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

Twilight Days of my Hard Drive

So, here's the scoop. My hard drive is probably going to die in the near future. This is bad because a) it is my largest hard drive that I use to record all my raw files and b) because I have a lot of unproduced videos and projects stored on that drive. I have made archive copies of all the important old videos on my other drive for now, but I have an entire LP of Penumbra: Overture, the first 40 minutes of Penumbra: Black Plague, a ton of Neverwinter footage I never finished sifting through, two chapters of Half Life that are in the middle of being edited (and fixed as I had some problems with the recording) and all of the Amnesia: Machine for Pigs videos, which I am still using to produce a...special video. 

This means a couple of things. I no longer have the luxury of storing videos on this drive and working on them when I feel up to the task. These videos must be produced as soon as possible, so I cannot give them the attention they need. I was planning inserting text comments and jokes into Half Life and the Penumbra videos. This takes time as I have to watch the whole LP. I also need to resync some of the audio in Penumbra because apparently these videos want to make me miserable. I'm certain now that it's the lag in the games doing it, and since the voice audio and game are recorded in two separate places...this causes problems. Then on top of that, 25-45 minute videos take 2-3 hours to encode. I can only produce one video at a time unless I get creative (which will require the use of other hard drives anyway). 

What's worse is I no longer have a lot of storage space to work with. I currently cannot afford to buy myself new hard drives because I need the money I have for the holidays. I will have to wait until the new year. This drive is my 2TB. The others are all 600GB and lower. This is fine for some games, but the problem is my drives are full of OTHER footage. I am currently recording Overlord 2, which takes up a lot of space. An hour, thirty minutes takes 300GB of space. That's 3.3GB per minute. Yay Fraps. 

So, the point of this post, essentially, is to say that my video production schedule will slow significantly until I get this sorted out. The good news is, I still have Overlord 1 to upload, so you will continue to have a running LP. The bad news is, plans may change, footage may be lost and I cannot realistically start or continue a new LP without great difficulty. 

Last news is, regardless of whether or not the hard drive survives until the new year, I am working on some special projects for the holidays. I have a lot of...amusing unused footage lurking in the depths of my computer. Keep your eyes out in mid-December for new non-LP videos.

Also, it's not relevant, but, I have my drivers license now. It's kind of a big deal. Well...for me. Now I must attain a chariot worthy of my reign of terror on the road. I mean...that's a nice safe buggy to go on lovely Sunday afternoon drives around town. Yes...safe...

Tedious

While studying for an exam I don't particularly care about, I got bored enough to start reading one of the documents I need for the test out loud. This did not end well. Or turned out better than expected. I'll let you decide.

FaceDesk

Meanwhile in Dungeon Siege land...

Still working on Broken World. I've been busy with driver's ed, school, work and being lazy lately, so I'm having trouble finding a good time to just sit and record what I want. I also need a time period where people aren't constantly interrupting me every five seconds so my videos don't get chopped up into tiny segments. I may just be bitter about another, unrelated recording. Just a wee bit. I also have a ton of Left 4 Dead 2 videos lined up for upload once I'm done Broken World. This will give me a chance to prepare for Dungeon Siege 3 (mostly mentally as I'm sure my mind won't come out of this LP completely intact) and give me a chance to experiment with the audio a bit. I want to learn more video editing tricks as well, so I may be experimenting with Vegas and look at some new tutorials.

Big Plans

I'm officially finished my Dungeon Siege 2 LP and am almost ready to start Broken World. I may still add Dungeon Siege 2 videos in the future (ie quests I've missed or need other characters for, and the secret quest), but I have no idea when I'll do that. As for Broken World, I plan to start the game early December and then really get into it by December 12 (day after my final exams). I will not have any time to make videos between now and the 26th though, because I have a 15 page paper due next week that I haven't started and a few assignments that I need 100% on because of my...less than adequate midterm mark...

In the meantime, I have something entirely random, but super fun to post while you wait for the new videos. I mainly played the game to test out recording and audio on the computer I'll be using from now on for LPs (well...apart from Broken World maybe...haven't decided yet). The audio...was tricky. My voice ended up drowned out in a lot of segments, so I apologise for the bad audio. I may consider recording audio separately (ie not with FRAPS), but I'm worried about audio syncing as a friend of mine has had countless issues with that in his LPs in the past. In addition, I'm not an expert at this. I still have a lot to learn to make these videos higher quality.

By the New Year, I'd like to begin Dungeon Siege 3 (which is what I'm doing most the tests for) and start thinking about what sort of series I could LP next. I did Dungeon Siege because a) I love the games and b) because I've had a degree of past experience with them. Nothing like looking like a total spaz in front of an audience, which has happened in failed videos. Regardless, I may just play a few random games as I have a ton on Steam that I've purchased on sales...and the after-Christmas sales (boxing day/week for us Canadian and British folk), I may have more.

Anyway, stay tuned, I got a lot of inanity coming your way.

Break

So, two weeks since my last video post. I am having a great deal of difficulty with recording as of late. I explain it a bit on the WMRR blog, but I will restate it here. 

1) My laptop is not cooperating. The CD drive is not working again. I fixed it once, but I'm not sure if I can do it again. At this point I have two options: no CDpatch/iso or move the entire operation to my fully functioning computer. Downside to the former is that the laptop is unpredictable and random components tend to break. Downside to the latter is the sound and settings are completely different on the other machine.

2) I have no time. I am balancing 2 jobs and editing, writing, family commitments and having a decent social life with my hobbies including playing video games and recording. I need a pocket of time during the week were I can record in silence, uninterrupted and at a time where I'm not waking up my entire household by swearing at armour regenerating trees.

3) I'm having a tough time getting motivated to record and encode. I love making videos. I love playing video games. Naturally, I love recording video games that I play. The problem is I also love a lot of other activities and I just don't have the time for it. I feel terrible if I haven't produced a video in weeks, but that's mostly because I know that some people are waiting to watch the next instalment. I can't take my time when life gets busy or when I feel like doing something else for a bit. I haven't written much in months. I haven't read a book in god knows how long. I miss activities like that.

Conclusions? I may delay the production of Broken World and DS3. I know I was excited about these, but I need a little time to just...get everything sorted out on my end. I will finish Dungeon Siege 2 as soon as I can. Maybe in producing the last Act (and the last bits of Act II) will spark my addiction to making more videos, but the truth is I'm just tired at the moment. These problems coupled by the few people who have given rather irritating feedback on my videos (mostly the Carmen San Diego one) indicating nothing beyond how much I "suck," have really killed my desire to continue for the time being. I have yet to decide on this, but I know that I need to give something up for awhile. So I will think about it and come up with an answer soon.

Graphics Upgrade

I mention it in the video I will be posting, but I have a new graphics card for my encoding computer. The card on the left is the old and the card on the right is the new, so significant size change.

This means that I can now play games on it without shadows flipping out or having pieces of the floor missing. My laptop is getting old, and its really beginning to show. After DS2, Broken World and maybe the Half Life text LP, I will be retiring the laptop from LPs. I just don't think it can handle it anymore. I'll still use the machine until it completely dies, but it has served me well these past five years.