Thanks for the tips. Let me know what you think of the Elgato and if you have any tips. As I said, I kind of just plug it in and use it.
I used it last night. The software is very simple. We even streamed to Twitch.tv and it worked perfectly.
And I haven't tried it on the PS3 but it is a bit tricky I've read. Sony put some block in the system where you can't stream straight from the console using the HDMI port. I forget what the explanation was. But the Elgato comes with an adaptor that gets around this. I haven't tried it yet though.
The cable it comes with for the PS3 is really just a custom PS3 component cable that ends in the Elgato's connector rather than the red, blue, green component ends, I believe. You will need to make sure your PS3 is set to output via component though. Unlike the Xbox, the PS3 doesn't always auto-detect the correct output.
Checked out some of your videos and they're really nice my man.
Do you use Final cut exclusively to edit? I noticed some cool transitions in there so I was curious. We're gonna do something pretty similar (along with some other videos) but I have to figure out a way to record voice over XBL. I saw a method on youtube where the guy recorded the sound from the television separate on garageband and put it together afterwards. Made my goddamn head spin.
But good stuff my man. Definitely gonna check out some more of your stuff.
I use iMovie '11. I can't really afford Final Cut Pro and I've actually found iMovie quite fast for editing these kinds of video.
For voice we use Skype, not xbox live. This makes a huge difference in quality. Also, if you use a Skype recording software you can have it output each person on a separate audio track to clean up later. I would use sound editing software to combine the Skype audio with the game. The trick to this is to simply perform a "virtual clapper", like for example, I bring up the guide and then say, "I'm clicking down to friends in three, two, one, click!" I then sync the video's audio up with my voice recording in the sound editor. Then, after clean-up, I use Quicktime Pro to put the combined audio into a new video clip and import that into iMovie.
However, last night with this new Elgato, I used it's voice over feature to mix our Skype call directly into the video recording (which is one of the reason's I bought it to begin with). To do this, I use an app called "Audio Hijack Pro" to send the Skype audio to another software called "Soundflower" which is a virtual audio device. Then, in the Elgato software, I select Soundflower as my microphone and everything going into and coming out of Skype is automatically mixed in with the video of the game. Very handy and saves a lot of time. Only downside is that you have to make sure your levels are right before you record because you can't adjust them later. I'm going to try a few episodes this way and see if I trust it. If not, I'll go back to using my other method and just let the Elgato record only the game video and audio.
One last thing I've noticed, iMovie sometimes has audio syncing issues when importing MP4 video. The audio will be half-a-second or full-second off. It seems completely random. However, last night I discovered that if you import the original MP4 recording located in the Elgato Recording folder into iMovie the audio appears to stay in sync. This means not using the "Import into iMovie" feature built in the Elgato software (which actually converts it to ProRes and makes the video files like 100x larger). Just a tip in case you have audio sync problems.
Lastly, if you are going to use Final Cut, I suppose you'd want to export that using the Pro Res option in the Elgato Software. Again, this will create giant files so make sure you have a lot of space to work. However, editing in Final Cut should never have audio sync problems and editing audio is infinitely easier compared to iMovie. I just like iMovie because it's quick and easy.
