First attempt at casting

Casted matches and replay files for Elite.
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Takadekadaka
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First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Fri 11 Mar, 2016 12:53 am

Hey everyone,

It's been a long time since I've been on the forums. This has been something I've wanted to do for a while, but never really worked up the courage to do it. Long story short, I finally have, and just put out a cast on a game I've recently played.

Feel free to be honest and let me know what needs work - I know the audio levels need fixing, amongst my commentary that is pretty hit and miss. But, I hope you enjoy anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfrIaJM1Cg
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Swift » Fri 11 Mar, 2016 7:43 am

Pretty solid for a first attempt, could only watch the first few minutes because I am notionally busy atm but I liked what I saw. Microphone was a little low but you know that. Good job.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Fri 11 Mar, 2016 8:12 am

Felt inspired, and wanted to make up for my poor audio levels on the first cast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fyFkUA ... e=youtu.be

Also decided to do a 1v1 so I could keep up with the events that were going on - I hope you all enjoy.

EDIT: Realized I rendered in with low resolution...will be fixed in the morning.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Swift » Fri 11 Mar, 2016 8:23 am

I'd recommend for 1v1 taking games from the ladder too, some really good games get posted there frequently.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Fri 11 Mar, 2016 10:51 pm

I guess I just have a few questions for the casting/watching community at large, if anyone wishes to answer them.

Spontaneity/Excitement: Is this something you actively work on, or are you just naturally excited when things happen? How do you convey excitement to get the audience excited? I watched what I posted, and I just seem to get louder, but not really excited.

Preparation: Do casters typically watch their matches before hand to figure out where they're going to focus their attention on during the game, and/or decide ahead of time what material/balance points to discuss? I watched those replays maybe 2 or 3 times before I did the cast, and I can't help but feel that since I played the matches, and watched the replays multiple times, that the excitement is more or less gone since I know exactly what is going to happen. Do other people feel the same way?

Choosing Replays: Am I free to cast whatever is posted on the internet (i.e. is there an implicit agreement that when someone uploads their replays, others are free to cast them?)?

Style: I figure everyone develops their own after they cast for a while and acquire a good casting set up, but how much of people's casting styles comes passively, and how much of it do I have to develop actively (i.e. do my research on what people want, learn a particular speaking style, etc.)?

Promotion: I would do these matches/casts for fun on my own for myself, since I enjoy the process of playing/watching/casting, but when I upload them I would like people to watch them. How do you develop a steady viewing audience over time?

I've gotten some positive feedback from my friends who don't know what DoW 2 is, but enjoyed watching it anyways, so I feel good about continuing. But I would like to get better...
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby BbBoS » Sat 12 Mar, 2016 1:32 am

Takadekadaka wrote:Spontaneity/Excitement: Is this something you actively work on, or are you just naturally excited when things happen? How do you convey excitement to get the audience excited? I watched what I posted, and I just seem to get louder, but not really excited.


If you feel excited about whats going happening on the screen, you will sound excited (so naturally excited I would say)

Takadekadaka wrote:Preparation: Do casters typically watch their matches before hand to figure out where they're going to focus their attention on during the game, and/or decide ahead of time what material/balance points to discuss? I watched those replays maybe 2 or 3 times before I did the cast, and I can't help but feel that since I played the matches, and watched the replays multiple times, that the excitement is more or less gone since I know exactly what is going to happen. Do other people feel the same way?


I personally watch the games beforehand, I don't know what others do. When I watch the games though, its at 4x speed, I pretty much skim through it and if I like I add it to a pile that I will cast. Normally I leave it a few hours or a day before casting it though so I forget whats happened in that game

Takadekadaka wrote:Choosing Replays: Am I free to cast whatever is posted on the internet (i.e. is there an implicit agreement that when someone uploads their replays, others are free to cast them?)?


I've not seen people complain about them or their replay getting casted, I find that I am able to cast whatever game I find really.

Takadekadaka wrote:Style: I figure everyone develops their own after they cast for a while and acquire a good casting set up, but how much of people's casting styles comes passively, and how much of it do I have to develop actively (i.e. do my research on what people want, learn a particular speaking style, etc.)?


I think that casting style comes naturally, you go with what is comfortable each cast!

Takadekadaka wrote:Promotion: I would do these matches/casts for fun on my own for myself, since I enjoy the process of playing/watching/casting, but when I upload them I would like people to watch them. How do you develop a steady viewing audience over time?


You could try posting to:
http://www.reddit.com/r/dawnofwar
http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/v ... hp?game=47
Twitter with #warhammer40k
Here on the forums in this thread when you get new casts out

After some time, if you are consistent with your casts (1 a week for example) you can ask moderators / people who run the website to get added to the front page.

Posting to these places will "get the word out" that you are casting to try and get an audience. Developing a steady viewing takes a lot of time, and consistency can help (for example, releasing a video every Monday afternoon).

But overall it will just take time, you need to put out some content that people will like and wait for them to come to you, if they enjoy it, they will come back / subscribe and over time you will get a following and it will grow and grow assuming you keep putting out good content consistently. Just be patient :)

Maybe someone else can weigh in on Excitement & Style because I don't feel confident in what I am saying about these areas :P

And as a side note having watched the 2 casts linked, in some areas the video appeared really blocky for me, in the first game when the first blight grenade was thrown onto the Tyranid army & when the Orbital Bombardment went off it became very blocky / looked heavily compressed. I don't know if that's my video player or if other viewers also witnessed it. Also I think you should turn down the voicelines just a little bit if someone is using the Death Kreig Colour scheme just because the breathing noise was loud, but otherwise a nice 1st & 2nd attempt :D
Atlas

Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Atlas » Sat 12 Mar, 2016 3:57 am

As some just general notes, I'll pipe in.

- You've already been aware of the sound balance issues, so I'll skip that.

- When doing casts, make sure to go to the top left and hide the timebar so as to not spoil the ending of the game.

- In terms of general content, you're doing just fine! Casting is something that takes time to get good at imo. These kind of things tend to get ironed out as you refine your style.

- One way to avoid burnout (if you plan on making this a regular thing) is to actually just do a bunch of casts at once, and then slowly disseminating them throughout a period of time. That way, you don't feel pressured to do something every day when you get busy.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Sat 12 Mar, 2016 7:03 am

BbBoS wrote:And as a side note having watched the 2 casts linked, in some areas the video appeared really blocky for me, in the first game when the first blight grenade was thrown onto the Tyranid army & when the Orbital Bombardment went off it became very blocky / looked heavily compressed. I don't know if that's my video player or if other viewers also witnessed it. Also I think you should turn down the voicelines just a little bit if someone is using the Death Kreig Colour scheme just because the breathing noise was loud...


Yeah...I didn't catch that because I viewed all of my videos from the raw fraps capture. I haven't played around with Sony Vegas's compression options - I had simply assumed if I chose the "Internet HD 1080p" rendering option, it would work just fine.

I'll keep the Krieg's gas mask sounds in mind in the future, I'm having a lot of trouble getting the audio mix right because the audio levels I hear in my earbuds are not what I hear in game. Do you max out the computer's audio output when you cast to get a sense for what it really sounds like? That's the only reason I can think of that might be why I can't get a sense for audio balance.

Atlas wrote: One way to avoid burnout (if you plan on making this a regular thing) is to actually just do a bunch of casts at once, and then slowly disseminating them throughout a period of time. That way, you don't feel pressured to do something every day when you get busy.


That's a brilliant idea... I'll definitely do that in the future.

And thank you guys for the kind comments - it was a far better reception than I expected :)
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Swift » Sat 12 Mar, 2016 12:20 pm

Yeah, you seem to know what you're doing, just start compressing videos and turn down the in game voices and sound effects as well as turning up your voice.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Dark Riku » Sat 12 Mar, 2016 9:44 pm

If you really don't want to spoil game lengths always make your TY uploads 50 mins or something by adding black screen at the end :)
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Mon 14 Mar, 2016 5:05 pm

A few more questions for those who have casting/recording experience:

I have just bought a Blue Snowball USB microphone with a pop-filter as an upgrade for the clip-on microphone I've had for years. Since I have made this investment, I really want to make the most of the upgrade by learning how to use it properly. So my question is:

How do you guys capture the mic sound?

I've heard from people that they prefer to turn off the option on fraps to capture the mic-input capture onto the raw feed, and use audacity to record the mic inputs instead. Does anyone have experience with this?

In people's experience, is Fraps or Dxtory a better video capture program? Is googlecast worth looking into?
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Atlas » Tue 15 Mar, 2016 12:04 am

I can't recommend Open Broadcaster Software enough for streaming. Free and powerful enough to do what I want it to do. I've also used it for just general recording as well.

I'd actually like to hear about the mic suggestions myself :P I currently work on a shitty $5 mic that actually doesn't even work completely any more lol. I often have issues with breathing noise and such as well. Some recommendations would be great.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby BbBoS » Tue 15 Mar, 2016 12:20 am

Takadekadaka wrote:A few more questions for those who have casting/recording experience:

I have just bought a Blue Snowball USB microphone with a pop-filter as an upgrade for the clip-on microphone I've had for years. Since I have made this investment, I really want to make the most of the upgrade by learning how to use it properly. So my question is:

How do you guys capture the mic sound?

I've heard from people that they prefer to turn off the option on fraps to capture the mic-input capture onto the raw feed, and use audacity to record the mic inputs instead. Does anyone have experience with this?

In people's experience, is Fraps or Dxtory a better video capture program? Is googlecast worth looking into?


For capturing Microphone sound I actually have the microphone fed into Adobe Audition, and use that to reduce background noise since my PC is loud, and then using Virtual Audio Cable to send the output of Audition to OBS. So in a sense, just using the program I use to record to also record my microphone!

You can also use a separate program to record your voice separately to your audio, this can allow you to edit the audio of your voice separate to ingame sounds.

I can't comment on Fraps, Dxtory or Googlecast since I've not used them to record, I just use OBS to record and haven't tried any others since I get along with it and also it being free is nice on top of the ability to stream 8-)
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Tue 15 Mar, 2016 6:04 am

Atlas wrote:I'd actually like to hear about the mic suggestions myself :P I currently work on a shitty $5 mic that actually doesn't even work completely any more lol. I often have issues with breathing noise and such as well. Some recommendations would be great.


I bought the $50 Blue Snowball mic off of Amazon (if you have Prime, it qualifies for one day shipping :]) - my friends have used it before and as far as I have heard and researched - it's pretty much the BEST entry level microphone that directly interfaces with your computer WITHOUT the need for an external soundcard. I read a few reviews that said that it was pretty much indistinguishable from some combination that I have no idea about, but as far as what I know: a few of my friends have used it for their own recording purposes (bedroom recordings with a guitar/vocals, piano, etc.) and they thought it was a massive upgrade that worked well. They have a $70 version of the snowball that had additional features that I glanced at and decided I didn't need.

The next level up that has the ease of use with the USB interfacing is Blue's Yeti, at roughly $100. If you want a step up, I'd look into that.

Atlas wrote: I can't recommend Open Broadcaster Software enough for streaming. Free and powerful enough to do what I want it to do. I've also used it for just general recording as well.


BbBoS wrote: For capturing Microphone sound I actually have the microphone fed into Adobe Audition, and use that to reduce background noise since my PC is loud, and then using Virtual Audio Cable to send the output of Audition to OBS. So in a sense, just using the program I use to record to also record my microphone!


I guess I am going to be trying out OBS. I ended up acquiring Adobe Audition - are there any particular settings you would like to recommend? Am I able to adjust the mic input EQ settings and other settings to adjust the sound I record (since I assume OBS only records one layer of audio at a given time), or would OBS allow me to do some audio editing in post?
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby BbBoS » Tue 15 Mar, 2016 12:33 pm

Takadekadaka wrote:I guess I am going to be trying out OBS. I ended up acquiring Adobe Audition - are there any particular settings you would like to recommend? Am I able to adjust the mic input EQ settings and other settings to adjust the sound I record (since I assume OBS only records one layer of audio at a given time), or would OBS allow me to do some audio editing in post?


You should be able to do all the microphone settings you want in Audition, you will need to add in a small delay, if you have a look there are a lot of guides on how to use Audition with Virtual Audio Cable, a lot of them for background noise reduction but there are other tutorials which you can use with that to adjust other parts of your voice through Audition.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Sat 19 Mar, 2016 3:58 am

I was just thinking about some content to do for my next cast, and I had some ideas I wanted to bounce off the forum.

Self-Analysis: I was thinking about casting maybe the first few minutes of a few games (maybe one or two) where I try to analyze what went wrong or what went right in my games (Just played like 5 games, won 2 lost 3, IIRC). Would people be interested in watching this sort of thing from a low/mid level player?

POV: Sort of like streaming, except commentary is added in post-editting (I woudln't be talking live to keep the concentration up). This would function as a sort of reflection on my gameplay, but with the constraints of what I can see (rather than having everything revealed in the replay). I guess this type would emphasize like mechanics low to mid level players can improve on. Is this an interesting concept?
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Swift » Sat 19 Mar, 2016 4:29 pm

Always worth a pilot to see how people take to it.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Thu 31 Mar, 2016 3:08 pm

Hey guys,

New cast is up, and there's a bunch of changes I've made - hopefully it's a higher quality product compared to previous attempts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3cBfab0fY0

Comments are appreciated : D

Having a bit of trouble with the color saturation/brightness when I export - Sony Vegas views it as normal colors but exports it as something else completely...
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby GuruSkippy » Thu 31 Mar, 2016 4:45 pm

my honest opinion so far on your last upload after 5 min of watching :

- change your parameters to move your camera screen slower, and use double click on a unit, to follow this unit smoothly.
- use click on minimap to move fast from one point to an other less often, like only if it's an emergency or if you are in one side of the map and you have to go on the other side. Use the camera move instead imo.
- go back to default camera visualisation after a camera zoom or a camera rotation, people are used to the zoomed out default camera position.
- screen color seems really orange ?
- we hear keyboard and mouse sound ? why ? click click click click click click click and more click. I don't mind when watching someone playing, but you're not.
- unit spotlight, personally I don't care, but I understand that some people may like it. Though it appears not long enough if you are really interested about it, and it takes way too much space for my taste, hiding the game.
- music behind ? erk, no music or game music only.
- And I'm not even hearing the game sounds ?
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Dark Riku » Thu 31 Mar, 2016 5:24 pm

As you already mentioned, fix the colours :p
I would prefer the in game sound cues to have a higher volume, they are too low. Personal music is fine.
The clicking sounds would indeed be nice if they got filtered out.

Looking really good! I very much like the unit spotlight. Very useful for new players and might even learn more experienced players a thing or two.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Codex » Sun 03 Apr, 2016 11:17 pm

I'm a big believer in the idea that you should incorporate ideas that you like, and improve upon aspects you've seen you don't like. For example, I've always bemoaned how sports commentary is largely sensationalist- it's cool to describe what's happening on screen, but the lack of analysis has really driven me to focus on giving concise analysis and making the stream exciting and fun to watch through personality.

But the larger point is your casting style should be a reflection of you and what you feel ought to be prioritised, then improve from there. Kinda like everything else in life.
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Re: First attempt at casting

Postby Takadekadaka » Tue 05 Apr, 2016 9:14 pm

Thanks everyone for your comments - there are still a few technical issues I have to sort out (color, sound balance, etc.)

As for the spotlights - I'm glad people like them. I hadn't really thought out of where I would have put them (hence the sizing/blocking issues), but I think the best thing for them is to place them so they're not obstructive. In doing so, they can stay long enough for people to view them if they want, or ignored by the people who don't care.

GuruSkippy wrote:my honest opinion so far on your last upload after 5 min of watching :
- we hear keyboard and mouse sound ? why ? click click click click click click click and more click. I don't mind when watching someone playing, but you're not.


It's my new mic - the other one was very weak and didn't pick anything up unless it was right next to the source. Now I have a mic that picks up everything, but I'm looking into ways to reduce that. I think once I get used to only using the mouse during replays (per your camera suggestions), the amounts of clicks will be reduced to a far more tolerable level. Past that, I can only really put a towel over my mouse - I don't really have table space to play with mic positioning :(

Dark Riku wrote:I very much like the unit spotlight. Very useful for new players and might even learn more experienced players a thing or two.


Precisely why I wanted to include them! I'm glad you like what I have thus far.

Codex wrote:But the larger point is your casting style should be a reflection of you and what you feel ought to be prioritised, then improve from there. Kinda like everything else in life.


Well put. Exactly why I'm starting to include all of the post-commentary additions (spotlights, etc.) My goal is to have numerically informed analysis during, or after casts to help viewers evaluate engagements/games. I'm not at the skill level where I can analyze a game based entirely off intuition, an ability that other casters have. However, I think the inclusion of the numerical analysis would help the viewer understand what is going on (in addition to what I talk about), and myself (where the numbers get ingrained in my head the more I work with them).
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