EDIT: Sorry, correct link this time — I had to reupload to fix an audio issue! If the video doesn't appear for you immediately, check back in a few minutes — it's still processing as I type this.
Today's Coffee Talk video was primarily an experiment for myself to see how quickly I could turn around an article into a "feature"-style video — i.e. a reading of an article with appropriately accompanying footage. Turns out I can do it pretty quickly — I could have probably actually done this the same day I wrote the article if I'd been that way inclined.
I'm not going to make any promises that I'll be doing this for every article going forward, but I'd like to do it more often, as it's a means for my more "structured" stuff to get seen by people who prefer to watch and/or listen than read. Getting it done efficiently is reliant on one simple thing that I've changed recently: the fact that when I'm sitting down to play something I know I'm going to write about, I record it. All of it. Then I immediately back it up to Google Photos, which saves a good (albeit compressed) 1080p copy of it that I can retrieve if and when I need it, and then I can delete the raw recording files off my SSD if I need the space.
I take the Google Photos step because if you allow them to compress your footage (which is roughly equivalent to what YouTube does to it, so not ideal for very "busy" modern games, but fine for older stuff or things with less movement) you literally have unlimited online storage. This means that I can keep a complete archive of footage from the things I play, so that when I want to talk about it on, say, a podcast, or a video about a more general topic, I can search for relevant footage in my backup and reuse it as necessary.
I wish I'd thought of this sooner; besides allowing me to make videos more easily, it's also great for taking screenshots. Rather than having to carefully time pressing the screenshot button for when something cool happens — literally impossible to do on PS4, if you've ever tried it, but fine on PC and Switch in most cases — I can simply record a bunch of footage and then pick out the exact frame that something cool happens to use as a screenshot.
This is going to be my default method of working going forward, and hopefully it means you'll see a wider variety of videos as time goes on — assuming I make time to produce them. Like I say, I'm making no promises for the moment… but let's just say I have some "infrastructure" in place now! 🙂
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