Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

https://twitter.com/MaxOfS2D/status/941028547669450752

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 20:55

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:54

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

ZiegeDame posted:

So this is a pretty basic question but I'm pretty new to this and want to make sure I'm not missing something basic:

A while back I figured out how to route Discord around OBS so I could record LPs with my co-commentator on a separate track. Now that I'm getting into streaming I want to do the opposite. It's simple enough to put Discord back through OBS so viewers can hear my co-pilot. What I'm wondering is how do I let said co-pilot see the game I'm playing without getting horrible echo effects. Do I just have them watch the same stream with the sound off so they don't hear me twice and also themself? Do I try out Discord's new screen share? Is there any way to do this where my partner can actually hear the game audio?

I'd think the simplest way to prevent any kind of echo from occurring is to have your co-commentator use headphones instead of speakers.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2017 19:09

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Just posting to let whoever runs this thread these days know that the link in the OP about Image Formats is dead.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2018 07:42

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

zfleeman posted:

Not sure I follow. I stream to YouTube. They have a clip editor?

I tried to use it last year. It was horrible, even if you did a precise selection, it would round it to some arbitrary amount 5 seconds away, either cutting off just enough of what you want to say so it gets annoying, or leaving in just enough unrelated sound/video that it was annoying either. I don't quite remember which tool I ended up using but basically everything is better than that youtube editor.

So, if it's gone, good riddance.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2018 21:34

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Oublietteer posted:

When I try to use Rightload and the LPix plugin, I get an error:

"Program can't start because MSVCR120.dll is missing from your computer"

I tried installing the Visual C thing from Microsoft, but it's still happening. I was able to use Rightload before with no issues. Any ideas what's up?

If the ShareX advice the previous poster gave doesn't work for some reason - what you can do is go to a DLL download site, search for that missing DLL, download it and dump it into the Rightload folder. That trick usually solves any DLL issue. However, this is fully on your own risk. It's easy to inject viruses into DLLs and downloading files that can contain viruses from a random website might not be the best idea.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2018 17:52

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

The best fix is to post more comments so there are less updates on a page.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2018 21:21

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Silegna posted:

When I try to upload images, they don't show up, but I put the tags in properly.

For instance, this on my screen doesn't show up. It's just a blank space.

Edit: and for some reason, it works now. Could it just have been the app messing up?

I don't know, but if you did something with one of the apps you're better off asking questions in the appropriate app thread. Here's the android app thread https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3571717 , there's one for the iPhone app too but I don't have a link.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2018 18:27

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

ivantod posted:

It's 75% off on Steam right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/528200/VEGAS_Pro_14_Edit_Steam_Edition/

Just to clarify, this is Vegas 14. Vegas 16 is still at full price. I don't know what the difference is though, I use neither.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2018 21:08

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Touchfuzzy posted:

Sure, no problem. A few things to keep in mind:
� This is my process, and so is suited to the specific thing I do. The general idea is there, though.
� I don't do LPs of any kind, so if that's your goal, I trust you can twist the info I give to suit your needs.
� I'm not as concerned with getting the absolute best, premium quality. It's an important thing to keep in mind during all stages, but when you realize that (at least if we're talking about video) most people are going to be sitting away from their screen reclined with a pile of cheese puffs on their chest, or watching on their phone while on the toilet, you start not worrying about it too much.

The order is: Capture > Pre-Edit > Editing > Delivery

Capture:--------------------
� Record at the specifications you ultimately want to people to see. If your end goal is 1080p60, record in 1080p60. Your recording isn't going to gain any quality from here, so make this good.
� I tend to just use OBS for everything, even when capturing off of external consoles with an Elgato HD60 Pro, because while the OBS isn't going to magically capture things the Elgato software can't, it does mean I can use my processor to compress footage (using x264 at CRF 8 or some poo poo) rather than the Elgato software's bitrate mode. These ultimately don't mean anything in the grand scheme, it's mostly a file size difference thing, and if you can spare it, use whatever works.
► Of course, your capture method will change depending on what you're recording and what you have available. You could use VirtualDub, Dxtory, OBS with NVENC; whatever you have to use. If you use a high-end capture card, such as one able to capture 4k or uncompressed RGB, the programs you'll use will be different than any of these. Play with the settings to find a quality you like.
� I personally hold that audio is king. People are more likely to withstand sub-par video than they are to stick around sub-par audio. Unless you're doing screenshot LP business, then lol.

Pre-Edit:--------------------
� After I have my file(s), I use AviSynth to apply any broad changes I need done, like resizing, cropping, color fuckery, "framerate normalizing", and the like. I have a single AviSynth script that has every console/source I've recorded in, with notes and frequently associated functions I use commented all out. Things like "I always crop this much off of my NES footage", "I always use these settings to desaturate GBA footage"; things like that.
► If you end up doing a lot of retro games, resizing is something you're going to wrestle with. If you can at all help it, you want whole integer resizes (2x, 3x, etc.), but sometimes it'll be at a size you still want bigger, but don't want overhang on, so you're going to have to delve into uneven resizes and bluring and it's a pain in the rear end. My general rule looking through my scripts seems to be: PointResize if you can, GaussResize if you can't. But again, play with stuff and find what suits your eye.
� I usually then use the Trim function to cut out only the relevant bits I need. Obviously if you're doing a longplay or a screenshot LP, this won't apply to you, but I often record everything I do and take notes while playing, then scrub back through and cut out the bits that have notes. This will drastically cut down on space on the next step, because...
� ...once my script(s) is ready to go, I throw the script into VirtualDub and use the MagicYUV codec to spit out an intermediate working file that, as long as I didn't gently caress up, as all of the important bits I could want to use and isn't so large that it wishes to dwarf my small working SSD.

Editing:--------------------
� This part is going to be very subjective depending on who's reading it, since everyone will have their favorite software and editing needs, so I'm not going to go too deep.
� A good habit to keep is remembering and maintaining the colorspace your videos are in (same thing with audio sample rate). More noticeable on older game footage, if you swap them, certain colors (usually blacks, reds and greens) will not look like what you had originally saw or intended. Actually looking up colorspace definitions and whatnot is some poo poo of the highest grognard magnitude, but it'd benefit yourself to play around with them in Avisynth so you get a good idea of what they are, and so you can attempt to keep a constant one throughout your workflow.
� If you're doing a voiceover LP or something, this would probably be the time you'd sync up your audio to your gameplay, or other people's audio to each other if you went that route. You could do this in Audacity or your video editor, depending on what you have. I can't offer much more help than that, since that's out of the area of my familiarity, though I should state I haven't had a desync between my game footage audio and video in multiple years, so if you do, something is definitely wrong and it's probably your computer.
� Once you've finished editing and the project looks how you want it to be seen, how you export is up to you. If your editor of choice supports exporting to a Frameserver (like DebugMode) you could use that. I used to, but anymore I just export the file once again using MagicYUV.

Delivery:--------------------
� I use MeGUI to encode still, but there's all kinds out now. You could use Handbrake, VirtualDub, your editor's built-in encoder, whatever you want.
� For video, I used to use a heavily modified x264 profile for my encodes, but then I realized it doesn't loving matter. Right now, I just use x265 with the slowest preset and lowest CRF I can stand, which is currently Slow 21. Realistically, I almost always encode before I go to bed or work or some poo poo, so I could go much lower, but that's up to you to play with.
� For audio, I use AAC at a VBR of 320 or higher. Use FAAC, Nero's, FFmpeg AAC; use whatever -- at this bitrate no one is going to tell.
� Once done, throw it up on your hosting site of choice. That's it!

This post deserves a link from the OP.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2019 08:13

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Peanut Butler posted:

I got a decade old laptop with no GPU, 3GB RAM, Celeron 900 @ 2.2 GHz, lil 300GB HDD- I want to record some gameplay for a video, obvi not in 1080 lol, but prolly more like 800x600-

haven't done this in years, and that was on a desktop machine with better specs (RIP)- is there a go-to toolchain/method for recording on a low-end system? Can't really pick up any equipment; I'm extremely broke, else I'd just get the $200 or so in parts needed to repair the desktop

feel like I'm going to have to balance compression on a lovely CPU with very little HDD space but I'm not sure where to start as the last time I did this I had like 4TB to play with

When I did my Submachine SSLP I first recorded it as raw video footage using OBS at mostly default settings. I think the only time I directly uploaded video instead of screenshots was for the credits sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJc9m-xg5No

This was done on an old and slow laptop without a GPU.
This all worked out because Submachine are tiny little games that don't require much resources to run so OBS could take all it needed. And also because I wasn't playing the HD versions but the original 400x514px flash versions, combined with the graphical style of those games, meant low resolution was barely noticable in the end result.

I wasn't able to record any high-quality full screen games using that setup.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2019 06:56

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

ChaosArgate posted:

I�d like to make a feature request to have all those image URLs dumped to a text file on completion, I think that could be very useful for people getting the image links into their updates.

Hell, with that it would be a single line of code extra to already put [img] tags around them in the text file.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2019 15:16

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

I am able to read boring parts of screenshot LPs at several fps.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2019 08:57

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Divergence posted:

Now that tindeck no longer exists, what's the go-to audio host for let's plays?

Reasonably small mp3s can be hosted on lpix directly. I'm not entirely sure what the max size is though.

The current Dangan Ronpa LP uses clyp.it which seems to work fine. And yes, lots of people just use youtube.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

If you have a Linux-like shell (cygwin or Git Bash provides this on Windows)

Or of course just Windows Subsystem for Linux which is provided by Microsoft.

Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Feb 25, 2020

# ¿ Feb 25, 2020 07:45

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

For the streamers among us:

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Forums poster astral has unraveled the mysteries of the twitch.tv embed code, so you can embed stuff from twitch now! It should work for vods, clips, and channels! Just surround a twitch link with video tags. Thanks a ton astral!
code:
[video ]https://www.twitch.tv/seeric/[/video]
Congrats to the guy who posted this who gets to be my example:

https://twitch.tv/seeric

astral posted:

To use these fancy new embeds, just throw a twitch link in video tags instead of URL ones or use type=twitch and put your favorite streamer's channel name inside!

Alternatively, for video on demand (past broadcasts), with type=twitch you can sandwich:
code:
videos/numbershere
between the video tags, or for clips you can similarly use:
code:
clip/clipnamehere
Start times on video on demand are not supported yet but I need a break so that's next on the list!

edit: Collections or playlists or whatever aren't supported either.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 07:02

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

PurpleXVI posted:

Having just finished an LP, how do you get it shoved into the LP Archive? I feel like this is an already-answered question that I'm just too blind/easily confused to figure out, as I browsed the OP and didn't feel like I found the answer I was looking for.

There's a link with instructions from the Sandcastle OP: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=153724

# ¿ Jul 11, 2020 07:51

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Touchfuzzy posted:

Would it behoove us to have a Discord for this stuff? (Unless there's already something similar.) Real-time help for those that need it would be nice, having to redo the OP is a pain, and half the time, we have to ask if they have a Discord just to see their problem in the first place if they can't post it elsewhere.

I've been thinking about this thread and the OP from time to time, and as much as I've wanted to help start a new OP, it seems like it'd be easier to just have an open Discord and make the OP more of a quick thing. That's just me though, what do you guys think?

Not sure if you're talking about LP in general, or more specific streaming stuff, but for the former, there's a tech support channel in the Let's Play Discord linked from the Sandcastle.. Feel free to join. Just note that the Discord is nowadays not just the Discord for this let's play forum but also for the LPBeach spinoff which was made when we got rather uncomfortable about the administration of SA a while ago.

Doesn't matter which of the forums you use though, we're a friendly bunch either way.

There's also some people there who stream regularly so they might be able to help out with streaming questions too, it's just not the main thing.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 17:07

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Putty posted:

Anyone got some magic tricks to uploading footage to Youtube that gets blocked normally? I don't care about monetization but some stuff just gets blocked from viewing in all countries and some effects editing to the video doesn't work usually.

e: to clarify the detection is on the video, not the audio

Upload to Pornhub instead. They allow non-adult oriented videos.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2020 08:08

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Fedule posted:

I don't see any such option. I've seen multiple people referring to this and I see everything else in the menus they show except specifically that option.

Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Dec 28, 2020

# ¿ Dec 28, 2020 18:40

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Blueberry Pancakes posted:

Oh, thanks. That helps a lot!

One other question: is there a way to adjust the orientation of text on SomethingAwful? Like, if I wanted to have an image in the center margin of a post, for example.

I don't think so. Closest you can get is put the image in a [pre] block and put a bunch of spaces or whatever in front, but then whether it's in the middle or on the next line depends on the width of the screen of the reader. (And people do read SA from mobile)

# ¿ Jan 22, 2021 17:35

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

E: wrong thread

# ¿ May 23, 2021 16:03

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Uganda Loves Me posted:

I'd like to do a Let's Play of a game with pictures of a physical journal. I want to be able to easily dump images in a file in sequence, with text in between. I'd like to keep the pictures as high-res as possible until I want to share it. Should I just use a Word doc? Is there an easy way to turn such a thing into a post? I see RightLoad for uploading the images, but is there a way to keep track of the text I wrote in-between the pictures without putting everything back together by hand?

I'm not sure when or even if I'd post it, but I'd like to be able to easily modify it before I do so. I'd also like to be able to export it to a .pdf at the end.

I know this isn't the forum for posting a let's play like that, but I wasn't sure who else might have advice. I assume that it would belong in The Game Room.

EDIT:
VVVV Cool!

I know there's a script floating around some LPers use where you put placeholders in a text file and then when you're done you can run the script once and it will replace the placeholders with the actual image links. Maybe that helps you?

You never want to use Word though, always a basic text document (or the SSLP test poster) with forums BBCode because changing Word formatting into BBCode is horrible.

Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Aug 27, 2021

# ¿ Aug 27, 2021 07:43

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Just a quick post to let the mods know that the "Image Formats" link in the Guides post on the first page isn't working anymore.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2021 11:07

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Hi friends, does anyone have a quick overview on what tools and settings to use to easily make crisp upscaled screenshots of Gameboy Color games?

# ¿ Oct 6, 2022 20:03

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Thanks!

# ¿ Oct 8, 2022 19:59

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Falconier111 posted:

I just finished a ~17,000 word guide on screenshot LPs that I've been working on for... God, for years now. It covers thread management, burnout prevention, OP construction, image creation and hosting, update structuring and editing, pratical BBCode, three different ways to go from blank word doc to posted update in increasing levels of complexity complete with copypastable VBA scripts, and a bunch of other poo poo I've forgotten about. I threw up a draft on the test poster for lack of other places to put it, since it uses SA BBCode (it evolved out of an addendum to one of my LPs) and there's no way in hell I could post it here without drowning out the thread. Are there steps I should be taking to get eyes on it and/or get it considered for inclusion in the OP?

ShareX is basically magical.

drat, that's an impressive amount of work, well done.

I just scrolled through it and noticed two points of feedback:

- First, in my letsplays, I try to base the length of an update on what a logical "chapter" section is. If that's too long or too short, I tend to base it around the number of images that feels good for the game I'm LP'ing (depends on the amount of content per image). I've never based it on number of words. So, that's another way to decide this.

- Secondly, I was incredibly confused about your choice of MS Word. I would never recommend MS Word to a newbie because, if they start using fonts and bold/italic, well, that's basically impossible to turn that into bbCode. So why use MS Word over a basic text editor? On top of that, not everyone has access to MS Word. Not even MS Windows is as commonplace as it once was (which means many people won't be able to use your Paint 3D guide either).

I was wondering about your MS Word choice until I saw your section about find-and-replace macros. That explains your choice. Now, this can also be done by more advanced text editors, or even with command line / python scripts, I'm sure some people here use those, but of course the syntax would be different. You can also decide to forgo those macros and do this kind of stuff with a manual search+replace all, or even write the bbcode directly (I tend to use the test poster as my main editor, so I can see immediately what the result looks like).

I would say, unless you can add search + replace guides for different editors (maybe provided by different people), make very clear at the start that people CANNOT use MS Word for the font stuff, and you only suggest it for macros. That you keep everything in MS Word as plain text.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2024 12:29

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:54

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Make sure to check the BBcode help on the edit post page, it also has other stuff like bold, italic and quote blocks.

To get the layout the way you want just mess around with BBcode until it works. Use the SA preview feature or the test poster to check your result without posting it right away.

The test poster is almost entirely compatible with SA BBcode.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2024 08:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Tech Support Fort - Questions, Comments and Codecs (READ THE OP!)