Recording Factorio Advice Needed

[Cyril]

Hey Guys

Not knowing any youtubers personally to ask I'm a little bit lost...

I've been recording Factorio a little while now (about a month) and uploading to youtube, I have really been bitten with the bug for recording, so much so I have been and bought extra stuff to make my videos better, i have bought a new HD webcam, a Blue Snowball Mic and even got Sony Vegas Movie Suite, however it's the last one that's causing me problems, I have no idea what setting to render Factorio in.......

So my questions folks are:

what quality of video would you like to watch and what effects would you want to see?
Do you want it in 1080p 60fps or are you happy with 720p 30fps?
Are you bothered about seeing every tree cut down? would you like it sped up and some delightful (royalty free) comedy music put over the noise of sped up tree cutting? or would you like it cut from the video completely to come back when it's done?
I'm thinking I like the idea of facecam so you can see my puzzled look when I screw up or realise I forgot to do something, but is that something you may want to witness? (I'm not the model type btw)
Would you like to see floaty text over things?

Either way I would really like to hear some things you would like to see and I will do my best to accomplish them.

[FishSandwich]

I don't have much to say about what you've said here, apart from to do what you feel comfortable with. So long as you're comfortable and enjoying the process it will be seen in your videos.

Since you have Sony Vegas, there's a nice plugin I use that automatically picks render settings most compatible with YouTube. You can also choose between 720p/1080p. It's called Videos4Youtube, I strongly suggest you pick it up.

I haven't had a chance to check out any of your vids yet, I bookmarked your playlist to watch when I have time though. It might be a while but if you're happy to get feedback I'll be happy to give it.

[Klonan]

Important info, what are you recording with?

I use OBS for all my recording, and it works wonderful with some tweaking.
For me 720p 30fps is perfectly acceptable, but generally seen as the minimum for modern videos, and of course anything greater is better.
With sony vegas there is a rendering option called 'Internet Video 720p' or something similar, which is perfect for 30fps (29.97) at 720 for youtube.
I'm not a fan of facecams, for streaming its alright, but youtube it seems... out of touch, and creepy.

Speeding up recorded footage is pretty fun to watch, and its good for cutting down on tedious watching.

Most of it is all for your style though, so make it your own, and if its good, people will flock.

One suggestion... personal preference... set the game to alwaysday...

Code: Select all

/c game.alwaysday = true

Its terrible to see nighttime, and its unavoidable early game, and you will always always neglect lights, but thats up to you.

Good luck

[Cyril]

Cheers Fish, the first few episodes are a bit shaky with me being new, but you should see an improvement as you go through lol, I'll be making episode 14 tomorrow and will definitely be using Sony Vegas for the first time for rendering and a bit of editing. (been on widows live movie maker since beginning that why I needed the advice on Vegas)

Klonan unfortunately I'm so far into the game now that I remembered lights around episode 5 or 6, I have been testing a for the last hour and have managed with Fraps and some settings in Sony Vegas to pull a 1080p 60fps video and it looks nice so I think I may stick with that, I'm still unsure about facecam for Factorio myself that's one I was wondering about a lot, thinking of using that in Five Nights at Freddies i picked up for a couple of quid as it's meant to be a creepy one and hopefully I could make a decent series from that.

[sbroadbent]

The first thing I'd say is that unless you needed the Professional level features found in Vegas, you could have easily saved money by going with Movie Studio Platinum. Vegas is a bit overkill for most of anything you might want to do on Youtube. A good quality mic is important and can make a big difference. I don't know much about the Blue Snowball, though if it is as good quality as the Yeti, then it's a good starter microphone. If there's anything I overspent on, it was spending $300+ on a Rode Podcaster.

With the videos that I record and upload I've been doing 1080p 60fps, even for Factorio, though that it mostly because I've noticed that the render time between 60 and 30 fps is not much. As a viewer, it doesn't matter to me whether a Youtuber goes 30 frames or 60 frames, although I definitely prefer 1080p, as full screening a 720p video will not look as good. If you're going 720p, I'd at least suggest 60fps.

In my videos, I've asked for feedback regarding whether viewers want the full experience of the game, or certain parts timelapsed or cut, naturally as a new Youtuber (3 months in) I didn't get much in the way of feedback In a lot of my early videos I did a lot of timelapses for the tedious parts. I've more recently been cutting away and returning, especially if it's something we've seen before, like chopping down Tree #1,203,506. I've built segments of rail on Camera, when I had something interesting to say, and then cut away to the finished result. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I might not notice that I've been recording for 35+ minutes and I really prefer to keep my episodes around 25 minutes or so (give or take a few minutes). More often than not I'll do stuff offscreen between episodes. What matters is that what you do on camera is interesting and something that people want to see.

Betham/Mangled Pork has been doing his RailWorld series as 20 minute 3x timelapsed episodes (an hour worth of gameplay) with commentary added during editing. It actually works quite well to fit a lot of stuff in without having to sit through the tediousness of a playthrough. I just wish he did more than 1 episode a week!!!

Regarding Facecam, while it might work when streaming, or with particular Youtubers, in general, I'd say to opt out.

By floaty text, I'm presuming you mean onscreen notes or clarifications? They can be useful, to provide additional information when you haven't sufficiently conveyed it during commentary. I have had a bit of a tendency to overuse them, and I think I've used them at some point in almost every series I've done on my channel. I try to put them out of the way, either at the top or bottom of the screen.