Greetings friends!
Last night I had the joy of spending about an hour and a half trying my best to edit the latest episode of HobbySofa. Why did it take so long you ask? Audio volume.
Yup for some reason that I only half understand my audio insists on recording as a load quieter than everyone else in the Skype chat. It's annoying as hell and stopping Bill & Andrey sounding like they were shouting and me sounding like a tiny mouse took all of 90 minutes, despite the actual cutting of the removable bits only taking a few minutes!
If you have listened to the show you'll have heard that for the first time recording we made use of cameras.
I don't know why we never thought of doing this before to be honest, it really makes sense, especially as whenever Tom & I play our Vassal games of Override we always use a camera.
You see, there are so many extra levels of communication that you get through visual queues which are completely missed when you stick to audio only.
Of course a lot of these visual factors are lost on you guys because you are still limited to audio only.
This is why I am going to look into the possibility of recording our next episode which will probably be early to mid January with video recording!
I'm not 100% sure of the best way of doing it, I know that through OBS (Open Broadcast Software) which I am semi familiar with, I can record video for use later on, it is how I did my Razor's Edge videos over the summer (which will be returning with the nicer weather by the way). In theory there should be nothing to stop me video capturing both Bill & Andrey's streams as well as my own and utilising this.
There are other options, but I am sure this will be the best as it will allow me to set up scenes with banners and stuff for title and backgrounds right into the show. I can also try my hand at video editing for adding a title screen.
But what do you guys think? Would you be interested in seeing our gurning faces for ~3hrs roughly every quarter? That sure sounds like a lot of punishment to me!
I'm still waiting to hear back from the rest of the Sofa Crew, and I'm not going to go to the effort of creating a YouTube channel just yet for something that could turn into a massive failed experiment. Instead (at least to begin with) the first episode will be hosted on my LoxBotLive channel just to see if it works and if it is at all popular, but I think it opens up a lot of possibilities that previously were not ideal.
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Now, saying that, I will not be doing away with the audio only version, and part of the experiment will involve how easy it is to dual run the system. Can I (for example) edit the whole thing for YouTube and then rip the audio out of it and use that? If so then I don't see there being an issue at all!
But I promise you this, under no circumstance will a visual presentation replace the audio.
What this also opens up is the possibility of even better experiences!
As it stands we have the issue that two of the Sofa crew are in the UK only about 20mins drive from each other, the 3rd Crew Member is on the other side of the pond. It is my hope that one day sometime in the future we could get the whole crew together in person, either Andrey & I going to the states, or Bill coming here. I do know that I was thinking of going to GenCon in a few years time once the little one is older and I also know that Bill does a lot of travelling for a living, so managing to wrangle him to visit could/maybe possible, but pulling either of those rabbits out of a hat would be in no way an easy or soon thing.
- But c'mon! How awesome would it be to have all 3 of the Sofa Crew actually sat on THE Hobby Sofa with a video recording of the lot?
Or maybe I'm just being narcissistic...
Anyway, hope you enjoy the latest episode (11) and as part of a New Years pledge for 2016 I'm going to try and get every episode edited on the same week it is recorded, or at the least the week after, as I know I've been letting down both the Crew and you the audience by my delays in getting shows out.
Until next time; stay safe and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
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