How should I make a Let's Play video?

[joeydohn]

I'm thinking about recording my playthroughs of some games, mainly for my own benefit as my memory isn't so great and I'd like to be able to look back on what I've played but I was thinking I'd upload them to Youtube (or at least clips) so you guys can laugh at me or something.

I was just wondering how I should go about this, I've got fraps to record the games, possibly mic audio too? Handbrake for easy transcoding so I don't have several TBs of whatever fraps spits out. I was thinking I should record my voice separately from the video though so I could omit it for youtube or easily edit it without tampering with the game's audio.

As for games I was thinking Fallout with the recommended mods in GRPG to start with and maybe Black Crypt after that, I'd like to replay Deus Ex with a bunch of mods sometime too.

I don't really know what else to say. Any input, advice in general or on what programs to use and so on would be appreciated.

 

[Azira]

Personally I dislike voiced over video LPs. I find them distracting. I look at the pretty pictures and amuse myself with whatever written commentary there might be (see RK47's ME3 LP for examples of this). With a voiced over video LP I find that I have to concentrate much more and can't really go to and from the LP as I please. As such, I don't follow those.
But I'm perfectly willing to point and laugh, if that's your thing.

 

[Erebus]

I also do prefer video LPs where the comments are written.

 

[joeydohn]

With a voiced over video LP I find that I have to concentrate much more and can't really go to and from the LP as I please. As such, I don't follow those.

I know what you mean, if you stop watching or skip ahead and end up in the middle of a sentence it's annoying. I guess if I do feel like talking to myself I'll also keep it to myself.

I think what I'll do is have a clean video then make some chapters/links to interesting parts of the videos or maybe have a highlights video (I believe I could upload a whole video to youtube then use their online video editing tool to do this). I'll probably post some screenshots and my comments/questions/request for input along with the video too.

For gameplay and saving/loading I'm not sure how best to handle it, on one hand watching me die over and over then reloading certainly won't be entertaining but would it look bad if I cut those out without explanation? Bad editing could make it look awkward if things are jumping around, I think I need to do some research and take some notes.

 

[garren]

Just record the whole thing from start to finish, add commentary if you wish, if you die too many times just skip the dying parts and continue from the point you succeed (inform this somehow to the audience), however I don't think showing yourself die a couple of times is bad. And if you do add some sort of commentary with your voice, for the love of god don't speak during cutscenes or important dialogue etc.

Of course if you have a whiny/shitty and unclear voice then don't speak at all. Oh yea also don't add some sort of minute long intros, those are fucking annoying, just start from gameplay the first second, maybe show starting menu at the beginning of the game but that's it.