My first try with youtube was such a tremendous success  (ahem) that I had to try again. The main problem of previous video was a really crappy sound. I did lots of tests since and discovered that my headset is producing decent sound quality with audacity. However, if I try to record directly from lightworks or OBS, the sound becomes awfully crappy. I don’t have an explanation yet.

Today’s topic is a response to tripa’s challenge to do a dodecaedron with a straigth edge and a compass. I found it quite interesting as it allowed me to explore other alternatives.

Let’s go to the gory details:

• Shooting is done using my reflex (Canon EOS 550D) and a 28-55 optic (if I remember correctly). The setup involved holding the reflex vertically and connecting it to my computer via USB. The challenges were mostly that the optic I used is a zoom and tended to fall and change focal and that the vibrations tended to shake slightly the video. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the video quality
• Shooting was done with my crazy parrot trying to help. Not sure if she was successful to help but she had a great time.
• I used lightworks, again, and I’m still not convinced. I was unable to zoom / trim my still pictures in the video editor (hence these nice black band) and export is limited to 720p, which is a pity knowing the initial material is 1080p… Some UI issue killed me as well, I have a feeling  that I’m not in control and it makes me slightly uncomfortable. Especially, I liked the concept of using subclips and reusing them, but I was hoping for references rather than copies : if I make a “introduction” edit and use it in my main edit, it seems like editing the intro one has no effect on the main one….
• Getting decent light is not trivial either, probably need to work on that one, I played easy as it was dailight and I had natural diffuse light (thanks to the snow falling from the sky)
• I used some background music that I took from bensound.com. I checked 10 times and it seems to be really fine with what I’m doing, I’m no musician but I found having a soft background sound helped. I definitely should do better with regards to music editing, I feel really crappy (no soft transition, lack of music at some point). I hope it does not cover my voice.
• I recorded the voice using audacity, then exporting sub-sample and mixing them. Not using face video means not having to care about AV synchro 🙂
• I inserted a title and some rolling credentials, was surprisingly easy !

My conclusion, it’s not trivial to do but it’s doable if you’re fine with a sub-par result. If you aim at higher quality, then the effort grows exponentially (and so does the headache)