Last month I started using a intro for my live streams and shared a post about it here: https://steemit.com/gaming/@brandongiesing/f4qu2roa. Since then I've made some small tweaks over time that eventually came together into this "v2".

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Part 1: Glitched Intro and Part 2: The Countdown

In the original post I mentioned the TWiT version of the intro but decided to go with the original from the TV show that video was parodying. People complained about the intro being too long so I went ahead and swapped in TWiT's since it's way faster and decided to ditch the custom glitch effects since the TWiT one already did some. In addition, I moved the countdown to start during the Intro to also speed up the process and make it less boring (since before nothing was happening but the numbers and a few sound effects, now the narration overlaps with it).

With these changes I was able to chop the first two parts from being the first 50 seconds of the intro to being only the first 25! That took the full intro from 1:47 to 1:22. That's a pretty good start but ideally it should be closer to 1 minute.

Part 3: Casting into the stream

To get as close as possible to that 1 minute time, we would have to make some minor changes to Part 3.

First I shortened some of the segments in this part to also contribute to making the whole thing shorter. The 2 biggest offenders were the 2nd Sonic clip (the one with the rail grinding) which I was able to trim off some of each end and the HBO clip right after which I was able to chop off quite a bit at the start right up to when the camera jumps in the air. This also allowed both clips to look more connected since Sonic flies into the air at the end of the clip right before. However, with the clips shrinked some, that made the song I used (Truecolor Alchemist by FadeX) no longer fit right. It was hard to try and shrink it to fit well while still sounding good so instead I switched it to Virtual Is Where We Live (Instrumental) by Approaching Nirvana.

The other big changes were more cosmetic but also managed to help with shaving the time as a side benefit. First of these was Transitions, before I used Adobe's "VR Light Leaks" effect for every transition. The effect was cool but it was getting a bit overdone with every single transition using it. To make things more varied, I swapped some of the "VR Light Leaks" for "VR Chroma Leaks" and also used "Mobius Zoom" on one clip. In addition, for 2 of the transitions, I made my own custom rotate transition! This was my first time doing it but I think it definitely came out good. This transition emulates what I do in my normal videos with GoPro Quik so knowing how to make it by hand will definitely help in future videos also.

Second change is the very end. Before I used a simple slide made in Canva that had the "CosiCast Live" logo (also made in Canva) followed by "Starts Now" on the background I use for my normal video outros. I wanted to do something way more fancy so I dived into After Effects to render a transition using a template I owned with just the logo. I think it came out really good and I'm definitely going to try and incorporate more After Effects stuff into the stream and videos.

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All together, these changes not only improved the professional quality of the video but also managed to fix the time issue with a final total duration of 1:09. That's 38 seconds shaved off! Not exactly 1 minute but way better than 1:47.

CREDITS

MUSIC

Virtual Is Where We Live (Instrumental) - Approaching Nirvana

CLIPS

TWiT, Sonic Generations, HBO, Audiosurf 2.

FOLLOW ME

Website: https://brandongiesing.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrandonGiesing

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