Did Somebody Call For A Video Capture Project?

From my last blog, it was probably assumed that I wouldn't be adding too many more gaming projects on my plate (unless, of course, they happened to be programming projects that happen to also be gaming projects). I suppose this assumption would be wrong. I'm not going to say unfortunately, since this new project has added a fun twist to my life, but getting a video capture card to capture console footage as well as buying the full version of Fraps was certainly an impulse decision.  Hey, it was just my birthday... I had just spoiled myself with a new desktop for Christmas and had promised myself that I wouldn't do anything for my birthday, but we can see how well that is going.

So before I got the video capture card, I was looking at my game library and thinking "what can I do that would perhaps be entertaining to watch as well as do?" I had decided that I don't ever play video games on their hardest difficulty setting, so I set out to do just that. The result? Well, I'm not yet utilizing that video capture card, but I am using Fraps to do a Half-Life 2 Hard Mode run. I had decided on Half-Life 2 because I've never beaten it, and I have Episode 1 sitting on my computer waiting to be played, but I don't want to play that until I finish with its prequel.

I don't do it in the first video, but I've been adding commentary to all of the following videos thus far. Making commentary is actually a lot tougher than I thought, but I'm improving greatly as time goes on. Thus far, I've made 5 videos. I actually made the footage for 6 today, but I just have to add in the commentary. That's something I probably won't get around to until tomorrow... Almost done with Water Hazard!  I had been worried about how difficult this was going to be, but most of the experience tells me I have nothing to worry about. There are a select few areas (aka. all of video 5) that bring back a bit of my worry, but I'm still managing to pull forward.



Side-note: I've been tweaking around with the video quality settings a bit to try to find the optimal file size so the upload to YouTube isn't so painfully long. For video 6, I spent more time on this and think I've found a condensed size that appears to retain the original quality. I believe it will go up to 720p.