Introducing Game Night with Geekshow
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
We wanted to give you guys a sneak peak of the new VidCast coming to Geekshow. This quick clip shows you what to expect. You also get a sneak peak of our new host, Russell. In addition, you can see our set in action.
Mostly, we are putting this up so that the iTunes feed can be created. Once that is on it’s way to being done, you will be able to subscribe in iTunes, and download the episodes to your MP3 player. In addition, look for our inclusion on YouTube, Zune Marketplace, and anywhere else we can find to pimp the show. Got a suggestion of where to post the show? Let us know, and we’ll make it happen.
For the time being, we will be using the YouTube embedded player to play the videos on the site. However, YouTube now supports HD video, so you shouldn’t be losing much in quality. In addition, we have the actual episodes attached as well. So you can choose to download the episode instead, if you prefer.
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I like the set quite a bit. There’s not much to it of course, but I think it will work really well. It’s going to make the games stand out lot more because there’s nothing else really going on. Plus it makes you guys stand out too…
… which I guess is a good or a bad thing depending on your point of view :P
The black table cloth actually makes a big difference when showing things off. I’m glad we ended up going that way.
Annoyingly enough, the LCD screen that you use on the Camcorder doesn’t show the whole screen. So it’s really hard to accurately line up a shot. I’m going to have to get an LCD monitor hooked up when recording to make sure everything is framed right.
You guys could put it up on megavideo. You guys could make money off of the videos through their rewards program. It could help pay for all the games.
We do have a sponsorship with Thoughthammer that will help cover most of the games we will review. However, obviously, that doesn’t cover most of the other expenses we will have. For instance, this whole set probably cost near $100. Part of that was my fault, since I thought originally that the table should be covered in “Geekshow Red”. That ended up being a horrible choice, since the color ended up being off, and it made the rest of the set look kind of bleh.
Then there was the fact that our Audio was ruined for our first 3 episodes. So we had to buy new cables, which ended up not helping as much as hoped. Plus, the backdrop is done with a 7′x7′ PVC support structure, plus enough fabric to cover that area. So yeah, the cost of the games won’t be so bad. But I still need to get a better tripod, some more lights, and a few other things.
We got the first 2 episodes reshot, and it looks pretty good. But one thing I’m going work on before we shoot the next set of episodes, is buying some sort of pedestal. When you watch the first episode, you’ll see what I mean. When talking about the game, we like to display the box lid. Currently, we have to do that in front of us. However, it is quite a bit distracting. And anytime we want to interact with the components of the game, we have this “peeking around the box” problem to overcome. So that’s another thing I have to pick up.
I’m going to be looking into the setup on different sites tonight. So keep the suggestions coming. They will make things a lot easier.
OK…dude you need to make a roadtrip up here … been thinking about doing some short vids for our shows here.
I’m very excited about this show. I love this idea – I better start saving some money for the games I’m sure I’ll want because of this…
let us know when the Itunes feed is up , also is there a way I can download out side of Itunes becouse I cant play mp4 on my mp3 player
Look down at the very bottom of the post, and you will see the option to download the .mov file. Also, the iTunes feed will automatically download the files, and you can watch it in iTunes without needing an MP3 player. If you don’t want to wait for the iTunes feed to come up, you could always just drag and drop the feed address into iTunes, and it will go ahead and subscribe you.
If you go up to the menu at the top of the page, and navigate to Podcasts > Game Night, that page will have the link to the RSS feed on it (At the top). Just drag that to iTunes, and it should subscribe you.
I know I can watch it on Itunes and most likey that how i will , but sinces I mp3 player is not an Ipod is will not work with my player , The MP3 i download will like ( all the other podcast ) but video is diffent , but that okay it short I can just watch it on my computer .
Thank u anyways for your help .
PS I already try the download link and it just plays it , it dont let me save it
So, does your MP3 player play videos? If so, I’m sure I can help you get it there. You’ll have to let me know what player it is, though.
I’m excited about these when they start coming out Russell seems super awesome!
Thank you. :D
Not doing a bad job to start off with. When me and Wayne first recorded GeekiN, I was literally trembling. Add in a Camera, and the situation is even more intimidating. I have to get used to the camera myself, so I know he does. :P
No I don’t. The camera loves me! :D Not really, but we can pretend.
My main issue will be getting over my tendency to overact with anything I do, and you will see what I mean with the first episode. I try to act just like I always do, but it’s hard to do that on demand! :(
First off, the crack at Wayne was unexpected and funny. I think the cool aspect of this will alco be seeing our hosts as they talk about something. Facial expressions convey more emotions than audio so it’ll be cool to see when and if one of you loves a game the other despises. Also Russell, awesome gravatar
Looking good. Can’t wait to see the first episode. :-D
looks good guys, never really been into board games myself but you never know you guys could persuade me to give them a try.
This looks like it will be fun guys. I can’t wait to see the first episode. My favorite board game of all time is Clue, but I like a lot of others that I have played including stuff like Catan, Risk, Monopoly, and the co-op LOTR board game that I have. I enjoy playing board games, but I don’t have anyone to play them with now. It was much easier back in college…
Finding players is always the most difficult part. Even I have problems with that a lot of the time. But hey, I even know of a few games that play solid by yourself. :)
I totally forgot to mention LOTR Risk! That’s the version that I actually own. :D
I was hoping to have the first episode ready to go tomorrow. But it currently looks like either very late tomorrow, or early Thursday.
Editing isn’t so bad. But I’m still having fits, trying to figure out the optimal way to go between the editing program (Final Cut Express) and the lettering program (LiveType). The problem is that unless I’m completely doing something wrong, Livetype gets no audio from FinalCut. So I stuck trying to add stuff without sound cues.
Sweet I’m looking forward to the Buffy and Firefly episodes.
I do in fact have the Buffy board game. It’s pretty fun. Holds in on my top 10 list. There are different scenarios you can play. The bad part is that it only goes to like season 3 or something. And it’s way out of print.
Looks good guys. Massive props on the set. It looks fantastic.
Can’t wait to start watching. I’m a big boardgame fan…though I didn’t know there was a boardgame community.
The New Years before last me and some friends just stayed in for a cruisy one and played boardgames all night. It was awesome. I captured my friend on Mousetrap and won the game right on the stroke of midnight, no joke. Great New Years!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com is a resource I can’t recommend enough. you will probably hear me talk about it in upcoming episodes.
Basically, the site is a huge database of board games. If the game exists, there is a 95% chance it exists on BGG. They will have information on the number of players, the time each game takes, who created it, distributed it, published it, etc. There will be pictures for most games, discussions on the rules, etc.
It really is the perfect tool for someone that plays board games.
O man! That site is awesome. Thanks for recommending it.
The show is now listed in iTunes, for those that use the service. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=305085202
For those of you with Video iPods, if you could test this episode out and let me know how it runs, that would be great. The format I used is supposed to be iPod compatible, but you just never know.
It download into iTunes OK and plays fine within iTunes. I can’t get it to sync with my iPod Touch so there could be some compatibility issue. I’ve tested other video podcasts and they work fine.
What format are you using for the original file? do you have the full Quicktime to convert it to other formats or smaller files ?
For info: all the video podcasts I have downloaded onto my iPod are MPEG-4 video files (.m4v) using the video codec H.264. It looks like your file is a Quicktime (.mov) file using a MPEG-4 video codec.
The files are created using Quicktime conversion via Final Cut. I’ll research how to get an .m4v file.
I’ve just used Quicktime and managed to convert your .mov file to a .m4v file in 3 minutes. File size dropped to 11.8 MB.
I’m going to assume it didn’t maintain HD format.
Unfortunately not, the price you pay for smaller files. You can also use Handbrake (the one I wrote an article on) to convert your original .mov file.
This kept it in HD and converted it to a .mp4 file using the H.264 codec – file size 35 MB done in 3 minutes.
However, I think the iPod issue is not related to the file type. The iPod Touch (and I suspect the other iPod Video players), do not like full HD resolution. If I reduce the resolution of your file to 480×70 it works fine on the iPod. At 1280×720 it just won’t have it.
Good suggestions. I suppose I will convert two versions. The HD one, and then the iPod friendly one for the feed. HD is a big sticking point for me. It makes viewing the components and such a lot easier. But it’s all about options, ultimately.
It is like silent movies changed to “talkies”, but in reverse.
Is it possible to chose what kind of quality to download? I chose to subscribe by draging the link to itunes and it started to d/l the show. But almost 100mb for 1.50m is abit much because I guess your shows will be longer when you actually review or I hope so atleast.
Could you make a d/l with less quality but abit more friendly size?
Not until I find a sane way to do it. Each version is going to add significantly to the amount of time it takes to Upload/transcode/etc. I’ll try and come up with a solution ASAP. But hopefully one of the places I upload to will offer a lower quality version for download.
There is always YouTube, however. It’s not a download option (though there are tools to download a youtube version). But It’s available on demand.
I’ll try and come up with something, but it may not be available immediately for the first episode.
The first episode would have been up tonight, but I’m an editing noob. I had everything ready to go when I realized I didn’t do color correction. It looks a lot better with it on, so I decided to go back and do that.
So from that little change that took like 6 mins to implement is going to take like 12 hours extra to get the movie up. I apparently had to re-render the whole movie before I could export (Can anyone verify this? For Final Cut). Which takes about 4 hours for a 20 min video. Then I have to export it to two different formats. iPod, and HD. HD takes about 4 hours, iPod takes about 2. Then, I have to split the video up into YouTube bite sizes. Then I have to upload 2 versions of the main video, and 3 segments of Youtube footage, which is again like 4-6 hours.
So yeah, a lot of extra work for such a minor issue. But I want the first episode to look as good as possible.
The weird thing, is that the sizes were freaking huge. The 20 mins of HD took like 1gig, and the iPod version took like 255 megs. So, yeah. Gotta do some more setting tinkering. I also need to find a site where I can embed an HD video that doesn’t have the 10 mins length limit that YouTube has.
“I also need to find a site where I can embed an HD video that doesn’t have the 10 mins length limit that YouTube has.”
Dailymotion
Thanks. Checking it out. I still want Youtube’s viewer base, I’m just not keen on posting 3 embedded players for 1 episode. YouTube’s 10 min rule needs to go the way of the dinosaur for users that can prove they are entirely original content. I understand the complications and the copyright issues at stake. But for the love of God, it’s Google. I expect more from them. Oddly enough, does Google Video have 10 min restrictions?
…150meg limit. WTF. Oh sure, you can upload a 20 minute long HD video, it just can’t be bigger than 150megs. :P
It doesn’t look like it has the time restrictions
http://www.google.com/video/upload/video_faq.html
Looks like the episode won’t be up until sometime after 7 tonight. I wanted to get the file size of the HD version down. So, I am running an H.264 compression rather than a straight MP4 version. H.264 has good quality for the size, at the cost of a lot of encoding time. Hopefully it will be worth it. My prior version was 1.1 gigs. Not gonna cut it. :P
I can’t seem to reply to your other comment :/
Google video will most likely have a limit since its owned by the same people but luckily i have access to a join unlimited account for video games :D
However you can also get one kinda like it if you become a youtube partner. You need original content and need to be able to get a few subscribers and views which im sure you could get pretty easy. Also i think you would get paid for doing it.
http://www.youtube.com/partners
Im not a partner so i don’t know everything but you get over 10min limit though youtube might have to check the video first. You should look in to it. Youtube can be a bitch to upload files but when you’re up on knowing how you could get a 40min HD video in under 400mb, uhh youtube HD that is.
You might be able to upload it on our account but then i dont have say of the other people and then it won’t really have its own geekshow youtube main page and stuff.
Oh and if you really needed fast access to more than 10min site try Veoh.com. Streaming quality is questionable however you can download the original file using the site or the site tools unlike youtube.
Everything is uploading now. The file sizes aren’t any better. Guess I’ll have to play around with that later. But it will be a couple hours to get everything uploaded…
♫ It’s the final countdown. ♫
Yeah Yeah. Believe me. I had no idea it would take this long. :P
I’m waiting on things to finish uploading at this point. My computer at home is uploading to Youtube. My computer at work is uploading to ExposureRoom. Youtube has been uploading all day. It creeps along. YouTube is slow.
Then, when I get home and have access to an FTP client, I’ll upload the iPod version of the file, and everything will be ready to go. What an experience. 1 day to edit, 2 days to render, convert, split, and upload :P
Oh, BTW, The new iPod version is like 96 megs. For 21 minutes, that’s pretty good.