I really fucked things up!

I don't know how I did it, but I really fucked things up in my last recording in Psychonauts.  I've been trying to fix it for the last couple of days and it's just not gonna happen.  I was able to figure out a "work around" to the problem, but then I was fucking that up as well.  I think that's all straightened out now so hopefully I'll be able to get a video posted in the next day or so.

The first fuck up: audio

I don't know how I did it but I recorded the audio for one session in Psychonauts over the top of the previous session I had recorded.  It didn't replace the audio for that session but just added the additional dialogue to the existing track.  I didn't catch that my system did this when I synced because I never talked at the same time on both of these tracks.  I didn't realized my error until I went to edit the file and got about 17 minutes in when I noticed that I was double talking.  It took me a while to figure out what was happening, but when I did I didn't panic.  I thought I'll just go back to the original audio and resync with the game play.  That's when I realized that the original audio was fucked up because the raw footage was saved together.  I didn't have separate recordings for both videos.

I spent a bunch of time trying to find a way to split the tracks so I could delete one and keep the other.  Couldn't figure out how to do that.  I figured out how to separate from stereo to mono, but that didn't help me.  After messing with the file for 3 days I finally gave up and decided I would post the game play video without my lovely commentary.  I'm sure no one would mind.

The second fuck up: video

I remember when I was playing I accidentally triggered a cut scene before I was ready to record.  I hurriedly pressed the record button on the game play and just never activated the audio recording (which is probably why it took so long for my audio tracks to overlap).  When the cut scene was done I stopped the recording and took the time to get things set up properly before recording.  I figured when I edited the video I would just add this cut scene to the beginning of my recording and everything would be okay.

When I gave up on the audio I started working on putting the original game play clips together to make one cohesive video.  Except whenever I added the game play clip to the cut scene clip the game play clip would error out and become unwatchable.  WTF?  I tried cut scene + clip #1 = unviewable error after processing.  I tried cut scene + clip #2 = unviewable error after processing.  I even tried clip #1 + clip #2 = unviewable error.  So I gave up and close down my editing program.

Except I hate giving up.

I came back to it a little while later (I will not have a program defeat me!!!!).  I put clip #1 and clip #2 together and after they were done processing they were viewable.  Hallelujah!!!  I quickly saved that configuration and called it a night.  Now I've got to see if I can get the cut scene attached to the game play clips and still have everything viewable. 

The cut scene is kind of important so I can't leave it out.  If things don't work I guess I could post just the cut scene as one video and then the game play as another.  Seems like a lot of work for such a stupid problem.  I really fucked things up, but I'm not sure how.

I wish I was better at this editing thing.  I wish I had more time to work and figure things out than just a couple of hours after work each night.  I thought I was getting better, but then something like this happens and I'm reminded of how much I don't know how to do.  I am trying though . . . and hopefully learning too.  I guess we'll have to see how everything turns out in the end.