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This is WISP

WildSlice Project (WISP) has been running for a little over nine months now. In that time we've learned a lot about making media for the Internet. Coming from a position of relatively little experience (none of us took media at college for example,) we've worked out a system of recording which utilize equipment and skills possessed by each of us.

Having said that, making and releasing videos which aren't complete garbage takes time and effort. Seriously, run a quick Google search on 'how to make video game videos' and you'll get a bunch of articles which go into great detail about the software and hardware requirements, but none of them can prepare you for weeks spent in Audacity hitting audio tracks with a spoon.

Maybe not a spoon, but correcting tracks because somebody's mike peaked during the recording, somebody else was having a bad day or someone used in-game voice chat instead of the chat-client.

However, its not all sugar and other things people willingly put in their mouths (chips and kittens? Maybe?)

Currently our update schedule runs on a simple principle; a video per week per series with at least one video being uploaded in any week.

We've had a few weeks where two or three videos were uploaded, but the majority of the time is falls back on a one-weeker. There are two reasons for this;

WISP is great but it's not a job and as much as I'd like to demand people sit at their PCs and churn out videos, it's just not going to happen. Family, work (the paying kind,) and other real-life commitments vie for time with the recording, editing and rendering processes.

Time

Time, we never seem to have enough of it - for any given series the typical session-to-screen flow goes as follows:

•  Choose a game to record

•  Record video - Fraps
•  Record multichannel commentary - mumble
(1-3 hours)

•  Clean up commentary
(1 hour per 10 minutes - or simply - freaking days -)

•  Create video overlays
(A few minutes to an hour)

•  Assemble videos in Premier Pro
(10 minutes to an hour per episode)

•  Render finalised video
(1 hour 10 minutes per episode, overnight)

That is not a typo, we spend so much time in Audacity it's practically family. Which sounds weird until you realize that the cat is currently being chased around the carpet by a Roomba.

But why?

Cleaning up the audio commentary. The two main actions are to beep out swear words (or chain-swearing in one case) and to correct collisions.

Beeping out swear words can only be done in real-time and takes roughly twice the length of the audio recording to complete, with sections of track being manually selected and a tone generated in place of the spoken word.

Beeps are 1000Hz at 0.1Amp if you were wondering. Any more power and you'll blow the ear wax out of the listener's ears.

Collisions on the other hand are where two or more people start talking over each other. This occurs either after a short period of silence where everybody decides to say something at once, or where in-game audio is too loud and somebody simply doesn't notice that somebody else is currently saying something.

Not sitting in the same room, people can't telegraph using body language that they have something to say. Also visual queues via an overlay are unavailable as recording software is usually run on a laptop (overlays are disabled anyway to stop Fraps seeing them.)

Fixing this requires sections of commentary to be manually cut and paste to provide a more fluid pattern and reduce periods of silence. Unfortunately this is proving to be a real block in the editing process.

What's Next?

I've suggested to the others that we scrap this process; moving to an honour system where people simply don't swear in the commentary. Easier said than done when people are playing a challenging game and emotions are running high. The occasional swear may get through, but hopefully I won't have to deal with the chain-cussing people have become accustomed to.

Talking over each-other is an issue which is harder to fix. Or maybe it doesn't need to be fixed. It may be that we've been spending time clearing up a non-issue and that by leaving commentary as it was recorded (with background clicks, coughs and teeth-dryers) makes for a more watchable experience.

Who knows, but as we trip-trap into 2014 the war-cry is to get more material out. Hopefully it'll appeal to the people and we'll see a change in views and subscribers. If not - then we'll do it for the experience.

~
Neil
Silver51

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