Making Minecraft (etc) Videos

Generali

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the Minecraft Video phenomenon. For those that are unaware an example may be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwDnBPWYhPM

My son would like to make similar videos for his mates to watch on You Tube too. What spec of laptop would he need in order to be able to do this? The bloke in the shop reckoned that it would really need a graphics card to be able to do this without being all jerky and also to be able to handle the editing side. The minimum price for something like that was £300 (actually $600 as I live in Aus) and for that money he could get something with 4GB Ram, 500GB hard drive:

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/laptops/dell/dell-y510939au-inspiron-15-6-3000-laptop/720886/

No idea about what software to get.

This is really pushing the budget so any cost saving ideas would be great.

BTW it could just as well be a desktop as a laptop.

Generali

Second question:

It used to be the case that if you bought a desktop you got a lot more computer for the money. The bloke in the shop claimed that was no longer the case. Is he right?

RobTang

presumably you already have something that can run Minecraft, you may as well just try to record a session and edit it, if it doesn't work or is too slow look into something else.
The specs for Minecraft are so low running a recorder on top prob wont make much of a difference.


Contrary to popular belied video editing doesn't need a fast machine as long as your willing to wait a longer time while is encoding, the other thing is editing is really really really really really really tedious and boring I would actually give it a try before committing anything

Generali

RobTang wrote: »

presumably you already have something that can run Minecraft, you may as well just try to record a session and edit it, if it doesn't work or is too slow look into something else.
The specs for Minecraft are so low running a recorder on top prob wont make much of a difference.


Contrary to popular belied video editing doesn't need a fast machine as long as your willing to wait a longer time while is encoding, the other thing is editing is really really really really really really tedious and boring I would actually give it a try before committing anything

Thanks for the response RobTang.

I have a laptop which I use for work but, given that my son wants to download 'mods' to Minecraft, the provenance of which are at best dubious, I don't want him anywhere near my machine.

He can wait for editing, I don't mind if that's a little inconvenient for him. What it does need to handle is Minecraft running alongside the recording software.

How would you suggest he tries out video editing?

mspritch

One option is to use a HDMI recorder on the laptop's HDMI or DisplayPort output. There are quite a few on eBay and they work pretty well (I've got one).
Mine has HDMI in, HDMI out, a USB port and a microphone port. The HDMI out means it can sit inline between a device and the screen, recording everything as it passes through. The microphone port on mine allows voiceover, but not all have this feature, and you can always record that separately.