Making videos and other bits and pieces

It’s been an odd week, with lots of rain and too little sleep, but I have been fairly productive. First up is my latest how-to video: ‘ESO – how to build a pointy wall’. It’s quite a long video so I don’t expect anyone to watch it all the way through!

The reason I’m showcasing this video is because of the new skills I’ve learned using VideoStudio Pro 2021, my video editing software.

The first thing I learned was how to create short, animated visual directions. The video below is only a few seconds long and demonstrates what I mean about a ‘visual direction’:

The animation is created from within VideoStudio Pro 2021 using the Painting Tool. I can see this tool getting a lot of use once I start making how-to videos for self-publishing.

The second thing I learned was how to manually fade the background music in and out. VideoStudio Pro 2021 has a feature called ‘Audio Ducking’ which is supposed to make the music go quiet when there’s narration on the video. The feature is okay, but I wasn’t too impressed with when it decided to raise and lower the volume of the music. So I went looking for a manual solution and found one. 😀

The blue track is the music track, and the purple one is for narration. When I’m talking, I want the music to be very soft, but when there’s a gap in the narration, I want the music to swell. The section of the tracks I’ve circled in red is one of those gaps. As you can see, the white line showing the volume of the music goes up – i.e. becomes louder – while I’m not talking.

To make VideoStudio Pro display the audio controls, press the icon circled in red below:

Controlling the volume of the music manually is a bit time-consuming and ‘clunky’, but I think the end result is much better.

In case anyone is interested, the music was created by Peritune, a Japanese composer who writes lovely, non-jarring music that compliments my videos beautifully.

And last but not least, I’ve just made my new Youtube ‘handle’ :

I’m not quite sure how the handle is actually supposed to work, but apparently in time, it will be used to personalise the URL of my Youtube channel. A small thing, but Indies have to grab their branding where they find it!

It’s Sunday here in Melbourne, and for a wonder the rain has stopped so I’m going to do a garden promenade with the animals.

Have a great weekend,
Meeks

A bit of YouTube news

Just a few days ago I reached my first major milestone on Youtube – 100 subscribers! Thank you to everyone who visited my channel and subscribed. You made me feel that I wasn’t wasting my time. On such a new venture, that kind of support is gold, pure gold.

In further news, two of my videos have reached milestones of their own: 1000 views, and a couple more are getting there very quickly so I’m thrilled. This is one of the new ones that’s getting a lot of views:

If you click on ‘Watch on YouTube’ you’ll be able to see a larger version of the video.

I would like to say that my how-to and reading videos are doing as well, but they’re not, at least not yet. I hope that in time I’ll be able to use YouTube for other aspects of my work. Till then, I’m still learning, still improving and, most importantly, still enjoying the process. D

cheers,
Meeks

Inching towards an audiobook

There, I’ve said it! At some point in the not-so-distant future, I’m going to try my hand, or voice, on an audiobook, and this 3 minute video is my first attempt at ‘acting out’ a scene:

I’ll probably cringe with embarrassment tomorrow, but for now I’m kind of proud of my first attempt, especially as it was miles harder than I thought it would be. Narrating something à la Sir David Attenborough is one thing, trying to make a story come to life is another thing entirely. It has been an immensely valuable learning experience though.

You know how we’re told to read our writing out loud to help with the editing? Well, acting it out loud exposes the shortcomings of the prose even more! I actually had to change what I’d written to give the scene enough oomph.

See if you can pick the differences. 😀 This is the ‘original’ :

“The Senior had just reached the alcove again when it finally saw the obvious: only the Triad, and the Acolyte, knew who had actually done what. And that meant the truth could be told. Only the roles needed to be re-imagined, leaving itself as the conscientious healer who stayed by the Female’s side until the other returned!
The truth, but not the truth. It was perfect, or almost so. The Second already knew about the threat from the Seven, so it would see why the truth could not be told, plus the lie was close enough to the truth for it to carry off the deception without giving everything away. Which left only the two younger iVokh to worry about.
In its weakened state, the Junior might not even remember the rescue, but if it did, casting it as the hero would mesh with how it saw itself. Plus it already disliked the Acolyte, so that would fit quite nicely, leaving only the Acolyte itself.
The young iVokh would not like being blamed for the Junior’s faults, but it was intelligent and ambitious. If it were told about the Seven’s ultimatum, it would see itself as being both important and trusted. That would appeal to its ambition, and it would feel proud to be trusted with such a vital task…
…ki, not task, mission…
If the Acolyte could be made to believe the fate of the Triad depended on its intelligence and resourcefulness, it would not betray them, at least not to the Voice…
…but afterward?…
Being no stranger to ambition itself, the Senior had no doubt that the young iVokh would try to profit from its knowledge at some point, but as it had no intention of allowing any of them to return to the Settlement, it was not particularily worried. Kohoh was a dangerous time of year, for everyone.”

Book 2, The Suns of Vokhtah series

Messing around with videos is starting to become useful as well as fun. Who knew? lol

cheers,
Meeks

ESO player housing: Moon Sugar Meadow

I completed this house some time ago, but my video capturing and editing skills have only just caught up. This video includes a number of new features, including a soundtrack:

I still have a lot to learn but I now know how to use the ESO in-game camera a bit better. It doesn’t matter how good your editing skills may be if the raw footage is poor quality.

On the video editing front, I’ve learned how to:

• Cut and splice the video footage with still images to create a smooth flowing visual narrative,
• Focus on important images using freeze frame,
• Narrate the important ‘bits’,
• Add a ‘soundtrack’ to help tie the whole thing together.

I’m particularly proud of the soundtrack as I was just experimenting, and it worked. lol

For anyone who’s interested, I recorded roughly ten minutes of video just for the background music. Then I took the video into VideoStudio Pro 2021 [the software I use for editing] and ‘split’ the audio out of the video. This left me with just an audio track. I then added the audio track to the completed video.

What all that means is that the video is made up of three layers:

• the edited video [complete with sound effects like bird calls and footsteps],
• the voice over narration, and
• the music soundtrack.

Once my skills improve a bit more, I hope to be able to create how-to videos and maybe, one day, a trailer for my books. That’s all in the future though. For now, I’m still on a massive learning curve. Thanks for coming along for the ride. 🙂

cheers,
Meeks

New toys, new skills

Some months back, I invested in Corel VideoStudio Pro, as well the Action! video capture program. One helps me take good quality video footage, the other helps me turn that raw footage into something a great deal more professional. Unfortunately, both have required quite a steep learning curve, but I’m proud to say I can now do a proper ‘voice over’^[1].

In time, I hope to make short how-to videos to complement my how-to posts. You saw a tiny snippet of that in my last post. For now though, I’m doing player housing walkthroughs while I learn the ropes. This is my latest walkthrough:

A narrated walkthrough of the Undercity

This particular housing project is set in an area that looks like a real wasteland, so I tried to reproduce some of the things I visualised in The Vintage Egg, in particular the story about the Christmas Roast. I think I managed to fudge the grim feel of the Undercity, but I couldn’t quite re-create the high tech architecture. Still, I had a lot of fun. 🙂

I’m off to practise some more new skills.

cheers,
Meeks

^[1] My first efforts saw me recording the ‘narration’ at the same time as I was trying to film the video. Okay for simple things, next to impossible for more complex things. Now I can focus on the video first, then record the narration over the top of the video. Still need a script but it’s miles easier.]

Last video…promise!

The reason I’m posting this short, 1 minute video is because I’m thrilled with my new editor – the Videopad video editor. I’m only using the free version at the moment, but I will be getting the paid version very soon.

So what does this editor do? Well for starters, it allows me to:

• create separate video and audio tracks,
• add in still images,
• do voice-overs after the fact,
• add groovy transitions [I didn’t in this one, but I will next time],
• add multiple tracks – e.g. video, music, narration etc,
• and slow the audio and video down to an absolute crawl so I can cut stuff out at just the right moment!

Honestly, after just a few hours of concentrated play, I’m loving this editor! My thanks to Dawn for recommending it. 😀

Oh, and here’s the video I did all my learning on:

Comments are off coz I don’t want to push our friendship tooooo much. lol

Hugs,
Meeks

Meeka’s Youtube Channel

I wasn’t game to say anything until I had a reasonable number of videos up, but I think I’m finally there, so…this is the link to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHW0WF_RtBjPLBA0ervswtA/featured

Down the bottom you can see a number of playlists. They’re just categories of videos. The how-to playlist only contains one video, but in time, I intend to create videos for all of the relevant sections of the free ‘How to print your novel with Kindle Direct Publishing’ book.

I’m not there yet in terms of skill, but the video below is my first attempt to do a how-to for the ESO housing editor:

This video will be the first in a series, but boy was it hard to do. Having a chatty narration ‘style’ is one thing, waffling on is another.

Lesson number 1: boring viewers is a cardinal sin!

Lesson number 2: waffling on is boring, especially when the viewer only wants information. 😦

As my narration style is naturally, um, ‘chatty’, I’ve had to do a lot of cutting and splicing to get rid of the waffle. Great practice in editing, not so great for the sound quality which waxed and waned with each splice. In the end, I was forced to do one long take with deliberate pauses so I could edit out the worst of the gaffs without affecting the sound quality too much.

Those hiccups aside, I’m really enjoying this learning curve. If any of you are already experienced in creating videos or have recommendations for tools to use, I’d love to hear them. I’m currently using RecMaster which is a great entry level video recorder, but maybe not quite powerful enough for my ambitious projects.

I also have a favour to ask – could you please subscribe to my channel? Youtube will allow me to have a customised URL for my channel – i.e. something with my name in it instead of hieroglyphics – but only after I reach the magic number of 100 subscribers. At the moment I have 4. It’s a big ask, I know, but I would really appreciate your help on this one.

Have a wonderful weekend, me lovelies. 🙂

Hugs,
Meeks

ESO Housing – Cyrodilic Jungle House

This house was my first major ‘renovation/extension’ in-game, and despite how small the house is, it’s still one of my favourites:

For a larger display area, I recommend that you watch the video on Youtube. As before, I’ve turned comments off.

cheers,
Meeks

ESO housing – Lion’s Cradle

This is another video walkthrough that I’m posting, partly for posterity and partly because I’m proud of the level of editing I was able to achieve. Still not ‘professional’ by a very long country mile, but getting there.

I’ve turned comments off as these posts are mostly for gamers.

cheers,
Meeks

Housing in ESO – Oops…Lucky Cat Landing in Southern Elsweyr

Apologies! I mixed up the names of two of the houses, both of which are getting videos. The first video is of ‘LUCKY CAT LANDING’, not Cat’s Cradle. -sigh- It’s the second one that’s called ‘Lion’s Cradle’.

I’ve updated the subtitles etc but otherwise the video is exactly the same as before. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend watching it on Youtube as it’s much bigger than what you’ll see here on WordPress:

My cinematography is still a bit too fast and ‘jerky’, but I’m getting pretty good at the editing. The finished video is at least a third smaller than the raw video I shot. Ums, ahs, stammers and oopsies all gone. 😀 Oh, and I learned how to put in subtitles!

cheers,
Meeks