I just put together an introduction video for the upcoming season, which starts on July 4th (Americas), July 5th (UK Eastward). Since Blue Tengu is all about demystifying game development, I should demystify some of the video production too. Here’s a list of steps that went into the making of the video (if anything, it’ll help me remember them!). It’s certainly not a full tutorial, since that would be a video series itself, but if you’ve tried any of these steps and can’t decipher one, write me a comment, I might be able to help.
Open Broadcaster (free and open source streaming program)
1) Configure all of the settings as recommended for Twitch.tv (since that’s what all of the future videos will use anyway)
2) Add an image to the source pane with the title card (a png file)
3) Add the web camera (Logicool C920) to the source
4) Add the microphone (Blue Snowball) to the source
(I could use the built-in web cam microphone, but I have the snowball anyway and it does sound a little cleaner)
5) Do a few previews to make sure everything is in its proper place, editing the scene as needed
6) Making sure to save a local copy of the file, record!
7) Once that’s done, turn off the microphone
8) Just leave the title card in the source and hit record, then play the opening theme
9) Hit stop, switch the title card to the closing card, then hit record and play the closing theme
Blender (free and open source rendering/animation program with video editing functions)
1) Change Blender to the video editing view (more info here)
2) Drop in the clip from Open Broadcaster
3) (G)rab it and shift it to the middle
4) Drop the opening clip in front and the closing clip in back, leaving about 30 frames of space
5) Add some Effect Strip | Color (black) before and after the videos
6) Add some Effect Strip | Cross Fades between the clips to get the fade-ins and fade-outs
7) (G)rab and soft edit the ends of the audio clips to get the essence of the audio clip
8) Sandwich everything together
9) The opening is fine, but the closing song needs a little volume drop, so find where the volume drop should start
10) With the clip selected at the right frame, go to the sound panel and, hovering above the Volume, hit “I”
11) Go to the end of the clip, lower the Volume to 0.0 and hit “I” again
12) Add additional steps in-between if anything sounds unnatural
13) Choose the H.264 video settings and mp3 audio settings (I’m in Windows, so AAC didn’t work for me)
14) Save the project, just in case
15) Ctrl+F12 to render the scene, wait for it to finish
YouTube
1) Preview it locally to make sure everything is right
2) Upload the video to YouTube
3) Add the title, the description, and tags
4) Add it to the playlist so it’ll show up in the Archive
5) Jump into annotations and add text as needed
6) Make it public
7) Test it to make sure everything is all right
Other
1) Relax with an ice-cold beverage!