It started as a joke back in 2013. After finishing the Super Smash Bros Brawl video of 6 hours, I said to Lux:
"Never again. But I know I'll probably go nuts one day and surpass this video once more."
A Single-Part-Video that would pass my limits. A Single-Part-Video that would break Sony Vegas and
couldn't be rendered. A Single-Part-Video that would go way over Youtube's upload limit.
In our second issue of Behind the Scenes, we're going to evaluate a Single-Part-Video that took almost
an entire year to finish... to be cancelled for a permanent appointment until Youtube is going to raise their
upload limit once again.
The video is cancelled temporary.
Don't think this video got cancelled for good. Everything's already here. We got the final video that we would upload, we got that custom thumbnail, we got a full index, the video has been quality checked... Just that uploading.
It's still going to happen, one day...
Preparation for recording
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| You can see that the difference between the top save-file and the bottom one is over 100 hours. Preparing that save-file took more than 100, because there has been a lot of save-resets as well. |
same year, I've started preparing a save-file to start a New Game+ for the video.
Why did it took 100 hours? It's your typical JRPG that has so much to offer. So much replay value.
I don't want to go unprepared in such video, and if there's one thing most MapleStory players know about me:
I seem to be very good at gaining knowledge over things I'm interested in, according to them.
But for any game, 100 hours is very good preparation. We like what we play.
I might not always be happy during preparing that video (because of a few minor flaws the game has), but I can't deny this game is one of the best offline RPGs I've ever played. Great game, but not flawless.
Then again, nothing is flawless, unless something is custom-made specifically for just one person.
There was no particular deadline, consider Lux and I never work with those on our Channel. We strive for the best quality we can deliver - hence why we can't work with them.
Near the Spring of 2015, I manage to finish the save-file that we would use for the recording.
Actually, the intended prepared save-file was aimed to be much more than I eventually came to.
Because it took "forever" to prepare the save-file (because I had little time a week to work on this one),
we had to cut more than half the work we intended to do.
The official recording session was at the 12th of June (blogpost). As described in that hyperlink, the recording session took from 6 in the morning to about midnight. In order to go through all of that, I really had to prepare myself for
the session. So before starting, I prepared a lunch, a dinner, a lot of pineapple, a few bottles of water and two cans of fizzy drinks. In case my controller would go dead, I had a pack of 10 AA Batteries and my second controller ready,
just to be sure.
Well doh, it's a Single-Part-Video recording session of 17,5 hours! You really expect us to record this in parts?
Producing the final video
So, the recording was finished, and there was a Gojira-sized 85 GB raw footage. We would render the video like any other in Sony Vegas, using our default template for videos that have been recorded through a capture card to regain
a little bit of the quality loss you would have through cable.
Editing and rendering such large video shouldn't be an issue for Sony Vegas. At least, that's what we thought.
Sony Vegas is one of the better video editing software for hobbyists - there's a balance between the complexity of the software and the amount of things you can do. There's plenty of software which can do much more than Sony Vegas, but those also comes with a higher complexity for the user.
The first render took about three days - at least, it crashed after three days. For some odd reason, Vegas had to reset the estimated & elapsed three times. We tried to check what went wrong - and we had some ideas from past experiences. Here's the error that we got:
It seemed the render always crashed between 75% and 79% during all the attempts.
Eventually we tried to render eleven (!) times. Do your maths. Eleven multiplied by three days on each render.
My entire summer holiday got consumed by retrying the render. I actually had little rest during my summer holiday, partially because of that. It's also one of those reasons why I didn't finish both my Hailfire and Constructor -
or why I was barely on EMS at all.
We found that there was no difference in GPU/CPU rendering, no difference in changing the file format between 1080p/720p/480p, no difference in lowering the render quality or rendering threads, splitting up the render in parts to rerender that batch to reduce the complexity for Vegas, rendering on different PCs, emptying all the drives on all the PCs we tried to render by over 150 GB, no difference after reinstalling, upgrading or cleaning the cache/error dump from Sony Vegas - we tried a lot of troubleshooting topics and we were open for any suggestions. None of them helped.
After all of that, we went to our back-up plan. Lux and I already prepared for such occasion.
So we transferred the aforementioned rendered parts to Adobe Premiere - and we tried to recreate our template. Which was tougher than it may sound, trust me on that. It's always hard to start with something you are not used to yet, especially with software. We had high hopes for this software; it's used by many professional companies and it's way to much for the average hobbyists (in a good way).
After about half a day we started the render. Attempt #12 took 5 days through Adobe Premiere. At least it worked! However, as I often said to my friends who were closely related to this project: recording is one thing - rendering this is another - probably the hardest part of it all is getting this thing on Youtube.
Uploading this video on Youtube
During rendering of the video, we already prepared ourselves to confirm if it was possible to upload it.
Youtube Help mentions there's a maximum limit of 128 GB and 11 hours.
There's plenty of videos that's over 24 hours - and a lot of recent ones too! Just type in "longest video on Youtube" or "24 hours" on Youtube and you'll see plenty of examples. The rendered video eventually came out to be 87 GB,
which is under the 128 GB upload limit. We assumed it should be possible and stayed positive about it.
Uploading the first time took 3 weeks in total. Yes, 3 weeks. Uploading the data took about three days, processing took forever. For some odd reason, the video reprocessed three times (what's up with retrying a magical three times?
I think it was Nintended.) and got aborted in the end. Youtube described "Failed (unable to convert file)". So I send a detailed formal support ticket that actually wouldn't fit in the 1000 character limit. So I had to rewrite and shorten it.
Youtube Help described that it could either be an issue of a processing delay from their side (and that delay went banana's in length so their automatic server-cleaning-up kicked in without them actually wanting it to happen) or just a transient issue - either of which, they were sorry about the inconvenience and requested me to retry to upload it. And if anything would go wrong, I would have to send another support ticket. Which I did. Both of them (retrying upload and sending another ticket).
Uploading the second time thankfully only took 5 days. But unthankfully, Youtube rejected the file once again. "Rejected (length of video is too long)". What. What is this b/s? There's plenty of examples around, and recent ones too right?
The PC that uploaded the video mentioned "Uploading a video cannot be longer than 720 minutes". What?
720 minutes does not equal 11 hours, or did I my calculator and brain have a fart? Sending another ticket, that is.
In the second support ticket I've asked why this video has been rejected. I also mentioned there was plenty of examples available... They've replied with the following (and I just copy paste from the ticket right here) "I relate to the inconvenience caused to you. However, please be informed that due to the recent update on the platform the maximum file size you'll be able to upload to YouTube is 128GB and the maximum duration is 11 hours.".
I'll emphasize on the part "due to a recent update". What? Wasn't this "recent update" like during the Spring already?
There's plenty of videos that have been uploaded during the Summer that's longer than 12 hours, dammit! And why do you mention it after the second ticket? I did explicitly mention upload a video of 17 hours, 27 minutes and 26 seconds in the first support ticket...
So, what now?
You may wonder why we reveal the video on this blogpost, way before we could publish it. We think it's important to know what you guys missed out, and I don't think this blogpost would read the same if I would be all secret about it.
At least Lux his dad refers this video as "the infamous one".
As I mentioned before, Xenoblade Chronicles - Main Story [New Game+] is not cancelled. We will publish it the moment Youtube would raise the limit once again. Did we kind of miss the boat because the limit apparently has been added "recently"? To be honest, I think we more or less did.
When can we upload it? Dunno. I don't expect Youtube to raise the limit soon, because this update is quite recent and the website itself is growing strongly after all those years. When we started way back in the Summer of 2008, the default quality of videos was 240p. The most subscribed Youtube channel had about 30.000 subs.
Today he has over 10 million. Just look at today - a lot has changed often (including the freaking Channel layouts).
Unless there's a Gojira-sized riot of Youtubers who want to upload 12h+ as well going on to remove that limit, just don't expect Xenoblade Chronicles - Main Story [New Game+] to be soon...
But yeah, I can be honest that because there is a limit of 11 hours (read: 720 minutes) and 128 GB, I do feel limited in what I can do with Single-Part-Videos. No matter if a video is only 3 hours or 10, it will still remain something that chews on my brain. And yes, it did influence our future SPV schedule, because there's already some other projects cancelled for a permanent appointment as well.
Oh, and before you ask: why can't you split up the video in two parts? Well, it's called a Single-Part-Video. That kind of kills the premise of it, right? I also can't live with myself if I have to see two parts of this playthrough. While most Youtubers enjoy to see having 100 parts of a few thousand views each on their My Videos interface, I don't.
To be continued.
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