Support Tips for Making Let's Plays?

Do you have any tips for making Let's Plays? I've already bought a Yeti microphone and the Elegato. Plus, my laptop has the necessary programs.

Is there anything I should be aware of when posting or creating the videos?

 

• Make sure the video quality is good; at the very least 720p. If you can manage 1080p and 60FPS, that'd be the best for console games.
• Don't talk all of the time for people who want to hear the game's dialogue, and by the same token, don't have long spans of silence except for during voiced cut scenes.
• Cut your LP's into desirable chunks of length. I find half an hour to one hour to be a good length for one part.
• Take time to adjust your audio levels. You don't want your voice to be 10x louder than the game, or vice-versa. Make it a good balance.
• Don't over-edit. An intro and outro is fine to have, but let the actual LP speak for itself otherwise.

I think a great example to learn from is the Silent Hill 2 LP by Two Best Friends Play. Though of course they had the benefit of more than just one person at the helm, they knew when to commentate and when to shut up. Pat knew the game well enough to give interesting trivia and explain some things, while Matt hadn't played much and thus had a newbie's perspective for the most part, so having his reactions was interesting.

 

So what kind of computer should I get?

 

Alright I don't mean to be "that guy" but in all honesty if you aren't doing this from the start strictly for your enjoyment, chances are this won't go very far for you.

What I'm trying to say is work with what you have and if you like it still after making a significant amount of videos (or if you stream, wait until you've streamed a lot). It is very ill advised to put any significant amount of money into this unless it is really needed.

Since from what I understand, you are starting off. You do not need to waste all of your money on the "essential tools" to making good content. Most people want to make content on YouTube/twitch/etc for a few reasons. Some of which being popularity and money. If that's you, don't waste your time.

If however you want to do this strictly for fun. Start off with the "basic stuff" until you get the hang of it AND actually get an audience (which not a lot people talk about, but it might not ever happen).

The entertainment industry is by no means "nice". Also don't get it in your head that spending "x" amount of money, time, effort, etc, will bring you results. Not everyone can be the big YouTube channel or entertainer. Which is why I must stress if you want to do this for fun: go for it. If not, ehhh that's just a bad mindset to start off with.

 

Welp it's a bit late for that...
I've already spent over $200 on the game capture card and the Blue Yeti Microphone. However, my laptop lags very considerably when it comes to using the Elgato. That's why I wanted to know about the kind of laptop or desktop.

 

Cost-wise, a desktop would be far better, but the computer depends on a few factors:

• is your computer workstation in the vicinity of your console?
• how often are you planning on moving all of your equipment each day or week?
• what else are you planning on doing with your computer beside streaming?

If you think you'll be moving around a lot, you might want to invest in a laptop that has at least 8GBof RAM. For the CPU, I'd recommend at least an Intel i5, but you can't go wrong with an i7. Just make sure it's able to run around 2-3GHz.

Feature-wise, get something that at least has USB2.0 ports, if not USB3.0. This will really help in the transfer of files, so you can easily store your recordings on a hard drive (since I recommend putting them on an external.)

Also, I personally recommend you avoid any HP computers, especially laptops. I see rampant stories about overheating issues.

If you don't have to move your gear around a lot, building your own desktop will be a LOT better value for you, saving you potentially half the cost of an equivalent-performance laptop. If you want to go this route, I (and I'm sure some others here) will try to give some guidance.

You should give us what kind of budget you're looking to spend on all of this too.

ALL THAT SAID: pay strong attention to Princess ♥'s post. This is not something you are guaranteed to find success in, but I can't say you shouldn't try at least.

What recording program do you plan to use? I personally use OBS since it's free and pretty good quality, but I only stream PC games with it right now.

 

I've heard about building your computer from tons of forums. However, to be honest that does not interest me in the slightest. I just want a computer/laptop that simply gets the job done when it comes to streaming. I have two other computers to do other tasks that don't involve streaming.

As for recording programs I was thinking of using Fraps however your program also sounds nice.

In addition, I don't plan on moving a lot, and my budget's maximum is $500 (which means that I am looking for a rare computer that's cheap but is good at streaming.)

 

The thing is, I don't think you're going to have much luck finding a pre-built system that can handle streaming at a decent quality (720p for me) for under $500. Building your own computer is simply the most cost-efficient way to go about all of it.

For instance, check out some of these build guides that are set under $500. They can all handle FAR more than pre-built systems at the same prices, with the only real caveats being the lack of an Operating System (since they assume you have one ready to install, or you'll just use Steam OS.) I think this one's a damn good value for the price, and it might be even cheaper now to build it than the time the guide went up.

Building your own PC is insanely easy too. If you're absolutely stuck on using a pre-built system, I can't help much...

Try out both Fraps and OBS to see which one you like best.

 

Whoa are you sure about that? Because my laptop can pump out 720p on Youtube and it was under $500. This guy also did not build his PC. In fact he told me that I really don't need a powerful PC anyway.

Plus, I really want to start making Let's Play in June. It seems like building the PC would take too much time since I'll have to find the parts, review them online, order them, and wait for them to ship to my house. Plus, I only get paid once a month because well Adsense...

I'm not saying that building a PC is bad it's just I would probably do it further down the line in my Let's Plays. I really just want a computer better than my crappy Toshiba one which I got in 2012.

 

Streaming 720p videos from YouTube and streaming 720p video to a service like Twitch or Hitbox aren't the same thing.

My laptop was €400, I can stream 1080p from Crunchyroll flawlessly but streaming 480p to Twitch is a pain.

Streaming from and to something are two very different tasks.

 

Oh hell no! I don't wish to do Twitch at all! I just want to upload Youtube videos.

And yes it was my mistake for saying streaming.

 

Spending 100's (maybe 1000's) of dollars on something that you don't even know if you'll enjoy / continue doing for a while, is kind of a bad move financially. Just throwing that out there, if you are rich/don't care about saving your money then by all means do whatever you want (I mean you can do that regardless, but still) otherwise I'd just start off with the bare minimum in every category.

And saying something like "well I already bought 'x' I might as well get the rest" is also very ehhhhhhh. Trust me man, I don't do YouTube anymore and the stuff I used just sits there. Granted I use it for other purposes considering I am a musician, but not everyone has the money to burn and considering you are asking us for help, chances are you don't either.

 

Lol that post sounded like you wanted me to quit while I'm ahead.

 

Dude listen to my words. This isn't personal by any means.

If you want to do this strictly for fun and have the money to burn on the stuff you think you "need", then go for it.

If not, then please for the love of God think about this. For one thing you plan on buying all of this stuff before you even find out if you like making LP's, are good at them in any way. are entertaining, etc. You're literally counting your chickens before they hatch. A lot of people (including some of my good friends that I met while doing youtube) don't do it anymore because they plateaued due to various reasons. One of the most common one was that the content they were pumping out just wasn't as good as all the other people who are already popular. Every single one of them spent a lot of money on this "hobby", and (at least the logical one) regretted putting so much money into a risk like this. Did he like making videos? Yes, but was the stress (because boy oh boy there will be stress), overall time consumption, and money spent, worth it? No. This is especially true because making money off of this stuff (a lot of people's reason for doing this, can't blame them but it is true) is harder than ever. Making a full dive into this many years ago worked for those guys because nobody else did this. However now this is so established that the chances of succeeding (depending on your definition of success that is) is very low.

Listen bro, I am not trying to "crush your dreams" or anything, I just want you to be realistic with this. If you were loaded up the wazoo this wouldn't be an issue, but if that was the case chances are you would have already bought a new computer for this as it is considering you've already bought stuff for making LP's that can be very costly, without even trying it first.

If you don't want financial advice about a money-hole then feel free to ignore everything I've said, but you asked. I merely answered.

 

I know what you are telling and here you but I don't think believe I should be worried too much.

For starters, I'll be planning to this ever since the Fall of 14. So ever since I've been slowly but surely gaining some popularity and standing on various social medias. This way I can gain a bit of leverage on YouTube since people already know about my personality. I also know that there are TONS of LP personalities on YouTube such as GameGrumps, Markiplier, MasaeAnela, Scykoh, Lucahjin. And while that did discourage me at first since there were people out there with awesome LP's, I learned that it's much better to learn from them and not to get discouraged by their talent. It also kind of helps to look at their first YouTube videos and realize they did not start from the top either.

Plus, unlike you gaming and the internet are the only categories that I am reasonably good at. I don't have the talent or patience to do be musician or anything else like you could. Another difference is that I have friends that have been successful in LPing. That guy I mentioned a few posts back was one of them. Plus, that guy also started in the exact situation that I am and is pulling it off quite well. So both him and my other friends give me confidence that I am capable of doing the same. I expect this to be more than just a hobby for me. So in short I just want to know if I need a better laptop for my Let's Plays. However, I suppose you'll discredit all of what've I said and state that I still need "experience." Which is great to hear but that's not what I'm looking for in this topic. I just want to know from your experience what kind of laptop/computer best suited you when you were LPing. Even if you believe that I am in over my head for buying the materials that usually lead to a great LP instead of gaining actually experiencing LPing first hand.

 

For one: you're spending money on a computer, so why would you choose to not get the most value out of hundreds of dollars?

For two: that link is broken.

For three: you're drastically overestimating how long it takes to build a computer. The PC next to my laptop? Took one day to go to Fry's Electronics, buy the parts, build the computer, and have it functioning. Ordering online? Maybe a week or so for the parts to come in. Building the PC itself only takes as long as you take to do Lego's, since that's essentially what building a PC is.

This site, which I already linked for you, will cut down the time you spend on finding, reviewing, and ordering parts, while also fetching prices for each one.

Do you have content already uploaded?

 

First off are you sure it's broken? I just clicked on it a few seconds ago and it worked fine because it took me to Ka-kashi's game channel.

Second of all I'm clearly not interesting in building my PC at least not yet. So, I'm sorry if I'm not capable of being understood. I appreciate the help but I have no experience in building computers and I still don't plan on doing something like that yet.

Third, yes I have uploaded content to YouTube before. How else could I have responded to your 720p question from before?

 

Better computer = faster editing

Better internet = faster uploading

Desktops > Laptops

If you have ever played with legos as a child, or plugged something into an outlet, you can build your own computer. It's literally that simple

And what leads to a great LP (or anything in the entertainment business) 9 times out of 10 is the person not the stuff.

 

Gotcha so desktop no laptop.

Now what sort of desktop did you or your friends use when you were making LP's? Was it beneficial, would you recommend using that? Or do you also believe that I should build my own PC now instead of waiting until further in the future to do that since I don't have all the money with me now? I'll probably get paid in May.