Experimenting With YouTube Part 2
I spent most of this morning and afternoon editing video content I captured while playing Sniper Elite Resistance. I assembled 26 minutes of highlights and then recorded a narration. After adding appropriate branding for Contains Moderate Peril, I then uploaded the finished video to YouTube. Sadly, the picture quality was problematic, often becoming pixelated and blocky when there was rapid movement. The volume of my narration was also too low, so I decided to delete the video from my channel. I was somewhat disappointed by this outcome and initially thought that the day had been a waste of time. However, as I write this post, it becomes very clear that this is just part of the learning curve. I have given some thought to the problem and I believe I have determined why this video was not up to the standard of the previous one. Ultimately, this is an invaluable lesson.
In my last post on this subject, I mentioned how I was having problems with audio desync when editing video captured by OBS Studio. This was due to the video material having a variable frame rate. Hence I moved over to XSplit Broadcaster because users on Reddit stated it produced video with a continuous bit rate. Sadly, this change appears to have cured one problem and caused another. The raw video footage captured by XSplit Broadcaster plays fine when editing and there are no audio issues. However, when I encoded the final edit, the results were poor quality. I used exactly the same encoding settings as I did last time, which produced a viable video that I successfully uploaded to YouTube. That was not the case this time. The only element of my production process that changed was the video capture software. I shall therefore switch back to OBS Studio.
There is no guarantee that this is the correct solution to the problem. There are many variables involved in this process and the problem may lie elsewhere. However, swapping back to OBS Studio is a logical step. The software has been updated since I last used it and if the issue with variable frame rates returns, I can always use third party software to resolve the issue and re-encode any video to a constant frame rate of 60 FPS. In the meantime, this project remains a work in progress, so I have come to terms with the possibility that further technical issues may occur along the way. I shall do some further research online, to see if anyone has had a similar problem. Then I’ll record some more game highlights, repeat my production process and see if the video quality improves. I’ll share my results in the next post in this series, as that’s what it now appears to be.
Last year, when I was looking for some suitable video editing software, I found that people would often recommended DaVinci Resolve. It is indeed an outstanding tool but totally beyond my needs. It is also a beast to run and occupies a substantial percentage of real estate on your SSD, so I dismissed this option for practical reasons. Let it suffice to say that finding a suitable product that met my requirements was quite difficult. Video editors often seem to be either quick and easy tools for clipping content on the fly, such as Bandicut (which is great for exactly that purpose) or huge, professional quality behemoths, used by people who work in the appropriate industry. DaVinci Resolve is a textbook example of this. It begs the question what products occupy the middle ground, assuming they exist.