I was considering making a topic in the main SC2 forum but I want to keep on the good side of everyone and really don't want it to seem like I'm advertising or something like that so I'm making a blog post instead to tell you of my experience so far! Hopefully it'll be a good read.. one can hope!
Okay so my story started just before SC2 went live, I was in the beta and tried my hand at casting on a terrible laptop over the summer holidays and, well, I guess technically my first video wasn't actually a cast but a sped up replay from a 4v4 in the late stages of the beta, one can view it here!
I don't even advise watching it, it's that bad!
Anyway I moved on to trying to cast with my shoddy laptop, it actually managed to run SC2 which was a surprise for a start but I couldn't go without SC2 for a week while I was down in Edinburgh to do my resits (one of which I slept through.. partly because of SC2 and partly because of getting naked on Omegle chat and falling asleep because of benzos and phenibut but anyway TMI).
Okay so here's a cast with my laptop, my 2nd cast that I did alone and... holy crap it's the worst cast I've ever seen, it's actually SO GOD DAMN BAD! Woah my face blushes just watching this complete I don't know what you could call it. It's just an absolute disgrace. For those of you with a strong stomach (I think that's the phrase) here's the link http://naytv.blip.tv/file/3992297/.
Given a lifetime I don't think I could list how much is wrong with that cast. So. MOVING SWIFTLY ON!
So this here's about the first cast I'd done on my good computer, it's TLO v Hasu, here's your linky if you're interested http://naytv.blip.tv/file/4023518/.
So things are starting to get better, the sound is disgraceful though, you can hear me click-clucking because of the hyper-sensitivity of the microphone. I don't even do that shit! It just, like, is picked up? I blame some higher power.
Definitely much better but still not something I'd, or anyone would elect to watch! My talking is slow (benzos combined with a complete lack of knowledge of ANYTHING SC2 related).
At this point all my casts have been recorded with fraps and then transcoded with Camtasia and then uploaded after converting into flash by Blip.tv (great site if you haven't uploaded to it before).
I've now swapped to Fraps / VirtualDub and WOAH what a difference! There's no bloody fiddly messy crap with a horrible bloated GUI, everything's just VERY fast and nice to transcode. So here's an example for you, my darlings: http://naytv.blip.tv/file/4390738/
I've recently dished out a LOT of money for a student massively in debt (thank's Daddy for giving me a bit of money!) and I think the cast quality in everything has gone up rather a lot, I've been laddering SO MUCH to get a better understanding of the races, I watch every single Day[9] cast and play as much as possible. I don't have the highest post count here but I do lurk a lot and make sure I get all the little tips and tricks!
Anyway I really love the fact that people are enjoying my casts now (getting positive feedback on Reddit!) and I'd love some feedback from you guys, I regard TL as a pretty elitist community where I have to watch my step, don't want to get on the wrong side of anyone or INSTABAN! Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration but I get the fear!
I'd love to make a thread to stick my casts in every time I do a new one worth watching (as I do in /r/starcraft) but I don't know if TL is the place to do that, the slightly annoying factor is that I don't use Youtube so people can only subscribe to my RSS on http://naytv.blip.tv.
Thank you so much for reading! And I would really appreciate any feedback you can give me, you lot being the best of the best in terms of Starcraft!
Love you all! And again I hope this doesn't come across as spam, I just wanted to give some insight into my struggle in the casting world, I'm continually getting better and certainly not perfect yet but ONE DAY I might be loved the world over. That'd be a dream come true!