near to 700 dollars.

[DaveMcW]

Computers that can run games and record in high quality at the same time are also pricey.

[n9103]

Licenses for fraps and Sony Vegas alone come near to 700 dollars.

Not the only options by a good margin.

Computers that can run games and record in high quality at the same time are also pricey.

True, but odds are you've got one that's good enough for 720p if you're playing this game. And that's assuming you insist on an HD upload. (Yes, I know, 1080+ would be better, but the difference between required and preferred is my point.)

[FishSandwich]

Licenses for fraps and Sony Vegas alone come near to 700 dollars.

Not the only options by a good margin.

Never said they were the only options. :p I could do it for free recording it with my phone camera, but that's not exactly doing it well.

[Jace_Macleod]

Licenses for fraps and Sony Vegas alone come near to 700 dollars.

Note that the Fraps part of that only comes to ~40 US dollars. Recording software is fairly cheap. Editing software, on the other hand...

Personally, I find the trickiest part of recording to the audio side of things. Arguably, the biggest advantage of editing suites is less the actual video editing part and just how much they simplify things like balancing and splicing the audio. Audacity can do a lot (and is always a necessary part of the pipeline!), but syncing things up can get really tricky outside of an environment dedicated to such things.

[FishSandwich]

I don't know about that.. :p I spend maybe 10 seconds syncing commentary to the video.

[Xecutor]

NVidia shadow play can record video and mix in audio from your mic. I tried this and it works reasonably good.
It's not necessary to enable shadow play itself (i.e. mode where last 20 minutes of gameplay is captured and can be saved anytime).
You can just manually start recording by pressing configurable hotkey.
The only drawback to this is - there is no way to pause/resume. If you want to pause/resume you'll need to stop recording,
move away current file, record another part(s) and then somehow merge all parts together.

[Phillip_Lynx]

...and then somehow merge all parts together.

An easy way to merge videos gives YT itself. It can do it but I do not know how good it is. I have not tried it out.


And I stick to Part 1 and 4 .
I think my videos are not to bad (quality wise) and recorded on an old rig with OBS in 720p. My graphics card for example is an nvidia GT 220. I do not htink I can use shadowplay with that

[ColonelFailure]

An alternative to Fraps is DXtory. It's nice and non-lossy but is better suited (perhaps) to those who are going to do a little editing post production. It's about the same price as Fraps.

My main tip (since this is a tips thread, right?) you can spend all the money in the world on a recording setup but if you've got nothing to say it won't make your videos any better. The trick here is to critique your recordings (and ask others to do the same) to figure out what is good and what needs improvement. I've got a bunch of flaws in the way I present right now that I want to improve, and that comes with practice. My tip, therefore is to stick with it, review what you're doing and listen to your feedback. Critically, if you're not enjoying what you're doing nobody else will either.

Your recording is only ever going to be as good as your material.

[_aD]

Also: buy a bloody headset.

[xnmo]

Or better yet, a real microphone

If you are really interested in doing this kind of thing you should heavily consider spending a couple hundred bucks on something like a Shure sm57 (I got one for I think about 70$) and an audio interface (You can get one to suit your needs for about 150$) which is necessary to plug it in. It'll sound a lot better than anything you'll get on some gaming headset and stuff like that is useful to have around if you are interested in music, or have friends that could benefit from borrowing it now and again

In this day and age it's a shame how frequently I still see people use the shitty mic that came with their computer that distorts to hell and back anytime they raise their voice.

[n9103]

I agree that a dedicated mic should be a high priority item for streaming and youtubes, but I strongly disagree that they need a production quality mic with a dedicated interface.
Sure it's better than a good but common microphone, but there's no way you can say it gives a performance boost equal to the 4x-8x higher cost.
About the only time I would say it's justified is for those that to a large volume of singing. Even then, almost all music gets post-processed anyway, so the difference between $230 and $50 is still close to non-existent.

[jockeril]

Roo - I know this thread is old but I'm disappointed - I thought you'd give more information & some technical explanations on post processing (what is that ??) and other stuff like how to overcome the 15 min. limit by YT and downsizing your video while not loosing quality (as much)... those are the important things

[NateDangerous]

Licenses for fraps and Sony Vegas alone come near to 700 dollars.

Note that the Fraps part of that only comes to ~40 US dollars. Recording software is fairly cheap. Editing software, on the other hand...

A relatively affordable option for professional level video editing is Adobe Premiere Pro CC. It's available by subscription for only like $20 per month, or you can get the whole suite of Adobe stuff for around $60 per month.

[Bobby Lin]

Thanks for the guide. I like how you put in some pointers about rendering, because a lot of people forget this part/don't do it correctly.

I love live streaming (for marketing and personal purposes) because it's definitely a VR-like thing of the future. I recommend reading this blog post about live streaming to learn even more about it: [link removed --daniel34]