A lot has changed since I was last around here, I got a regular job, I stopped uploading every single day to YouTube, I basically stopped streaming on Twitch... A LOT has changed. I originally intended to go with a vlog to detail all of these changes, but with the regular job, I basically have no daylight during the week to work on any vlogs. I'm not as comfortable at work yet as I'd like, so maybe at some point I'll film a little bit of a vlog here or there. Maybe I can do some car vlogs too, since my commute is about an hour... Anyway, that stuff just isn't here or there, so let's get back on track!
The real job has really gotten in the way of me uploading a video every single day (except Sundays, most of the time), but I realized quite a while ago that the every-day schedule just isn't something that's sustainable. I had intended to try and go about this for the whole year, but I could tell that this wasn't really helping me that much. Sure it brought in some new blood to the channel, but most of them did not stay for very long as my content was just ALL over the place. I had done research previously to find that variety channels thrive on multiple concurrent let's plays or infrequent, but very high-quality, highly edited videos. I mean, the stress alone from just trying to upload every day was also getting to me, so it's probably good that something came along in my life that forced me to stop that. We all know I would have been too stubborn to stop otherwise, haha.
In regards to Twitch, the first couple weeks that I was getting used to my new work schedule were EXCEPTIONALLY busy and I ended up just not having ANY free time after work at all. On top of that, I got another update from Elgato for Game Capture HD that basically ruined my HD60. If I ran it through GCHD it would ruin any captures and the video files would be corrupt so they were all unusable. If I ran it through OBS I'd get an hour or so of video and then it would just fizzle and crap out (However while recording Zombie Vikings with Lea/Orange I've discovered that might just be an issue in general with OBS at this point...). I went the distance and downloaded OBS Studio (FINALLY), but I've found that if you used the HD60 as a source your CPU would jump up... If you actually turned the thing on my CPU would shoot up past 100 and my computer would lock up and eventually crash. I have since found that this is a known issue with the HD60 family of capture cards and it's because of the Creators Update. Apparently the Creators Update wrecked the HD60 family of cards and they fixed it post update. I had tried to install the CU twice before and it basically made my whole system unusable so I was completely out of luck on that front, and since the game I was streaming at the time was a PS1 game, I was just too fed up to continue trying to stream.
Well, I got the Creators Update for the THIRD time the other day and I think it's fixed my HD60 problem. My CPU hasn't run up crazy high and I was able to run through a single test recording off my PS4 in GCHD properly without any corruption/pixelation. It took me FOUR HOURS to fix my sound, in essence I had to install the known wrong driver for my system sounds, and then install a newer version of the drivers that came with my system ON TOP of the wrong drivers to get my sound to function the same way that it used to. It was a crazy four hours and I was pissed off the whole time, but I got my computer working in a reasonable manner. Now that I have OBS Studio I'm going to start new series recording with it and Game Capture HD (if it is in fact usable again) and I'll do my best to phase out regular OBS. I might not totally phase out OBS though, it seems like OBS Studio doesn't properly record videos for games that stretch when they go full-screen so I may be keeping regular OBS around anyway. I have my alerts running in both OBS Studio and GCHD at this point though, so that will bring a bit more interactivity to my channel in the future.
In regards to scheduling for the channel, I'm going to work first on finishing off series, and then I'll work mostly on series, as opposed to one-off videos for YouTube. I may have a metric butt-ton of games, but coming up with which one I want to record for each day was driving me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I fully intend to work on one-offs in the future, but constantly trying to make sure there's an upload every day is definitely not going to be a priority for me anymore. In the case of Twitch, I think I'll be changing my stream schedule in the coming days from every other day to Tuesday and Thursday at 8, and then one long stream on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday. Please continue to follow me on twitter for updates on when I'm streaming/if I will be that day. If my elgato is up and running I'll be going back to streaming Ball Breakers on Tuesday/Thursday and when Alisa is available, Portal 2's single player campaign until that is complete (should be soon though, I put in a good 5-6 hours last week!) on the weekend.
I'm also thinking of starting a secondary channel on YouTube. A lot of my content lately has been dismissed as monetizable by the adpocalypse regulations and I realize that having ALL of my content on one channel hurts it more than it helps. People expecting to see video games aren't really happy to see the vlogs (nor do they care), and vice-versa. I'm considering at this point starting up a secondary channel specifically for real-life stuff and keeping my original channel there for video games. If you're wondering what that means, well... It means Unfair-Y Tales would be moving over to the new channel. Since I'm going to have a lot of trouble recording for Unfair-Y Tales in the near future, I'm considering starting the new channel off by uploading the existing Unfair-Y Tales episodes there one by one to get it started, and then from then on upload them there alone, one by one when they are ready to go. I'd also keep vlogs related specifically to video games on the Kage_Okami channel, while moving the personal ones over to the new vlog channel. I actually already have a second channel that is personally branded because it's tied to my gmail account so starting it up wouldn't really be a problem, it's just the branding and all that.
Speaking of branding, I'm currently in the works for a new icon for the clan, so that'll help when we do Okamigakure Plays videos, and also it'll help with my business cards and all that jazz. I made business cards for eBay a little bit ago and then I realized I should have them for YouTube stuff too, in case I'm doing a vlog out or talking to people at a convention. I'd rather they have the info for my online persona than like... My actual address, y'know what I mean? I was supposed to be getting all new branding for my YouTube channel as a whole, but at this point, I'll settle for just the clan stuff getting better. It also helps that my current job has some ties to the gaming market, so I think having content creation-related cards will be beneficial to me in the future as well! Also, speaking of that, since I'm done experimenting with the style of my first channel, maybe it's finally time for me to finish up the patreon I've had sitting around waiting for the new branding and release it to the public? We'll see how that goes, but for now, I just wanna say thanks for everyone sticking with me over the years, and that I'm looking forward to continuing to provide content for everybody in the future!
P.S. Thanks for reading this big huge post if you got all the way down here!
