Recording sessions for YouTube

[TalonKaine]

Greetings,

I'm planning to start a new campaign soon and I wanted to record each session to put on my YouTube channel. Are there any of you out there that do this? If so what is your set up for communication program and recording software?

My current group uses Skype for communication. Has anyone else used Skype while recording video? Or will I need to switch to other communication software for my plans?

Thanks in advance to any who reply.

[Nylanfs]

This thread has lots of good advice.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?24282-How-to-make-an-overlay-and-setup-OBS-for-streaming!

[Galach]

Hello, Talon.

If you will be using OBS Studio for recording/streaming, there is no need to change the voice software you are using, because it will capture the sound that is directed to your speakers, no matter the source.
Anyway, depending on your hardware settings and internet connection speed and latency, I would recommend to change your voice software.

I have poor experiences with Skype, especially in video conferences with more than two people. I was using Google Hangouts solely because of the video call, but ultimately I had dropped it favoring an audio-only solution.

Beyond Team Speak, I had tested Dolby Axon and Discord. Dolby Axon have nice features, like virtual, dynamic surround option, that creates the experience of being on a real room with your mates, but it showed to be a bit bugged with poor quality to two of my players.

Discord have a very nice and clear sound, good audio failure correction and a web-based client that runs directly from a web browser, but it is a pain in the @&& because every time you change something on your OS or clear your browser cache, it will ask you to re-confirm the access on your IP address. In top of that, joining chat channels on Discord is not very intuitive, so you can get a bit confused.

Finally, Team Speak is the king of the audio conference software’s, but with it, you need to set up your own home server, or you pay to a host service. Gladly, FG community have a TS server you can use, if the need arises.

But if Skype is working for you, it would not prevent you from recording and sharing your videos.

[Myrdin Potter]

I run a teamspeak server on my NAS and you can even run one on a raspberry pi, so it is not like the server software is that demanding. I have a decent cable modem connection and can support 7 people (me plus six players) very cleanly.

You can even run the server on the computer you are using to run FG, but I prefer the more permanent option of the NAS as I used to travel a lot and it was one less thing to worry about.

When I was playing Eve Online and running a large alliance, I paid for a host that could handle over 200 at once and it worked fine.

[Galach]

I run a teamspeak server on my NAS and you can even run one on a raspberry pi, so it is not like the server software is that demanding. I have a decent cable modem connection and can support 7 people (me plus six players) very cleanly.

Yes, TS is very lightweight; but I am not so sure if it is easy to configure and keep it up and running. I had downloaded the TS 3 server installer and searched on google for some tutorials, and all of them gave me the impression that TS Server is a bit tricky to configure.

But I never tried it, so I may be wrong.

[Myrdin Potter]

The hardest part for me on the NAS was getting the permission key out of the text file on the NAS as I am not the best with Linux and the standard file structure there. Once I had the permission key, it was very simple to use the Windows GUI client and get the server going. Teamspeak has android and iOS clients and even works well over 3G cellular internet.

You do lose being able to see each other's faces, but video conferences on home connections with 5-6 people can be pretty choppy. We all know each other so no big deal on the lack of seeing our aged faces. :-)

(And my forum title is now funny considering my profile picture)

[Galach]

The hardest part for me on the NAS was getting the permission key out of the text file on the NAS as I am not the best with Linux and the standard file structure there. Once I had the permission key, it was very simple to use the Windows GUI client and get the server going. Teamspeak has android and iOS clients and even works well over 3G cellular internet.

That is very nice to know. Did you had to install anything like a No-IP client to get around the common Dynamic IP issues, so the clients can find the server, or it wasn't necessary?

[Mask_of_winter]

YouTube and Google are seamlessly integrated. This article may be of interest to you: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083786

[Myrdin Potter]

I use the built in ddns client in my ASUS router and point the port to the internal network IP.

[Xorn]

A free voice option that is basically Ventrilo/Teamspeak is RaidCall. It's remotely hosted and a 200 person channel is free. I used it for a very long time. Now though, I use Rabbit.

[Trenloe]

And don't forget the free FG Community TeamSpeak server: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?17071-Voicechat!-Community-TeamSpeak3-Server

[TalonKaine]

Great.. thanks for all the replies. So I will be the GM and I have another question. Any tips on only recording the game from the player point of view so that the viewers cannot see all my plans and GM features. Would opening a second copy of FG on a 2nd monitor and having the recording program record just monitor 2 work? What other suggestions do you people have for this type of thing? Thanks again.

[Nylanfs]

Just run a second copy, connect to localhost instead of an IP and it logs in as a player view then use that to stream from.

[Galach]

Great.. thanks for all the replies. So I will be the GM and I have another question. Any tips on only recording the game from the player point of view so that the viewers cannot see all my plans and GM features. Would opening a second copy of FG on a 2nd monitor and having the recording program record just monitor 2 work? What other suggestions do you people have for this type of thing? Thanks again.

To achieve that, the easiest way would be ask one of your players to record the game sessions. That would relieve your computer from the stress of the recording software too.

You can also launch a second instance of FG and login on your own game as a player, but that will be a bit demanding: you will be running FG as a “server”, as a “client” and, in top of that, you will have OBS or other recording program running too. Depending on your machine, things can become sluggish.

[TalonKaine]

Need some help... so I watched the tutorials on using OBS Studio and so far so good. However when I click to add in for Window Capture, it is only capturing my Monitor 2. I want it to record Monitor 1. I've search for hours online and all the tutorials on how to fix this are for an older version of the program, there they simply say click Settings, Video, then pick which monitor. The Settings are different in the new version and it does not give me an option to select which monitor I want to stream. Can anyone help with this?

Note: I have two monitors set up on extended display.

Thanks to any who reply.

[LordEntrails]

You might try changing your primary display.

[TalonKaine]

I tried switching primary display on my PC.. strangely it did not work.

[Galach]

I just reinstalled my OS this week and did not installed OBS yet. I will try to install it today, after work, and see if I can find anything since I have a similar setup (provided you had not solved the problem yet).

[Galach]

Well, here we go.

First, just for the sake of comparison of my setting with yours, I am using a Dell Inspiron 15 notebook, with two GPUs (one Intel integrated on motherboard, another a think is offboard - but I am not certain - Radeon r7 265);
I had to change manually in the Radeon configuration tool which GPU OBS will use - I had set it to use Radeon GPU, same with Fantasy Grounds, because this GPU is better. OBS only "saw" Fantasy Grounds after I had done his;
I have a 29" LED TV plugged at the HDMI port of my notebook, and configured the TV as my default monitor.
I had set a new "Scene" to make some tests; after setting up the audio, everything was running ok.
My screen configuration on OBS is on the attached image.


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PS: I had Fantasy Grounds already running when I configured the scene on OBS

[TalonKaine]

Thanks. I got it all figured out now. Here is a question though... I pull images from all over the internet when I play RPGs. Of course up until now the images were only used privately. If I start recording and putting my sessions on YouTube, which displays art work, images, maps from all over the world wide web is this going to get my video pulled down right away? It will be near impossible to cite and give credit to every creator of every image I use for NPCs and what not.

For example the first game I plan to record and run will be a Mutants and Masterminds game based with Marvel characters. So I'll be using images of the marvel heroes. Doing a a goggle search for "Free, Usable content" brings back basically no usable art.

Has anyone had problems with his in the past? Or will the internet not really care cause I'm not profiting off of it. Hell if anything I'll be encouraging and supporting their brand or images.

[Myrdin Potter]

The Internet is a terrible place to ask for legal advice and the forum moderators here zealously protect copyrights.

I can tell you that YouTube (google) tends to act on complaints. They do have quite a sophisticated scanning capability that can match songs and some video, but unless up anyone flags it you probably would not have an issue.

Disney (Marvel) is very aggressive to protect their copyrights. I am not a lawyer so I do not K I if what you want to do falls under fair use. Parody and reviews are generally ok. Even if you do not make money, YouTube does via ads, so probably a violation. Up to you in the end. If you were playing an official Marvel system, then would have a better argument.

[LordEntrails]

I don't know. You'll have to research fair use and some other topics. I know that teachers and others are able to use parts of copyrighted material and distribute it, but I don't know the restrictions on it.

And copyright protections aren't just about commercial use, they are about any type of distribution. So just because you are not selling anything, if streaming is considered distribution, then you have to worry about copyright.

Sorry I don't know more. But hopefully this information helps.

[damned]

Its impossible to say. There is definitely an element of Fair Use at play here but only a court case would provide a clear answer. The worst thing that will happen (for this type of use/sharing) would be having Youtube pull it down or you getting a DCMA and having to pull it down yourself. This is not legal advice.

[Mask_of_winter]

This is considered fair use. I'm only aware of one video that got pulled from YouTube and the guy had added a Thundarr the Barbarian trailer as an intro to the game. Hanna-Barbara filed a complaint.

[Talyn]

Try searching with an engine like CC Search (https://search.creativecommons.org/) or something similar, or use very specific keywords in your Google searches. Even the CC Search you should double check the image it leads you to before you save it but it gives me good results the majority of the time.

[Galach]

I think it will depend on the IP holder; some will never bother about you using their content on a streaming, others can complain and ask you to take down your videos.

If you are planning to stream on Youtube, any owner of any IP used without consent can ask Youtube to take down the videos using copyrighted/legally owned content - there are plenty of old links that no longer work because of unauthorized use of IP - though, as far as I know, it was always related to music and movies, not pictures.

[TalonKaine]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens. Put simply the party will be a new secret team put together on the down-low by Cable to carry out the dirty missions, similar to X-Force. So there will be marvel characters popping up every so often, but the party themselves are all unique characters. I've attached a screenshot of my OBS layout so far... I'd like some feedback on your thoughts on the layout of the OBS screen as it is my first time using it.

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Also, I had that extra square space that was blank so I decided to put my YouTube channel logo on there, the Fantasy Grounds logo and the M&M logo. Is this okay? Or should I remove the FG or M&M logo as I did not ask permission to do so.

*Sigh* for legal stuff when I'm just trying to have fun.. haha. :)

[JohnD]

Assume you're using Google Maps for the map? Looks good either way, just curious.

[TalonKaine]

Was Google Earth yeah. Quick and easy. :)

[LordEntrails]

It's easy to ask SmiteWorks if you can use the FG logo, just email [email protected] and link the to this thread showing them what you want to do. I'm sure they'll get back to you quickly.