I believe we’re starting to approach the home stretch of the Chrono Cross playthrough on PSX Mania. If you’ve been following my Completion List Google Doc, you’ll notice how the Twitch VOD links are easily accessible, yet YouTube uploads have not been posted. What I am attempting to accomplish with the YouTube videos is to give them their own 15 second intro for each game. Here’s a sampling of what I mean:

First off, I have the opening title card. PSX Mania logo (from MS Paint to GIMP lol), the game cover art with what number game it was in this challenge, on the background of PaRappa the Rapper (truly the only character that should be considered the PlayStation mascot). After eight seconds, we move onto the second and final title card:

We have a basic breakdown of the important pieces of information to know upfront. On the left we have the game name, the year of its release, how long it took to beat the game, as well as the overall rating that I gave it, all with Crash Bandicoot breaking through towards the viewer. The right side has the PSX Mania logo, another shot of the box art, as well as my Twitter and website links below that. That’s on screen for seven seconds. All of this is accompanied by the PlayStation start up tones. Again forgive how absolutely amateurish this looks; I’m a writer, not a visual artist! Down the line I’m sure I’ll start making these title cards look a bit cleaner, more lively. But in the interim, we have a cohesive introduction to every game.

Beyond that, creating a Twitch VOD is quick and easy. As I’m more focusing on the YouTube uploads having an intro to accompany the game, I’m just hacking out the stream start and making the highlight. This way folks will be able to see things right away, without much or any fuss. Due to some issues I’ve had directly downloading a VOD from Twitch to edit and upload for YouTube, I make the highlight on Twitch, then private upload the stream to YouTube, where I then download from there to dress up, and then reupload. The downloads are never always at max speed, so they take time to download if it’s something like an 8 hour highlight.

Oh, there’s this whole issue of never having previous video editing experience, so it’s been trial by fire, where I already got burned on an edit I made and had to redo. No video editing experience, no actual Photoshop experience, the hell am I doing?! But there’s also the exporting/rendering time of these longer videos as well. I can’t do it while streaming because it eats up all resources, so I have to do it before a stream (if it’s not a long video) or overnight after a stream is over (if it’s an 8 hour one, or one I had to splice together because of an internet drop splitting it into two VOD’s). In the future I may use my laptop to do video editing stuff with, have that on and going separate from my PC, and then able to stream without an issue if I am rendering. As newb as I am to video editing, like with most things I do, I am very anal with making sure things come out the way I want them to, or as close to that as I possibly can do, so that might delay stuff as well.

I’m not aiming for TMR quality uploads, as he has a level of video editing experience that far trumps mine. I just want to add something other than “boom, I’m playing this, here it is from the start with no kind of intro piece, now suck it!”, just cause I think it gives a better impression that way. I do have several videos totally done, however I also want to slowly start the releasing of them, not necessarily in a strict time frame, but both in consistency and not so many at once as well. Got to build some anticipation and all!

But that’s why the YouTube VOD links haven’t been available as of now. I think the second week of March I’ll start uploading them. I know this is a lot of meticulous planning for stuff that won’t get many views for a long time (if ever), but I like to think forward. I want to be prepared and plan properly to what may come in a perfect world.

If you haven’t stopped by yet, come take a look at my Twitch channel! To find out when I’ll be going live, follow me on Twitter as well! I’m trying to settle on a schedule for the time being (it’s hard to do consecutive days, at least for me since I’m not conditioned to as well as I thought I’d be) but here it is as of now (watch on Twitter for any days I have as TBA, all are EST time zone starts):

Sunday: TBA/Off
Monday: 9pm-?
Tuesday: TBA-?
Wednesday: 9pm-?
Thursday: TBA/9pm-?
Friday: 9pm-?
Saturday: 9pm-?

Hope you can stop by during a stream! Outside of Madden NFL 2000 coming up after Chrono Cross, another non-spoiler teaser of what’s coming up through the first 25 games:

• An epic 8-bit franchise’s first (and only) 32-bit appearance
• A game based on a movie based on a game
• Another kids game, but likely not as hilarious as Play With The Teletubbies
• One of the greatest Zelda clones ever (at least I remember it being epic, though hard as hell)
• A launch game for the console
• A sequel to a game that was originally designed to be a 32-bit Streets of Rage
• A game based off a kids movie
• A game based off a very much not kids movie