Can't believe September is behind us already, the month has flown by.
As you probably saw, the Marathon 2 video dropped a few days ago. Not my highest performing video by any stretch, but it signals the end of the longer-form videos and a new focused and considered approach.
The indie previews will still be a part of the channel, and the next video will cover a cool Western-inspired shooter called Wanted 3D Dead or Alive. Beyond that is a tough choice. I'd really like to cover a specific topic, but I also don't want it to send a false impression about the changes happening to the channel. It's 100% related to gaming, but I can see some thinking the channel has become rage-bait, which is not the case. It's a topic I feel frustrated by, have felt frustrated by for some time, but it may have to wait while I set the channel trajectory with a video more in line with future videos. And that video I'll keep as a surprise!
After the Marathon 2 video released, I watched a course on my post production software - Davinci Resolve - to get a better handle on the tools of the trade so that I can produce higher quality videos. Learned a lot of useful stuff (thanks, Casey Faris!). I also plan to do a course on Affinity Photo, my image editing software, to improve thumbnails and images used in my videos. I'll likely do more courses in future, as needed, and add this knowledge to my repository. All this useful stuff is going into my notes so that I don't forget them between videos (which is what usually happens...).
There's some admin stuff to get through this month, stuff I've been delaying for far too long. It'll probably take a week or 2 to sort through it, but it'll leave the channel and my mental health in a better place :P
What's Blondie playin'?
Lots and lots of Abiotic Factor. There's a huge amount of content packed into this game, and the gameplay loop is ridiculously fun. So much to discover.
Ambitions
This list is getting addressed this month, no more delays.
Create a playlist for the videos my Youtube buddies create so that I can catch up on their work.
Fix Patreon alerts so that I get notified when other people I follow post something.
Add recommendations to my Patreon. I'll eventually set aside a chunk of time to do all of this in one hit.
Personal ambitions
Running - took last week off because of a build-up of neuromuscular fatigue which made every run feel like 100% effort, even the baseline runs. Perfectly normal and healthy, just my body letting me know that rest was a good idea. My watch may be losing the plot too because it doesn't seem to be tracking heart rate properly now, at least not when measured against perceived effort. HR is well above where my effort is telling me it should be, and there are sudden spikes and drops which make no sense.
Food portions - while I'm cognisant of how much goes into my body, I don't track it meticulously. That said, I'm leaner and now see abs, and that's thanks to the extra km's I put in each week. If anything, calorie requirements have increased as each run burns around 600 calories. I'm prioritising protein and carbs to stay on top of muscle repair and glycogen replacement, and stopping before I feel full. That, and trying to avoid overly processed foods, is suitable enough for now.
That's it for this month. Hell of a storm in the world these days. Stay safe out there.
Hey Folks, the video is finally done. Apologies for the late release, a few things came up near the end of the month which delayed release. I hope you enjoy it!
G'day, chaps and chapettes. July down, progress made.
The Doom/Quake horror video is now at 1hr 36mins. I had hoped to be closer to the 2hr mark by now but stumbled across more supporting material, and viewing/cutting it has taken longer than expected. I'm also making an effort to use footage which supports talking points, and because the script is loaded with talking points (and because the Doom 3 playthrough spans 18 long video files), finding footage to support even a single paragraph of the script has sometimes taken 30mins or longer. There was also another body of work I needed to complete for the Blondefire channel which was delayed by last month's IRL work, so July was very much a catch-up month all around.
The good news is that July was free of IRL distractions so I've made big progress on the video. I normally add the backing track after the footage and voice over is laid, but this time I've added it as I go. This means that the next (and final) pass only requires QA checks and audio ...
G'day, chaps and chapettes. What a crazy month it's been.
So. The video production is coming along nicely. There are a tonne of images, sounds, B-roll videos, interview footage and other miscellaneous stuff required, and sourcing it for a video this long and detailed is taking time. This is no different to other videos I've made, though it is compounded by having to cover a lot more games.
I've also hit an issue I've not had in previous projects. Well, I sort of had, but not to this degree. This video uses 4.6TB of recorded game footage. Terabytes, not a typo. Davinci Resolve, my video editing software, doesn't like loading lots of 2k videos into a project, and it has hung and crashed numerous times. I briefly had this issue with the Marathon and Jedi Knight videos - they're the longest ones on the channel so far - but only when the production timeline approached the 2 hour mark. This project struggles to copy even small clips into the timeline, and it would have been impossible to continue.
The fix? Proxy ...