I'm possibly making a blog/youtube channel for FFXI storyline cutscenes.

Attention: FFXI community!

I’ve recently started recording videos of FFXI storyline missions on my blog, and I eventually hope to make this blog a large (HD) collection of all the cutscenes and battles from the main FFXI storylines.

That being said, I recently ran into a big problem. FFXI does not work too well with newer graphics cards. Even though my laptop can run many new games at medium (and in some cases, high) settings, FFXI can make my framerate drop considerably. While FRAPS is recording, I notice that it goes from from 30FPS to 17-22 FPS when I run into confluxes, summons, and other objects that use a certain “glow” effect in the game. This includes some effects that are only seen in cutscenes.

As a result, I have to make a big decision regarding the resolution of the videos that I will be making from now on. After thinking about this issue for a while, I’ve come up with two different options that I have:

1) I could continue to make my videos in widescreen 720p resolution, but experience a noticeable framerate drop during cutscenes and fights that involve the “glow effect” (which isn't TOO often, but there is the possibility that when it does occur, it will ruin the experience of watching some cutscenes/fights).

2) I could start making my videos in 4:3 at a resolution that YouTube still considers 720p HD and have a consistent 30 FPS.

So here is where you guys come in.

What would you prefer? I don't want to provide a link to my Youtube channel or blog on this forum for various reasons, but I would like to see what the general consensus is.



[By the way, I know there is already a big compilation being done by Lawtechguy, but his videos are done in a lower quality resolution, and they also use some strange Veoh website that requires you to install a webplayer. I am in no way trying to compete with or insult Lawtechguy. While I did get the general idea from his blog, I am doing things in a different style according to my tastes. Plus, as I said, I am just starting this project. He is FARRRRRR ahead of me in terms of completion.]

Look up WOTG Aishee's subscription page on Youtube, she has all of WotG (including Nation Quests), CoP, and is working on some others.

If it has to be one or the other, I'd say go with the latter. Otherwise I'd suggest making the videos uncompressed and compressing them later. This option, however, will require lots of disk space (and possibly a fast disk if you're doing HD videos). For PCs, an SSD would be perfect. Laptop SSDs usually have tiny capacity, but laptops suck anyway, not sure why people bother doing computationally expensive work on them.