This is a guest post from “The Linux Gamer”, Gardiner Bryant



Hi, my name is Gardiner. I run the YouTube channel The Linux Gamer and I was asked to write a guest post here on the System76 blog.

We’ve come a long way with multimedia production on the Linux desktop. Our tools have become much more powerful, and far more approachable–even in the short time I’ve been doing my show. So here’s a quick overview of how I produce my videos.

I believe that the most important thing with Internet video is audio. It seems unintuitive, but I have found this to be the case. The difference between a good video and a great one can be determined by the price of your microphone and how you use it.

The quality of hardware is equally as important as the pacing of audio editing and the post-processing. I use a program called Ocenaudio to edit my voice overs, the music in my videos, and sound effects. I use the built-in enhancement tools like the equalizer, compressor, and normalizer to process my voice and filter out any background noise.

If you’re going to edit voice over, it has to feel like a single, natural performance. When I cut out mistakes in my V.O., I use the drawing of breath as a yardstick of sorts, which allows the cuts to feel less jarring and gives a natural feel to the conversation.

As a side note, I’ve been guilty of poor audio production. An example would be my Dawn of War II review. The voice over sounds really bad and people noticed. No matter which video I compare Dawn of War II with, it has lower viewership retention. I firmly believe this is because of the poor quality of the voiceover.

People ask me about my editing techniques and how I make my videos. I can’t say it enough; the most effective means of a high-quality video edit is to have well-produced audio.

So let’s get into video editing. I use KdenLive to do all of it. It’s a simple, yet powerful tool with the features I need to get the job done.

The features in KdenLive that I use the most are the pan & zoom tool, the ‘composite’ transition layer, basic keyframe animating, volume control, and the audio normalization tool. I don’t use many other effects or transitions in my videos.

As I said previously; audio comes first. It’s especially true when you’re working on your video edit. The first thing I do when I’m make a video is drop in my voice over and find some stock music that fits the tone of the game I’m reviewing (or the video I’m making). I get my stock music from Epidemic Sound. It’s a great resource for that kind of thing, but you can also use the YouTube Audio Library (which is free).

Now that I have something to cut my footage to, I get started. Editing is really about feeling, to me. I like to show what I’m talking about on screen whenever possible. I like to cut footage rather quickly (never staying on a single clip for more than 12-ish seconds). And when I make my cuts, they need to roughly align to either a syllable in the voice over track or a beat in the music track. It always comes back to audio for me.

There’s also a visual rhythm I like to follow; Juxtaposing fast-paced moments with slow ones, intercutting shots with vibrant and distinct colors, and using a variety of different characters, designs, or in-game styles throughout the video.

If players can choose different characters, I want to show as many characters choices as possible. If one level has a blue sky dominating much of the footage, I will cut it against a level with a lot of green or red. Similarly, if there’s a quiet moment in a long hallway, I like to cut it against a frantic moment that has a lot of action in it.

Now, there are many times when you need to break these rules, especially if the story you’re trying to tell demands it. There are some games where it’s exclusively chaotic. Or maybe the game sticks to a single, muted color pallet. Even through these difficulties, the mandate I’ve set for myself is keep the video visually interesting.

I guess, when it comes down to making my videos, I could get by with virtually any software tool. OpenShot or PiTiVi would work much like KdenLive, though the process would be a bit more tedious. In fact, a much younger Gardiner actually won an award for a video he edited using the XP version of Windows Movie Maker. (He was 14 and didn’t know any better.) But I choose to use KdenLive because of its powerful toolset and the virtually limitless number of video and audio tracks.

Video editing is about the feeling, and it’s less of a science than it is alchemy. Keep practicing and eventually you’ll find your alchemy, too!

If you’d like to see what equipment I use to make my videos, check out the video below: