CodeWalrus

Multimedia => Media Talk => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on August 12, 2016, 03:17:20 AM

Title: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on August 12, 2016, 03:17:20 AM
I posted this several years ago on Omnimaga and Cemetech already, but when I saw this (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/467/46771.html) I thought this would be the occasion to necro-cross-post this here too. When you take animated screenshots or record video footage of gameplay, tutorials or whatever, here are some advices:

-Once capture starts, wait at least 15 minutes before taking any action on the emulated calculator. People will be very happy to wait until the program you wanted to show is ran. Plus nobody cares about dial-up and 3G bandwidth anymore, anyway.

-Also, people usually don't mind waiting an additional 5 minute if you mess up several times when trying to select commands in the CATALOG or programs in the calculator PRGM menu, same when you type on the home screen, so don't worry about this too much either. People will be fine.

-An extra advice I'm adding also is about tutorials: Instead of inserting text using your favorite video editor and displaying it instantly, record yourself opening a tiny Notepad window, where you slowly type (and correct several times) your tutorial text.

-For Youtube videos, your intro should be at least 5 minutes long and be the only part of the video that is recorded horizontally.

-It's all about the clickbait, so it's fine if 99% of your gameplay showcase or tutorial video is just talking about random stuff for 15 minutes before you finally get to the point, then conclude with 5 extra minutes of talking. It also gives the watcher the extra challenge of trying to find the actual content by skipping through the video over and over.
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Unicorn on August 15, 2016, 07:37:44 AM
Those are pretty on point suggestions. Do you have any tips for posting them on a forum? :trollface:
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on August 24, 2016, 06:43:59 AM
Spam every sub-forum and IRC channel asking how to put screenshots on the Internet, and keep asking every 10 minute until someone answers? :trollface:

By the way in the first post, the first "advice" was followed by most people in the community around 2011-13 >.<. Often, I ended up saving screenshots on my PC, opening them in a video player/editor so I can skip immediately to where the game finally gets executed (in some cases more than halfway through the screenshot) because I was tired of waiting over 1 minute everytime. That and the second point was also rampant at the time.

(http://img.codewalr.us/pokemongo.gif)

I think some people just setup WabbitEmu to 800% speed while taking screenshots, though, which could explain why some people were so slow at launching their programs.
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: p2 on September 27, 2016, 09:58:42 AM
Additional tips / rules:

- when typing some stuff in a notepad window, make sure to change your font settings (text size) after typing the first few words. Zooming in so you see nothing of the screen but that notepad window will be fine, too.

- just typing more and more stuff in a notepad window is bad style. Make sure to delete the old text each sentence. But not by selecting everything and pressing DEL - only use the backspace.

- never minimzie a window while recording, you will risk not finding the window again. Instead just resize all windows and move them around all over the screen.

- make sure your intro is at least four times louder than the rest of the video.

- if you use background music for your video you should tell the people what song it was. Do that in a notepad window, too. Make sure to pause for at  least 1 minute after typing the name so people got enough time to read it. Probably adjust text size and font again.

- no matter how short the video is, never forget to advertise your channel: add a 30sec part at the beginning (this is ... please subscribe, like, comment, call, marry, ... my channel, have fn watching, ...) and another 1 minute part at the end of the video (this was my vid, I'm ..., if you liked it please subscribe, like, comment, ... If you didnt please comment why, ...). If available, also tell people about your brother's minecraft lets play channel. Girls will love it! <3
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 09, 2016, 04:13:07 PM
Haha I saw the 2nd one happen pretty often. It's annoying. >.<

I don't mind the 4th one since I am used to it with TV commercials (which are usually much louder than everything else), but long intros can be annoying unless it's a Youtube/TV show.

I also don't see anything wrong with the last one, since that's almost the only way to get subscribers once they watch vids, but it depends how it's done. Usually subscribe stuff goes at the end. As for myself, the CW ad at the beginning of my vids is about 3 seconds long.
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Yuki on October 09, 2016, 07:13:15 PM
Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAW9ErlarU

Otherwise, yeah the like/share/subscribe/check my other stuff calls at the end are encouraged, and some people even make it original, such as Frog Leap Studios who have the same text he says at the end of all of his videos, but he sings it in a different way each time.
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: p2 on October 09, 2016, 07:28:16 PM
hmmm
>30sec intro is pretty impressive.
I also like it how he (at the beginning) move around teh camera to put the focus on teh surroundings instead on what he's doing. That helps the watchers to understand even better what he's doing and where he's doing it (like showing the whole start menu instead of just the CMD icon). That's very helpful.
THe moving camera focus in general helps to make the video look less static and boring which is a great trick to make your video look really professional!
And the fact that he's hiding his true hacker skills by using the start menu search instead of just [WIN]+[R] (execute-window) whows us he's a real pro!
We can definitely learn something from this guy, everyone, watch closely and learn from the master ;)
And at 2:06 we see the BEST way of cencoring sensitive data I've ever seen! (He's using his mouse, that's awesome!) Even Hillary could learn something here!
Using google search during the video makes it obvious he also wants to teach thus with less computer knowledge to begin with which shows us what a kind and gentle heart he must have, helping the weak ones <3
But the most amazing point is that his video ended the same moment the music was over. This tells us he planed avery single keystroke and every single mouse move even before he started the video. He already had it all planned when looking for crappy music (btw I give him 9/10 for that). So he's not only gentle and kind as well as professional, he's also a true genius!
Thank you so much for sharing this video with us, Juju. The Walrus loves you <3
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 10, 2016, 04:09:00 AM
Oh... this video made me remember about another annoyance: Horrible or unfitting music. Imagine, for example, watching a League of Legends of Call of Duty video, but with this (https://youtube.com/watch?v=SPKh8ze7f1U) as the background music. I'm exagerating a bit, but I saw many Starcraft Brood War videos with totally crappy mainstream electro-rap thing.

Thankfully, in such case, you can always mute the audio, though.
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Yuki on October 10, 2016, 04:47:12 AM
Well, for background music, this one is a must. Please stand up for YouTube's national anthem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKfS5zVfGBc
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: p2 on October 11, 2016, 08:37:12 PM
Wow I really like that song :D
And I really hate how more and more noobs on youtube add music and then fail properly giving the song's name ind interpreter.
Way too often they go like "Fast and Furious 4 - Whatever song" as if the movie title was the artist <_<

I just found a great video...
To begin with: The title did in no way fit the content.
Also it had a full 60seconds of just one single frame shown at the beginning... O.o nothing animated at all, I wasnt even sure if the video was working because of thet... :P
And it got another entire minute of the exact same picture at the end... O.o
which made the video be 6:00 instead of 4:00 <_<
and it was this truely awesome ad which was by the way not clickable (video) and didnt contain any names nor links......  definitely a true pro there... <_<
(http://img.ourl.ca/bestAd.png)

*not gonna link it here due to inappropriate content*
Title: Re: Tips when making animated screenshots and videos
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on November 08, 2016, 08:04:39 PM
@p2 the issue with the song is that it was so much overused a few years ago that everyone started hating it. Same with Darude Sandstorm, which used to be liked by everyone, until it became a meme.

As for song titles, what I often see is people using the song genre as the artist name, often with the wrong title, such as that one Titanic techno remix.  Also i hate on Youtube when I am looking for a major news report and only images are shown.