If you’re in the Fediverse — and I suspect you are as that’s the only place I advertise my posts these days — then you may be aware of my recent YouTube postings. I figured it was about that time of the year when I circle back to “video stuff” so I’ve been recording some select forays into Star Citizen with @CakedCrusader. We’ve done all of the initial story arc content for the Onyx Facilities (as mentioned in a previous post) and just today I’ve published a rather short glimpse of what life is like in the turret of an Anvil Paladin gunship when taking on a high risk target mission.

I’m not putting a heck of a lot of effort into these productions. I’ve got my branded intro, followed by some title cards explaining what the video covers, and then I segue into the video itself. The product ends with my 1980’s arcade cabinet outro slide. Super simple. For the actual editing, in the longer videos I cut out boring parts — travel, mostly, as I only start the video when the actual content focus is about to happen — and stitch them together with a pre-packaged video transition. What really takes time is cleaning up the audio. I found out that OBS Studio has an experimental “audio capture” input that will “intercept” audio from whatever app I select which then allows me to route that app’s audio into a separate channel. This has been a real pain point for me in the past, as without any intervention, Discord voice is merged with the game audio, making it near impossible to do a good job of cleaning out all of the throat-clearing, coughing, snack bag wrangling, and general background, open-mic noises that happen as a matter of course when chilling out in a Discord voice channel. This has worked, but not well, as I’m getting audio bleed from Discord into the main audio channel, causing me to have to cut main audio to clean up wayward noise.

While I am satisfied with my current crop of videos, I’m also…kind of not. I like my intro, but every time I see it I think “this could be better”. The video doesn’t transition well on the audio beat. There’s a quick glimpse of the backdrop I used in the Blender composition that I’d like to remove. Those kinds of things. I do like the “Always Sunny” title card format, though, as I think it’s something people can recognize, is simple and easy to do, and…well, I guess now that I spell it out, it’s kind of the easy way out even if it does work, and maybe I could find a better sequence to use.

As for the video itself, I can’t help but think that there’s something missing. I cannot say what, though. Maybe it’s my imagination; maybe I’m expecting a “higher production value” and am misplacing my scrutiny on the portions which comprise the bulk of content and time-to-edit, finding it lacking somehow because it is the bulk of content and time-to-edit. The videos are meant to tell the tale of our gaming session, showing off Star Citizen to those who are unfamiliar with it (or who assume they are overly familiar with it), and hopefully providing an experience for viewers that isn’t going to bore them with extended “rock climbing” sequences. I’m not intent in providing these videos as guides, or as editorials, so there’s no need to include sped-up video, smash-cuts, or voice-overs. Still, I’m not sure where my disquiet is coming from.