THANKS GOOGLE

Ugh. Just spent an hour getting angry, then upset, then REALLY upset over YouTube's new uploading shtick. I woke up this morning and stumbled over to my computer to see that both uploads that I had started, had failed. The reason? Unsupported file format.

Wait. What?

Apparently, as of yesterday, .mkv files are no longer supported. I encode everything in .mkv format. For the past three years, I have encoded all of my videos, everything I've posted, everything I have not posted, in .mkv format. There are very few exceptions. Why is this a problem? Well, .mkv is a container. It is very difficult to covert the files back into a format I can work with and edit. This is additionally a problem because I delete the raw Fraps files as soon as I have encoded the videos properly to save space.

Beginning to see an issue here?

Let me show you something. This, is my computer:

This, is an example of one of the drives I use for recording:

And this is how much space an hour and a half of recording your average game takes up:

I have added two internals and purchased two external drives for this hobby. I know people who have more drives with larger storage capacity to do exactly what I do. This is why I encode in .mkv format. One of those .mkv files takes 134GB of video and turns it into 3GB.

All the videos you see on this page are in .mkv save one. This is where the bad and good news comes in. Here's the bad news first. All those videos in the top middle, were videos I had prepared in advance for YouTube. I'm leaving for two weeks...in a week. These were intended to keep my channel updated while I was gone. I cannot use them now. All those Dragonborn videos need to be converted. I do not have the raw files anymore. I deleted them two days ago. So I need to figure out a way to convert them if I want to post them, which will most likely mean a drop in quality. I will consult someone about this. The good news is I can start encoding in .mp4 format. Seems to have little difference in file size and the quality seems fine. I can start encoding all of the videos for YouTube that way. Life moves on. I'm over it now.

What I'm not over is that in my rage, I made the mistake of posting my complaint in the wrong place. I actually debated it knowing that a select few would be pricks about it, but I ultimately did it because it was cathartic. I then proceed to be lectured on how my problems meant nothing and that people are currently dying of disease and war in other parts of the world right now. A completely fair point. That said, I have control over my emotions, control over what's going on in my life, control over what I care about. This person didn't bother to ask what I do or think or care about in these situations. He just assumed I was being a selfish asshole. Yeah, maybe I was. For a single hour of a single day I dared to be angry about something relatively trivial in the grand scheme of the universe. Of course it means hours of work on something I don't have, especially when I've made promises to other people to make things for them. I can handle strangers being jerks. Most of the time if just makes me laugh. When it's someone I know personally, that hurts a lot more, because there is more meaning behind the comments besides being an asshole for the sake of making people mad. I'm over this, but now I get to feel like a terrible human being for the rest of the day, no matter what I tell myself or how much I care about what's going on in other places.

This is why I post videos. This is why I do LPs. Everywhere I go, everything I do, I feel like very few people take me seriously. Everyone else is more important, has worse shit to deal with, has a louder voice. I can sit, and talk and enjoy a game, for a few hours of my day, and not have to worry about the more pressing issues in my life and around the world in other people's lives. It helps me deal with confidence issues, depression, anxiety and all the abuse, names, bullying and manipulation I have been at the receiving end of for at least fifteen years (and why I am extremely lucky to know legitimately decent people these days). That was why YouTube's decision was a big deal to me, because for a moment I felt like something extremely important to my well-being was threatened, and I panicked. No one ever stops for the full story though.

So thank you for putting up with my rant. I'm over it and on to figuring out the .mkv issue. It's a challenge and I like those most the time.

Also, I'm going to attempt to bake cookies for a friend as she is leaving for grad school. This will end one of two ways: I will make a passable cookie...or I will burn the house down. Though, in reality, I'll probably just forget a vital ingredient again. I'm a terrible baker.


EDIT: The house is still standing and I have made a passable cookie.

SECOND EDIT: I have heard rumors of other people having similar issues and that it is a bug. I am praying this is true. Either way, I have spent the entire day being upset over essentially nothing. On the bright side, I now know that a) I say some dumb things and over-react when these things happen and b) I made a very good decision in 2009. I will leave it at that.

FINAL EDIT: It's fixed. Sigh...well this is a good lesson for when something like this happens again. Thanks to the people who put up with me yesterday and helped me feel better. You know who you are =p