Recently a friend asked me to create a trailer for his Let's Play Gaming Channel.
So I got the idea to create a wall of TVs where each screen shows a different game he is playing with the camera moving around from one screen to another... Even though I'm quite familiar with Sony Vegas, I haven't done something like that before. That's why the whole process was so interesting and the result so satisfying. That's how the final version looks like:
Not too bad, right? So let's go step by step explaining on how to make such a trailer. 1) Creating a TV wall
For doing that you either look for a fitting image online or create your own one. Make sure you can it has about as many screens as video clips you want to use. Once you've chosen a picture you put at the bottom of your project.
2) Put the clips on the screens
I downloaded like 12 videos of different games from my friend's channel. Then I started one by one, putting a video file above the TV wall template and minimized them by clicking on the icon at the edge of the clip in the timeline to open a window. Then you can accurately adapt the size of the clip and move it around to match on one of the TVs of your template.
That step you do with every clip until your TV wall is finished. That wall full of screen may looks like this.
3) Rendering the TV wall video Following that I rendered like a 30 second clip of that wall. This new file I copied into my project. 4) Let the "virtual camera" run
Now you work with your newly created TV wall clip in your project. Click again on the small icon at the bottom of your clip (see first screenshot in Step 1). At the bottom of that menu you see a timeline where you can set time markers. Now you can decide where to place the "F" window at each second.
You can zoom in, zoom out. Experiment a bit which works the best for you. In my case it worked best not to leave the gaps too big as moved the "F" window slowly from right to left to show the channel logo at the end. And that way you can create this kind of trailer video. For music I chose to use a fitting track in the YouTube Audio Library. I hope I could help or inspire you to create a nice channel trailer. Btw. I also made a tutorial video about it, if you wanna see a deeper explanation:
Your YouTube channel name is suddenly displayed with the name "null"? Here's how to fix it!
Last month a friend of mine created a new YouTube channel and in the last few days I noticed that instead of his real channel name, "null" is displayed. But why?
As Internet search couldn't give me a proper answer, I figured that the issue only occurs when I use YouTube in English. For example on one of my Japanese devices the name was displayed as usual, and switching to German also shows no problem.
So I thought it there might be an issue with the translation settings. And that was THE problem: The settings for the channel name in English were wrong, the channel name was written as "null". It happens automatically if you try to add a new language but leave the channel name blank. However, this issue seemingly only appears when you make the first translation that you are allowed to leave the channel name blank. When you try later on to change "null" to blank, YouTube won't let you continue. I could easily reproduce the issue with my English channel by adding a German translation to it.
So here's how to fix it: 1) Click on the upper right drop-down list to switch to the language your YouTube channel was originally created in 2) Select "Customize Channel" 3) Click on the settings wheel on the right 4) Look for "Translate Info" and click on the link "translating channel info"
5) Select "translate into". To fix the issue just copy-paste the channel title from the original channel or name it as you wish 6) Select "Save" and the issue should be fixed.
Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments if it could help you or if you got something to add on this!
Google decided to remove the YouTube Editor from its platform - a tool which I used quite often and now is unfortunately another way needed. Let's see what's possible now! Usually my main purpose to use the YT Editor was to put footage from my GoPro together to cut it correctly afterwards. Therefore I could easily just upload everything to YouTube, set the videos to 'private' and then put them together as I needed them. After the new clips were created, the uploads could be removed. It helped me to avoid long rendering processes with Sony Vegas and using YouTube for that saved me lots of time! Now I need to find a way to do it offline in a similar less time consuming way... So I tried combining these mp4 files via command: copy/b V1.mp4 +V2.mp4
The size of the file changed, but it did not actually append the second file - although it worked with other files before, maybe the GoPro file is too big. Following that I was looking for another tool which could do that and I found 'MP4 Joiner'. With that tool I could put the mp4 files together which was done in a few minutes before I can upload the new created file to YouTube.
Luckily it's still possible to cut single videos on YouTube by going to 'Video Manager', 'Videos', select the video, dropdown 'Enhancements' and then use 'Trim' as seen in screenshot above.
So to summarize: Create a big video file and cut in on YouTube - but of course only if it's for files which should just be on YouTube in raw format. That's the workaround which works for me. If you have a better idea, just leave a comment and let me know :)
In December a new updated version of DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 Latino Edition came out and with its new characters the game became even more awesome! How great it is I'd like to share with a few 5 vs. 5 battle I played against a friend.
'Tenkaichi 3' is despite being almost 10 years old still a fan-favourite - as I explained in another article. You can see that going on YouTube finding lots of battles with modded characters from the currently running new TV series Dragon Ball Super or even additional old ones who never made it to the official games. I tested the recent Latino Edition, where are lots of new characters included. Here's a short overview of the character selection:
Goku Black, Zamasu, their fusion, Hit, Cabba, SSJ Blue Vegetto, Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Super... it's all in it. Of course less important characters were replaced with new ones, but maybe they'll find a way to extent the amount of characters in the future.
Me and a friend are always enjoying the 5 versus 5 battles. Last time we did seven of these battles with new and old characters mixed up! Here's the result (Spoiler: I won the most of them :D).
Battle 01
Goku Black vs. Hit
Goku Black vs. Piccolo
Kid Buu vs. Piccolo
Kid Buu vs. SSJ4 Nappa
Super 17 vs. SSJ4 Nappa
Super 17 vs. Zaiko
Super 17 vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Freeza vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Vegeta (Buu Saga) vs SSJ Blue Vegeta
Battle 02
Vegeta (Buu Saga) vs. Whis
Broly vs. Whis
Freeza vs. Whis
Freeza vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Goku Black SSJ Rose vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Goku Black SSJ Rose vs. SSJ Blue Vegetto
Goku Black SSJ Rose vs. Piccolo
Goku Black SSJ Rose vs. Gine
Zamasu vs. Gine
Battle 03
SSJ2 Vegeta vs. Beerus
Kid Trunks vs. Beerus
SSJ Gotenks vs. Beerus
SSJ Gotenks vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ3 Gotenks vs. Golden Cell
Frieza vs. Golden Cell
Frieza vs. SSJ Cabba
Goku Black vs. SSJ Cabba
Goku Black vs. SSJ Future Trunks (Super)
Battle 04
Goku Black vs. SSJ4 Vegeta
Goku Black vs. SSJ Goten GT
Baby vs. SSJ Goten GT
Baby vs. Piccolo
Nova Shenron vs. Piccolo
Frieza vs. Piccolo
Frieza vs. SSJ Future Trunks (Super)
Frieza vs. SSJ4 Goku
Super 17 vs. SSJ4 Goku
Battle 05
Goku Black vs. SSJ4 Vegeta
Frieza Final Form 100% vs. SSJ4 Vegeta
Frieza Final Form 100% vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Frieza Final Form vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ2 Teen Gohan vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. SSJ Future Trunks (Super)
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. Piccolo
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. SSJ4 Goku
Battle 06
Goku Black vs. SSJ4 Pan
Goku Black vs. SSJ3 Kid Goku GT
LSSJ Broly vs. SSJ3 Kid Goku GT
SSJ4 Broly vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Kid Buu vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. Piccolo
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. Omega Shenron
Frieza Final Form 100% vs. Omega Shenron
Battle 07
Frieza vs. SSJ Blue Vegeta
Frieza vs. Piccolo
Majin Vegeta vs. Piccolo
Goku Black vs. Piccolo
Goku Black vs. SSJ4 Goku
Kid Buu vs. SSJ4 Goku
Kid Buu vs. SSJ Future Trunks Z
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. SSJ Future Trunks Z
SSJ Blue Bardock vs. Gine
These were my final battles of 2016 with the most recent mods at that time. Maybe this year I'll create my own mods after having made a bit experiences on how a few things on modding Tenkaichi 3 work - like exchanging music or downloaded characters. Let's see what 2017 brings - maybe even a new official Tenkaichi game? Better not giving up the hope and if not, there'll still be more mods!
After Facebook launched its live video feature for everyone it's interesting to see how people are using it. A first impression... The first time a noticed the new live feature was a few months ago when popular people were using it to communicate with their fans. For example the Formula One vice world champion Nico Rosberg used it to have a Q&A with his followers which were using the comment section to ask their questions. I found it was a quite interesting way too reach a lot of people. Basically a live stream is nothing new in the Internet, but an interesting feature for social media. YouTube also has this feature of course, but on Facebook it makes a difference - especially for usual people. Many people don't have a YouTube channel and are just using it passively - it's more likely they have a Facebook account. So the audience is different and the kind of recorded videos are also different. More natural and uncut. You can see that especially when you take a look for who is using the live feature at the moment. To do that you can now see 'Live map' listed under 'Apps' in Facebook. Following that you can see a world map with blue points. Every point means there is a live broadcast right now. I clicked on various points just to find out what people want to show to the world, here's an overview:
A Korean girl singing Japanese songs but she only showed half of her face
A Russian driving with his car
two people in Alaska playing with a little snake in a bathtub
pupil in Chile discussing in school class
a band playing in a bar
two guys sitting in the office working in California
a DJ mixing music on his laptop in Portugal
Greece girls listening to music
a concert in Spain
people using a Shisha at the Canaries
a German girl eating cookies
girls chilling and playing with their hair on Hawaii
a guy walking through the streets of Melbourne
a sunset on Tenerife with guitar music in the background
people eating in Tokyo
And this could have been continued endlessly. So entirely different things, but it's surely interesting to follow - not everything, but it gave me a basic impression about this 'new way of watching videos'. I mean everyone can have 'his own TV station' to have a worldwide broadcast just by using a phone. And it's really easy to use.
It's an interesting development and there's way more to follow. Facebook will expand its features way more. I only need to say 'VR'...
You saw a great YouTube video, most likely your new favourite song and you wanted to see it again and again - everytime you had to press play manually or you were looking for a tool which is able to show it in an endless loop. And now after all these years it's finally on YouTube!
As you see on the screenshot on the left by right-clicking the video you can see now the entry 'Loop'. One click and you can see the whole video again and again. It's funny. Over the years opened a lot different web sites only for that feature. Or even apps. Other people had the idea of making a long playlist with the same video. Also pretty famous: Watch 10 hours of a specific song. A phenomenon I noticed quite often in terms of anime theme songs. Maybe it's now over with that, as long as people are informed that this new feature is now available. But I ask myself: Why did it take them so long? Not too long ago they included the procedure that the next related video starts shortly after finishing a clip. Maybe then they thought: Why not finally adding the loop? I have absolutely no clue, but I'm glad that it's finally done. It's not added on the smartphone apps yet, but hopefully soon.
