Podcasting Ability/Status

Anything related to PR, release planning and any other non-technical idea how to move the project forward should be discussed here.
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WeirdSexy
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Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by WeirdSexy »

As you all know, I've been unable to regularly (or at least punctually) produce release commentaries and the like for quite some time now. Since v0.30.0, really.

The reasons why have changed over time, but aren't really important.

Since then, I've been asked on several occasions by the community to produce commentaries for releases and project changes such as the switch to OSG. Often I've accepted the challenge but have been unable to deliver. When I do this, I"m setting false expectations and waste the time of anyone who has helped out with writing scripts and so forth. I don't want to do that anymore.

My biggest obstacle currently is that I still do not have a full audio/video production environment since I let my adobe subscription run out. I need to independently resolve this and other personal barriers before I can agree to do any more commentary work for this project.

N.B. since I'm essentially posting this in response to a PM I received yesterday inquiring if I could use any help with respect to producing commentaries - I'm sorry, but there's really nothing anyone can do.

I will update my status as it changes. It has been a pleasure to contribute to this project in the past and I hope to do so again in the future.
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Okulo
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by Okulo »

That's okay though, WeirdSexy. You've done tons of presentations for releases where we had some really important stuff to show off. Looking at the roadmap, OpenMW is almost feature complete. The past few releases have mostly had bugfixes, and though the features for OpenMW-CS are great, it's difficult to make a fun video out of them. I wouldn't feel too guilty about it. :)
commodore256
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Joined: 17 Sep 2015, 05:16

Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by commodore256 »

Maybe we should save the next commentary for 1.0. I bet you should have the money by then and if not, it should be easy for a few people to pitch in $5 for a month of Adobe or a replacement. Movieplux x6 looks pretty good, it's like if an older version of Sony Vegas was as user friendly as Windows Movie Maker 2.6.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Serif-MoviePlus ... 1397311052
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WeirdSexy
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by WeirdSexy »

It's not really about the money. I could afford the adobe suite, although it would be more expensive than it used to be when I had a student discount. I don't want it anymore. For what I do, I should be able to use open source tools. I just need to set them up and learn them. That takes time and a sense of focus that I have not had since I got out of school. Especially since I've been mostly away from linux during that time.
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raevol
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by raevol »

For video you want OpenShot.

For free time, you want a tasty beer and some good friends.

Good to hear from you WeirdSexy! Don't stress, thanks for posting, and we can direct people to your post here from now in if that helps take some secretarial work off of you. I remember how crappy that "recently graduated" period of time is, please focus on your personal life and come back when you can, and not a moment before!

Honestly WeirdSexy, I think the two most difficult parts of the video production for us to take off your hands are the script writing and audio recording. I have a film degree and free time, I could record the footage and edit it together, but I am not blessed as a writer, and don't have your signature voice. Is there a way we could put together a team to get videos done? I agree that release videos have been lacking visual features recently, but an OSG video and a "1.0" video would be good to have. Maybe another FAQ video is due as well... what do you think?
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WeirdSexy
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by WeirdSexy »

Upcoming OpenShot 2.0 looks interesting. Seems like the beta will be public soon, I might try that when it's available.

raevol, I'll always need help with the scripts. Once the script is there, recording the narration is the easiest and quickest part of the whole process. It's the game/editor footage recording and especially editing that takes forever.

As of the current moment, I don't even have the ability to record vocal narration unless I were to just use Audacity for a quick and dirty job. I'm not even sure I know where the a/c adapter for my audio interface is.

So again, unless I solve my production environment problems, I wouldn't be much use in a team. Still, I could probably offer my voice pretty readily if such a team had the other parts of the process covered. To be perfectly clear, I might not even know where the a/c adapter for my audio interface is. It's been a long time since I've recorded anything. If I have any hardware issues in switching to new software, I wouldn't be available until I at least solve those.
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raevol
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by raevol »

Well let's put the hardware issues for audio recording on the back burner, that's a solvable problem. If we get to the point where that is the *only* thing holding us up, we'll figure it out.

Having free time to contribute is an unsolvable problem that we all face. Don't worry about that, all of us have to step away when we have to, we're not getting paid to do this. Sometimes it causes delays, and that's totally ok. (forgive me scrawl, for every time I have been impatient! :oops: )

What about script writing takes so long? Can you explain your process? I know that getting you human-understandable versions of the changelog entries are one huge barrier. If the rest of the team was able to deliver to you a handful of thoroughly-explained items that should be featured in the video, could you write up the script for it? Parsing and documenting the stuff that should be included in the video is something that I can do, but writing it up in entertaining and natural language for you is where I would stumble.
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Zini
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by Zini »

human-understandable versions of the changelog entries
I am not quite sure if that is an insult or a compliment. I'll just assume the later.
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raevol
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by raevol »

Zini wrote:I am not quite sure if that is an insult or a compliment. I'll just assume the later.
;D It's a compliment haha.

When I am doing our release announcements most of my struggle is translating a bug title that a bug reporter wrote that has little to no info on the "actual issue" into something that encompasses the entire issue in one sentence fragment. But when WeirdSexy is doing his videos, he has to not only understand the entire issue, but also be able to talk about it in an interesting way for a few sentences, and communicate the issue in a way that someone with no knowledge of the codebase can understand. That's tricky, especially since code can become so abstract. Us "mere mortals" need a little more handholding. :)
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WeirdSexy
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Re: Podcasting Ability/Status

Post by WeirdSexy »

It takes me forever to write a script because it takes me forever to write anything in general. I can deal with the changelogs. In the past, whenever any particular item wasn't clear to me, I just asked about it and that worked fine.

raevol, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but the point of this thread is that I don't feel comfortable saying that I'll contribute to videos, in any way, until I prove to myself privately that I can do it. That means I need to get my production environment sorted out and use it to successfully produce a mock commentary or something. Until that point, I don't want to take part in organizing any effort towards video commentaries for the project. If that's something you want to do, you'll have to leave me out of it for the moment :)
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