【６０ＦＰＳ】 Rainbow Dash Stole The 20% Cooler Thing

Excal! 2026-09-25 | 【６０ＦＰＳ】 Rainbow Dash Stole The 20% Cooler Thing

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt OP (English credits)

Excal! 2022-11-12 | Filler upload. Not my editing this time. :)
I picked something that I'm 99% sure won't get hit by copyright. :p
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The opening sequence to P&SwG, but with English credits. Taken straight from the Funimation bluray.

--Tools used--
N/A

Magia Record (game) - OP1 Kakawari - North America ver. (+ lyrics)

Excal! 2022-10-07 | Everyone who'd uploaded this OP to this website didn't really upload them cleanly and properly, so I'm here to fix that. Consider this an experiment with video encoding quality, as well as a preservation effort of sorts, as the English version of the game has long since shutdown.

Extracted directly from the game's file data.

Lyrics and transcription adapted from:
magireco.fandom.com/wiki/Kakawari

=== Original audio/video specs ===
V: 1920x1080, 3 mbps VP9 @ 23.976 FPS, Full RGB
A: 48000hz, 16-bit Stereo PCM
DL: drive.google.com/file/d/1wHJGlzfXgptJTEKazrgdFsPbdDZpL6Rr/view?usp=sharing

=== Uploaded specs ===
V: 1920x1080, 14 mbps H.264 @ 47.952 FPS, Limited RGB + hqdn3d weak preset
A: 48000hz, 192 kb/s Stereo AAC

Dub comparison (🇬🇧/🇯🇵/🇮🇩): Made In Abyss - Mitty mercy kill scene

Excal! 2022-09-28 | This was painful for me to put together because I had to play this scene over and over ;-;

But yeah, the official indonesian dub of MiA is now complete! Do their voice acting (or in this case Nanachi's) stack-up against the greats for this one heavy and heart-wrenching scene? Let me know in the comments!

Personally I don't think they did a good enough job and they really could've done better. I couldn't take the voice seriously and so I couldn't cry everytime I watch this scene with the indon dub.

The Demon Girl Next Door S1 OP Machikado Tangent (English credits) ©

Excal! 2022-08-24 | I don't know what to say guys, this show is *impossible* to get around copyright for. This is what I unfortunately had to do to get it to pass the copyright checks. The video contains only the frames that I edited. Everything else has been cut out.

Oh and my Vimeo account has been taken down lol. I'll need to figure out a better way to get uncensored versions up.
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The opening sequence for Season 1 of "The Demon Girl Next Door", but with English credits text instead.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas

Genius Princes Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt OP (English credits)

Excal! 2022-08-11 | This is a reaaaally fun show. 10/10 would recommend. Ninym best girl.

The credits are simple to recreate, but it's mostly for me to experiment with Vegas' ProType Titler thingy. I get more control over where the text should go and how they should look. I think it paid off. c:
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The opening sequence for "The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt", but with English credits text instead.

This is fanmade, and not the official version. Funimation may come out with an English credits OP at some point in the future when they release their English-dubbed blu-ray.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas
Official Genius Prince logo upscaled using: bigjpg.com

Azumanga Daioh - Region 1 DVD OP + ED (English credits + lyrics)

Excal! 2022-07-31 | Colour-corrected and (sloppily) extended to 16:9 for your viewing pleasure. Audio was also taken from the soundtrack for the highest listening quality possible.

I have not ever seen anyone upload this before. So for historical purposes, I'm leaving this up on this website here, juuust in case. :p

Lyrics subtitle taken from a fansub, spell-checked and re-styled to conform to Sentai's subtitle specs.

0:00 OP
1:32 ED

Made In Abyss S1 OP Deep In Abyss (w/ English credits + lyrics) ©

Excal! 2022-07-18 | One of the more complex opening credits to recreate because of the glyphs. I couldn't find ones that look identical, so this was the best I could work with.

Unfortunately this show is just too popular to not get blocked worldwide without a censor.
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UNCENSORED VERSION:
vimeo.com/730777830

The opening sequence for the first season of Made In Abyss, but with English credits text instead.

Lyrics subtitle taken from Sentai's bluray release.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas
Netherglyph font: frozenpandaman.github.io/abyss
Character/glyph mapping: charmap.exe (i'm serious)

Nichijou: My Ordinary Life OP1 (w/ English credits + lyrics)

Excal! 2022-07-04 | An everyday KyoAni masterpiece.

I'm not sure if Funimation already did this, since they *did* release an English-dubbed bluray for this show. If anyone can confirm, that'd be nice.
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The opening sequence for the first-half of Nichijou, but with English credits text instead.

English lyrics subtitle taken from the Funimation bluray.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! -Heart Throb- OP (w/ English credits + lyrics)

Excal! 2022-06-26 | BASED KYOANI THEY ACTUALLY LET ME UPLOAD THIS UNCENSORED.
This one was fun to make! I really liked the text transitions and recreating them. :D
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The opening sequence for season 2 of Chū-2, but with English credits text instead.

Lyrics subtitle taken from Sentai's bluray release.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas
Chu-2 byo Heart Throb logo: Adobe Photoshop (because i couldn't find an HD "Heart Throb" part of the logo, so i had to improvise lol)

HOW TO make your PS5 work with old & unsupported monitors

Excal! 2022-06-23 | I don't normally make videos like this, but I feel this piece of info will be useful to some people who might not yet be able to afford expensive displays to play their PS5's on. :)

also pls bear with me i don't really do very good on camera lol

Alternative connection setup to try if the one in the video doesn't work for you for some reason:
Dongle =--- [[splitter]] ---˂ PS5 + Monitor

If it still doesn't work, try unplug and re-plug the dongle-side HDMI connector.

Sometimes the PS5 will report the resolutions as "not supported" like you see here, but other times it will report the opposite. It's a very janky setup. :p
Do note however, that it's listing resolutions that the dongle supports, not what the monitor supports.

Toradora! OP1 Pre-parade (w/ English credits) ©

Excal! 2022-06-18 | This is a reupload, but uses my updated censoring technique. This one's tricky to get around Content ID for, as the theme song also blocks the video worldwide. Using the instrumental version instead made it so that it's only blocked in Japan. (ごめんね)
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UNCENSORED VERSION HERE:
vimeo.com/702396874

The first opening sequence of Toradora! but with English credits text instead.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

Mostly done as an excuse for video editing practice. But also, animes with english credits in their opening/ending credits oddly fascinates me. :p

--Tools used--
Editing, colour correction & typesetting: Sony Vegas
English Toradora! logo: Adobe Photoshop

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun OP (w/ English credits) ©

Excal! 2022-06-13 | Looks like overlaying an image with 50% opacity is all I need to get past Content ID. :p
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Uncensored version:
vimeo.com/715273315

Uncensored w/ English OP theme by Y. Chang:
vimeo.com/713849483

The opening sequence of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, but with English credits text instead.

This is fanmade, and not the official version that came with the North American home releases - those ones still get japanese credits text on the OP sequence.

--Tools used--
Editing & typesetting: Sony Vegas

Tonikawa, but its just Street Fighter

Excal! 2022-06-02 | i trimmed away the actual show, so all that's left is just Street Fighter gameplay
content ID will never be able to tell.

(also i can't believe no one's done this yet lol)

SANIC MANIA 2

Excal! 2022-05-14 | GADDA GO FAST

Soundodger 2 - Katapult by Mike Forst (Soundodger+ backcompat) - Normal S+ 106%

Excal! 2021-10-13 | Just a quick video for today - Soundodger 2 went early access a few days ago, and I was excited when I heard that it'll support old Soundodger+ content. So I got the game, and decided to put one of the more interesting songs from the original game into SD2. This involved pulling the MP3 and the XML level file out of SD+'s SWF files and playing it as a User Level. It plays pretty much the same as in SD+, though it's obviously more responsive being no longer a game that runs on Adobe Flash. :p

They plan to just support old SD+ songs natively without going through that later tho, so uhh...

Buy the game!
store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2

(also the bonus tracks from SD+ is already playable in SD2, since they're already just user levels themselves)

Angry German Kid - Tsurupettan ft. Hatsune Miku (Clone Hero remastered chart)

Excal! 2021-07-10 | Or more popularly known as the "Best Crazy German Kid REMIX Ever!" chart from the Guitar Hero 3 customs days. :p

::: Download :::
dropbox.com/s/xl11rrjm438q85h/Angry%20German%20Kid%20-%20Tsurupettan%20ft.%20Hatsune%20Miku.7z?dl=0

::: Original 2009 version :::
youtube.com/watch?v=ind8ZXlwR0g

This is something I'd been wanting to do for a long time, but never got around to doing it. It was a chart that's made popular by the relevancy of now-vintage internet memes and the fact that Guitar Hero customs were still relatively new at the time, so new that you were basically a cool kid if you're able to work out making your own GH custom charts. :p

At the time I made the original chart, I had near-zero experience on what a "good" chart is. Having a decent amount of that experience now, I wanted to touch up parts of the chart that nowadays feels "wrong" to me, but also add new little things to modernise the chart, such as the new guitar solo section, and upgrading the 4-note chord spam at the end to a 5-note chord spam.

I also made sure all the notes are all properly in sync this time, because boy was I terrible with that back then. Star power sections are also evenly spaced out now, but their placement's not too different from the original. I did my best to keep most of the original chart intact where I feel it's acceptable.

I decided for this video that, instead of letting the bot play for a preview, I would be the one giving the chart a go. I figured it feels more authentic that way, serving as a tribute to the original video, where I would make mistakes and whatnot.

Anywho, hope you enjoyed this! Let me know in the comments if you were one of the few people who'd seen the original! :D

Bill Kiley - Ye Olde Future [Clone Hero chart preview]

Excal! 2021-06-27 | From Soundodger+!

Download: dropbox.com/s/lu3ynfggj2pnr0f/Bill%20Kiley%20-%20Ye%20Olde%20Future.7z?dl=0

Felt like doing another one. Wanted to pick something from a kinda obscure game (at least it feels like it's obscure these days). Simple and short song, maybe good for practicing with ascending hopos, if you need that. :p

PCSX2: USB mic emulation is here! [Rock Band 2 vocals]

Excal! 2021-03-26 | It's about damn time....... for me to not actually sing the lyrics.
Get the latest nightly build here: buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2

Song is from one of the Track Pack discs imported to RB2, which you can also do yourself, here:
github.com/20excal07/RB2TrackPackV1V2

Thanks for watching!

DuckStation test: Gran Turismo 2 w/ 60FPS + Widescreen patches

Excal! 2021-02-27 | DuckStation is a newcomer in the PSX/PS1 emulation scene. It features some of the best enhancement features that are typically expected from a modern-day console emulator and more, including Vulkan support, XInput controller support, PGXP, custom GLSL shaders, and a user-friendly frontend interface ala Dolphin/RPCS3/Cemu/etc.

Give 'em a go! It is far FAR better than what ePSXe currently offers in comparison:
github.com/stenzek/duckstation

Footage recorded on these specs:
- Core i5-3320M @ 3.20 GHz
- Nvidia NVS 5400M @ 826/1046 MHz (Core/Memory)

Settings used:
- 4x resolution scale w/ D3D11
- Custom FXAA GLSL shader (borrowed from Dolphin)
- Scaled dithering enabled
- Downsampling disabled
- 200% emulated CPU clock speed (necessary for 60 FPS)
- PGXP enabled (default settings)
- Async audio output

Gameshark codes used to achieve
60FPS (v1.0 NTSC discs only):
// 301D52C4 0001
Widescreen:
// 8007B2AC 01AC
// 8007B2AE 3402
Disable HUD:
// 301D52C6 000C

Rock Band Unplugged - Jeremy - Expert FC (real PSP)

Excal! 2020-10-28 | Bought and modded a PSP 3K a couple of days ago and turns out a USB cable is enough for filming onscreen footage, so of course I decided to test it out with an FC run. :p

Excuse the PSP template thingy, that's only there to decorate the empty frame around the footage, since I wanted to keep the 1:1 pixel scaling as much as possible, so in this case, the actual footage is 960x544 (2x native PSP) within a 720p screen space.

If you're wondering why I didn't just play on an emulator instead, well, it's more authentic this way. Plus I don't have to deal with sync issues that I can't do anything about when playing this on an emulator.

Taiko Switch - 見たこともない景色 - Extreme FC [new capture card test]

Excal! 2020-10-01 | I bought one of those $10 mini capture cards that's made the rounds some months ago (they look like USB flash drives), and it's... decent? ?? Only downside is it records in mono, and only up to 720p if you need 60fps footages. I had trouble getting 60fps to not stutter all the way, so naturally I had to fall back down to 30fps for this.

This is the first time I've ever owned a capture card of any sort, and honestly it's an okay purchase if you're on a tight budget and need something you can record your console gaming sessions with. If your budget is way more tho? I would say avoid, and just invest in an Elgato or something.

There's nothing special about this FC, i just needed a reason to record a test video with the capture card. :p

Clone Hero [KB Drums] Rush - Subdivisions Expert 98%, 628k, 6*

Excal! 2020-07-20 | I've grinded an unhealthy amount of times on this song. a lot of the harder rolling sections that i perfectly hit on this clip are just out of pure luck and nothing more. you don't know how upsetting it is whenever i successfully hit a difficult part and then screw up the rest of the song 10 seconds later. like, holy hell.

Anyway, I'd been wanting to do this song on keyboard drums for a while now, and this seems like a perfectly good excuse to try using OBS in this way (since I've never done it like this before). It really saves me from having to reset both recorders separately every time I mess up. Excuse the poor quality hands cam footage, my 2nd-gen Nexus 7 tablet is the best camera i have at the moment x.x

I'll try to set the footage up more neatly next time i do a video like this. I just got reeeeaaally impatient with not being able to stay consistent on this.

...this is the Rock Band 3 DLC chart, if you're wondering.

Spin Rhythm - Beyond The Heart - XD FC

Excal! 2020-06-21 | My first XD FC ever on Spin Rhythm! Not much to say for this video except that I'm proud of it. This is one of the easier songs of this difficulty, but I hope to be able to nail the other songs later down the road!

(dat one missed release note tho)

I play with KB+mouse if anyone's wondering.

Mundial Ronaldinho Soccer 64, but its a cursedly accurate MIDI transcription

Excal! 2020-05-24 | You're welcome.
dropbox.com/s/wnhe3q40xv0tx0y/RONALDINHO.mid?dl=0

Heavy Weapons Fortress Soccer 2

Excal! 2020-05-06 | Heavy had his own bootleg soccer game.

I ported the Rock Band track pack discs into RB2 for PS2! [also Synchronicity II FC]

Excal! 2020-04-29 | I felt that this was needed, because all of the track pack discs used the RB1 engine, and the last track pack disc released that used the RB2 engine was not ever released for the PS2. 40 songs in total from both Vol1 and Vol2 discs rounding out at about 5 gigabytes (with the tutorial songs and irrelevant FMVs removed).

In theory, I could fit in one more track pack into this, but I wanted to have some consistency with the theming - where the other track packs were focused on compiling one specific genre of music, Vol1 and Vol2 were just compilations of HMX's favourite DLC picks at the time of release, so this checks out pretty well in that regard.

Anyway, if you wanna have a go:
github.com/20excal07/RB2TrackPackV1V2
All explanations and tools provided! You just need to have the relevant game discs at hand. (or on your drive as ISO images).

Again, all the songs will be available for play from the start. You do not have to play through the career mode or enable the "unlock all songs" cheat.

Thanks for watching, and have fun!

[timestamps for youtube's new "video chapters" feature]
0:00 Explanation
1:20 Intro
2:05 Verse 1
2:29 Chorus 1A
2:41 Chorus 1B
2:53 Chorus 1C
3:05 Verse 2
3:30 Chorus 2A
3:41 Chorus 2B
3:54 Chorus 2C
4:06 Guitar solo
4:18 Intro riff
4:30 Verse 3
4:54 Chorus 3A
5:06 Chorus 3B
5:21 Chorus 3C
5:32 Outro

Teminite - Believe [Clone Hero chart preview]

Excal! 2019-12-25 | Merry christmas! I had an urge to chart this song for Clone Hero as soon as I heard the sax solo while playing this in Spin Rhythm. It fits as well as I'd hoped.

Download:
dropbox.com/s/bh2im0dve9texy0/Teminite%20-%20Believe.rar?dl=0

The decision to chart the vocals was due in part to the way Teminite autotunes his voice. If you watch the live performance of the song, you can see that he's not actually playing his piano to anything else other than his own voice, so in a way it makes more sense to do this than say, actually chart it on vocals for Rock Band, in which a similar approach was done in RB4 for the song "Speed Fighters" by Masaya Matsuura; the autotuned vocals exist and is perfectly singable, but for the sake of playability, you play the vocal part on guitar instead.

Spin Rhythm XD on Nintendo Switch, but its actually on PC

Excal! 2019-10-26 | While the Switch version is currently still in the works, I decided to just pair my Joycons up to my laptop and make use of their gyro sensors. The game couldn't natively detect the controllers however, so I had to hack something up - the gyro is just emulating mouse movements, and the buttons are mapped to keyboard/mouse controls. Although I'm sure this is how the Switch version will end up being played anyway. :p

vJoy driver for Joycons:
github.com/fossephate/JoyCon-Driver

GlovePIE:
((apparently the project is now long dead, you'll have to google for the download links at your own risk))

Anyway, this game is super fun, pls buy and support the devs if you like it, it's still in early access atm but I see it has a lot of potential to be really good!
store.steampowered.com/app/1058830/Spin_Rhythm_XD

Also join their discord server too!
discord.gg/rSePjzR

Thanks for watching~

Fear Inoculum, but converted to MIDI in stereo & played in sine waves

Excal! 2019-09-21 | alt. title: "fear inoculum but it's transmitted through two 56k dial-up modems"
i wonder if youtube's content ID will pick this up... (EDIT: it did)
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I've always wondered how these MIDI converters actually work. Turns out basically, it takes a spectrogram image of the source audio, map the frequencies to the correct MIDI notes, and spit out the audible portions of the audio (the "hot" portions of the image) as, well, MIDI notes. This video here explains this better:
youtube.com/watch?v=4eJU7rGwrvk

So with that knowledge in mind, if we take a MIDI-converted sample and play it back in sine waves, we should get the original audio back, right? Well, kinda.

MIDI doesn't exactly have the level of detail that normal analog audio has, and in this case, I had to cut off notes in the upper frequencies post-conversion (anything above B5/C6) otherwise the MIDI just ends up being really noisy to listen to. Except at the very beginning of the song, because that's where the high-pitched tuning fork (i guess??) sounds are.

MIDI also isn't exactly stereo. So to get a stereo conversion going, I split the song audio into 2 separate mono files, converted them separately, then pieced both conversions back to stereo.

Also yeah, I love this song. Waited 13 years for new Tool, and we finally got one haha. Anyway, I just thought this was an interesting experiment, and wanted to share the result. :p

Hope you enjoyed~

[MIDI cover] Blitz It - Chirpy Chips - Splatoon 2 OST

Excal! 2019-08-17 | I teased this a bit at the start of my Now Or Never cover. I decided to finish it because I *really* wanted to give the chiptune section a go. And damn I've impressed myself with it.

[DOWNLOAD THE MIDI HERE]
dropbox.com/s/hbimjg5gtasf6sm/blitzit.mid?dl=0

[ Sources used ]
~ Official Splatoon / Splatoon 2 fonts
frozenpandaman.github.io/inkling.html
~ The actual Blitz It track from the game's OST :p

Not much to say about this one really, except that it came out sounding REALLY good than I first expected. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make the chiptune part sound good in midi, and I probably will want to do the rest of the Chirpy Chips tracks at some point because of this. :p

Tried something new with this video since the track is just an endlessly looping 1-minute track and felt boring to just watch. Figured it'd be nice to do a little comparison between my cover and the original and just listen to how close they sound to each other.

But as always, thanks for watching/listening!

[MIDI cover] Now Or Never! - Wet Floor - Splatoon 2 OST

Excal! 2019-07-13 | After seeing Scruffy take a look at the detail behind the composition of this song, I couldn't resist getting into it myself. Now Or Never is a relatively simple song that has a lot of power using as few instruments as possible, designed to get you really pumped up at the final minute of a Turf War. Check his video out, it's worth it!
youtube.com/watch?v=38h8eudzy7k

[ DOWNLOAD THE MIDI HERE ]
dropbox.com/s/puyt0o4eezf6o4t/nowornever_panned.mid?dl=0

[ Sources used ]
~ "GAME!" green screen
youtube.com/watch?v=ffnAxQGaLYc
~ Official Splatoon / Splatoon 2 fonts
frozenpandaman.github.io/inkling.html

Same deal as last time, no soundfonts used, just pure, raw, unfiltered stock microsoft midi synthesizer, turns out sounding better in the end, so I'm happy with that. That part just before the drumming becomes faster oddly has a 6/4 measure. Not really odd I guess, just thought it's worth pointing out, tho the rest of the song is in 4/4.

Anyway, thanks for watching/listening! I know I don't upload as frequently these days, but I think it's better like this. It makes sure I don't burn out my creative juices too quickly (and my own mental health) for when I do feel like doing a video thing~

Bottom Feeders - Seafoam Shanty [Squid Beatz to Clone Hero convert]

Excal! 2019-03-07 | Clone Beatz? Squid Hero? Idk. :p
DOWNLOAD:
dropbox.com/s/x6khz3tvgkdxymo/Bottom%20Feeders%20-%20Seafoam%20Shanty.rar?dl=0

This is not a normal Clone Hero chart. You are meant to play this on a gamepad with button mappings that mimic how Squid Beatz is played in Splatoon 2. I've included a readme file in the download link that explains how this is set-up.

In Squid Beatz, the face buttons and the d-pad are mapped to the pink notes, while the trigger buttons are mapped to the green notes, so there's room for some creativity there if you want to be consistent in hitting them, and often times take a while to get it just right. This conversion would (hopefully) aid in that regard.

The idea behind this is that if it's in Clone Hero, you are forced to play the chart in one specific way, and in turn forces you to quickly develop muscle memory needed to FC the actual chart in Squid Beatz.

This idea came about because I had to struggle orienting myself to the Squid Beatz format at first. Very often I would mentally "rotate" the chart so they'd be scrolling downwards in my mind, and I would always treat the green notes as my left hand, and pink notes as my right. It's a little frustrating, but I got it eventually. :p

Anywho, this is also kind of an experiment of sorts, let me know if you wanna see more Squid Beatz conversions like this! I might do every single song in the game if there's a demand for that.

Thanks for watching!

Squid Sisters - Now Or Never (Live) [Clone Hero chart preview]

Excal! 2019-02-17 | I REALISED I'VE PUT "INK ME UP" IN THE VIDEO, BUT IT'S ACTUALLY "NOW OR NEVER", THE ONE-MINUTE-REMAINING SPLATFEST TURF WAR THEME, WHICH IS WHAT THIS SONG IS.

Download:
dropbox.com/s/yi6wiez1a3utuye/Squid%20Sisters%20-%20Now%20Or%20Never%20%282nd%20Live%29.rar?dl=0

I'm kind of in a Splatoon mood these days, and I realised a lot of the songs (at least the live concert versions anyway) sound really fun to play on CH, so I figured: why the hell not.

Also in the midst of uploading this, I had this idea of basing Splatoon CH charts off of their equivalent Squid Beatz charts (the rhythm game minigame thing in Sploon, which is basically a Taiko No Tatsujin clone played with buttons instead of a taiko drum). I might try that out for my next custom, it'll be interesting to see how I'll be mapping the notes out to 5-fret guitar.

thanks for watching!

Splatoon 2 Splatfest: Waffles VS Pancakes! (recorded with a phone & a mini USB soundcard)

Excal! 2019-02-09 | Back again in my quest to explore ways to record gameplays on the cheap! This time I decided to do something I remembered a friend of mine has done: capturing gameplay with a phone, but capture its audio directly from the console.

For this, I'm using an LG Nexus 5 (2013) with a 1.3 MP (1280x1024) camera supporting up to 30fps of video frame rate, and one of those cheap chinese mini USB sound cards that usually costs like $5 on Amazon or something. Oh and a male-to-male 3.5mm headset jack to actually connect the Switch to the sound card.

I'm very happy with how the recording turned out, especially after adding bits of video post-processing to help with the, uh, weird side effects that come from cameras trying to record a very bright screen :p

Anyways, below is how I did it, and hopefully someone can follow along as well if they want to try this~

===== VERY LONG DESCRIPTION BEGIN =====

pbs.twimg.com/media/Dy_dVmGVAAALp4r.jpg:large

1. Lay the Switch flat on a table. Yes, this means that I had a very uncomfortable viewing angle from where I can see the screen while recording this.

2. Place 2 relatively tall objects on both sides of the Switch (where the rails are). These objects need to be tall enough so that when you hold your phone at the object's height with the camera facing straight down towards the Switch's screen, the screen should have already filled most of the camera's viewfinder frame (or its width, if it isn't 16:9). I personally just used the boxes that came with me and my mum's phones, and had them stand vertically on each side. Also they need to be level in height. If they aren't, then add something to pad onto the shorter object.

3. Place a 25cm ruler (they'll need be wide enough for the phone to sit on) forming a bridge between the two objects, then place the phone on there. Your phone should be in the same landscape orientation as the Switch. Thankfully, the camera on my Nexus 5 is on the right-half of the phone, so getting it on there without having it fall and the ruler covering the camera wasn't an issue. If your phone's camera is in the centre however, you may need to experiment with the setup a little bit. Then just make sure the camera points directly down at the screen; the Switch's screen should already fill most of the camera's viewfinder. DO NOT RELY TOO MUCH ON DIGITAL ZOOM FOR FINE ADJUSTMENTS, you will lose video quality this way! Optical zoom is okay though, if that's a thing your phone camera has.

4. Connect the Switch's headset jack to the USB sound card's Mic In jack. Yes you read that right, the microphone jack. You will not get stereo audio, but this is the only thing that these sound cards have. (If you're on a desktop, just plug it into your conveniently-provided Line In jack instead on the rear panel - you'll get stereo audio this way!)

5. Begin experimenting with your phone's camera. You should avoid using the stock camera app (even Google's) and use one that allows complete manual camera customization, like OpenCamera. I'm not sure about iOS camera apps, but it should be possible to do something similar?
A few things to keep in mind:

---5.a) Your shutter speed should always at least be double of the recording frame rate, so 30fps will have 1/60 speed, 60fps will have 1/120 speed, etc. Increase the shutter speed again if it's getting you less motion blurs, but not too much as you won't be letting enough light into the camera. You can always play around with your Switch's brightness setting to compensate.

---5.b) Lower the ISO setting as low as you can and avoid noise artifacts altogether. Again, you can compensate with the Switch's screen brightness.

---5.c) You'll need to manually configure the white balance instead of using presets, if you want near 1:1 color accuracy.

---5.d) Auto-exposure and auto-focus should be disabled entirely. You should manually configure these yourself for the best quality.

6. Fire up an audio recording software like Audacity to record the ingame audio. Hit record on your phone as well. You will use a video editor of your choosing to sync these two up together later. Feel free to mess around with the video footage too, add things like colour correction, brightness & contrast settings, etc. to make it look nicer~

===== VERY LONG DESCRIPTION END =====

Thanks for watching/reading!

~Excal

Recorded a full Splatoon 2 gameplay with /just/ the builtin Switch recorder.

Excal! 2019-01-19 | I'm thinking of uploading gameplays again inbetween my regular videos, and currently looking into cheap but viable methods to record gameplays from my Switch. This method here is a no-brainer, but I wanted to see how good a quality I can achieve from the Switch's already sadly low bitrate recording output.

I chose to do a Salmon Run for this because it's less costly than say, needing to hit the capture button right in the middle of a turf war firefight. :u

What you see in this upload is completely unedited, as in I never threw it into Sony Vegas like I normally would with almost all of my other videos. Details of what exactly I did are down below~

Anyways I hope the upload looks okay. But maybe you guys can recommend me less shitty but still cheap alternatives? Let me know in the comments. c:

(TL;DR - I don't want to spend on an expensive capture device atm and I'm experimenting with inexpensive ways of recording)

---- LONG DESCRIPTION BEGIN ----

The builtin recorder (or perhaps Shadowplay, because that's pretty much what it is anyway because lol nvidia tegra chip) continuously saves a buffer of up to the last 30 seconds of your gameplay. Every time you hold down the capture button and save it to a video, the buffer resets, and begins recording again at almost exactly the point where the last buffer stopped.

So with that information, I devised a method. I downloaded an interval timer app to my phone, and set it to beep every 25 seconds, so everytime it beeps, I'll have a 5-second window to hit that capture button before the 30-second buffer window ends. Because really, if I'm going to hit it at exactly the 30-second mark, my mind will just be constantly racing between focusing on my gameplay & not forgetting to hit the button, which is distracting as hell, and actually costed me a match lmao. Though even with that 5-sec window, it's still a bit distracting because your thumb still has to let go of the left stick and reach for the button.

But after all that trouble's over, I moved all the clips to my PC and used MP4Joiner to losslessly combine the footages into one, then I threw that output into Avidemux to clean up the low-bitrate artifacts and re-encoded it, before finally uploading it.

---- END OF LONG DESCRIPTION ----

[MIDI cover] Fly Octo Fly ~ Ebb & Flow - Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion OST

Excal! 2019-01-13 | I blame Lumena-tan's 8-bit cover for their indirect inspiration to make this :D
youtube.com/watch?v=IXASL0aAAU4

[ DOWNLOAD THE MIDI HERE ]
dropbox.com/s/v74vylqqqdrshau/flyoctoflyebbandflow_final_v2.mid?dl=0

[ Sources used ]
~ OE final battle super jump clip
youtube.com/watch?v=iud80bIc0vs
~ "GAME!" green screen
youtube.com/watch?v=ffnAxQGaLYc
~ Official Splatoon / Splatoon 2 fonts
frozenpandaman.github.io/inkling.html

The challenge I'd put up for myself is to not use any soundfonts while making this, so people with no clue on how to use them can just listen to the MIDI file normally and it'd sound just as good as intended. I'm very proud with how it turned out in the end, and for real, I've been listening to my own cover on repeat so many times lmao, it's THAT satisfying.

Thanks for watching/listening! Hope you enjoyed~

Haywyre - Insight (Live) [Clone Hero chart preview]

Excal! 2018-12-24 | Better make good use of those fingers, because this has a lot of fun arpeggios to play.

Download:
dropbox.com/s/kz760v125188rq1/Haywyre%20-%20Insight.rar?dl=0

Another one in the backburner. Again, same with Renatus, originally thought I'd put it in Rock Band as a full band custom, ultimately decided it's way more fun in this Clone Hero form. Definitely worth it. I absolutely love charting arpeggios on guitar.

anyways, merry christmas! x3

Soleily - Renatus レナトゥス [Clone Hero chart preview]

Excal! 2018-12-08 | If you frequently play Osu!, you might be familiar with this song. :p
(also hi, i'm still alive and doing well-ish)

Download:
dropbox.com/s/5ca7vuxwmot1ynb/Soleily%20-%20Renatus.rar?dl=0

This one's been on the backburner for quite a while now. Original idea was to make this a Full Band custom for Rock Band, but it didn't feel quite right and not as fun to chart it "'reallistically". I've since touched it up and decided to make this a Clone Hero thing (or a GH3 PC thing if you want), because with CH, you don't really come into it expecting instrument-accurate charting for every song that the community makes customs for. It's really all about making the chart as fun to play on a plastic guitar controller as possible, even if it looks ridiculuous that you're playing essentially more than one instrument track in a song. Think charting for DDR/Stepmania, except you have a guitar in place of a dance pad.

Anyway, I have one more CH custom I'd like to release, hopefully before the end of the year, in January otherwise. It's gonna be something off of Monstercat, and I think it'd be hella fun to play on CH. :3

Overwatch, but with Team Fortress 2 voices

Excal! 2018-04-28 | What if Blizzard hired the TF2 cast to do voices for the game instead...

Footages were taken on a craptop, and I recorded everything in 21:9, so bear the potato video quality with me a bit. :u

EDIT: well shit, i forgot about Zenyatta. oops. x.x

433 by John Cage, 1st Ever Expert Full Band FC

Excal! 2018-04-01 | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4′33″

it's over. everyone go home. no other FC can possibly top this.

featuring youtube.com/Ashie being an absolute beast on guitar. props~

Merry Christmas, from our favorite Heavy Weapons Guy~

Excal! 2017-12-25 | This holiday season, Heavy learns how to use expletives.

SFM image done by my horse buddy Zena~
twitter.com/zenapone

Tempests Actual Real Name

Excal! 2017-11-05 | I have absolutely zero regrets.

[MIDI cover] Coldplay - Fix You (instrumental)

Excal! 2017-09-09 | The lights will guide you home...
_________________________________________________________________

--=={ Download links}==--
MP3:
drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLflfPbH_qFdUZCNDFlblVoWGM/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-g53KJfwLAV6tmvW0aIcczA
MIDI:
drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLflfPbH_qFVDJkUGY4ZkpqalU/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-F18_y5n4MYs1bUtmVl4_mw
Guitar Pro tab:
drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLflfPbH_qFVW9zSTRTYmdiRmM/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-ye8T2M79hW6P-LS8CGk5ZQ

I'm not feeling too well mentally at the moment. Broke up with my girlfriend a few days ago, although not on a sour note, it still kinda hurts. Like, now I just feel this large empty void that's needing to be filled once more. Not a great feeling, heh.

This song touched me on an emotional level, and is partly why I wanted to cover it, the other reason being that I just wanted to challenge myself. That said, the lyrics mean a lot for me, and so I will paste it here if any of you wants to sing along to it:
_________________________________________________________________

[Verse 1]
When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

[Verse 2]
When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

[Chorus]
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

[Verse 3]
And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I…
Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I…

[Chorus]

My Little Fortress - Battle For Engineer

Excal! 2017-08-19 | Heavy swooces right in to sweep Engineer off his feet. But he's not the only one who wants to make love with the texan...
__________________________________________________

Premiered first at SEAPonyCon 2017!
seaponycon.com

Featured on Equestria Daily~
http://www.equestriadaily.com/2017/08/wut-my-little-fortress-battle-for.html

--=={ TECHNICALITIES }==--
Total time spent: 1 month
Voice clips used: 176
Most used Spy clip: spy_revenge03.wav (90 times)
Most used Heavy clip: heavy_cloakedspyidentify08.wav (81 times)

--=={ SOCIAL MEDIA THINGS }==--
Twitter: twitter.com/20excaibur07
Tumblr: 2007excalibur2007.tumblr.com
__________________________________________________

First of all, I HAVE RETURNED. Second, if you're still following me for these videos, I want to thank you and give you all big hugs, because honestly, I'd been elsewhere if it weren't for you peeps. This is the first time that I've been to a horse convention overseas, so getting to premiere this live was very exciting!

Hope you all enjoyed this one, because I (hopefully) have a lot more in store for you all. Really missed doing these videos and I probably won't ever truly stop making them.

And to all those who were at the convention, HUGE THANKS FOR COMING TO SEE ME (and this video) AAAAAAAA LOVE YOU ALL~ uwu
__________________________________________________

~Excal

guitar hero custom of rarity shredding in anger

Excal! 2017-06-04 | i don't know why i did this

ALL OF MY UNFINISHED(??) ROCK BAND CUSTOMS :V

Excal! 2017-05-11 | Throughout the course of my hiatus, I'd been "doodling" a bunch of Rock Band customs that I seem to never be able to finish, either because I'm too unmotivated to, or because I just don't have as much free time to sit down and actually finish one.

I'll never be sure if I could finish any of these, but in case I ultimately can't, I made this compilation video so at least these "doodles" didn't feel like a total waste of time.

Hope you all like em!

p.s. shoutout to Scooblee for her song! I'm sorry I was never able to finish the custom for it, but I hope you know now that I haven't quite thrown it away just yet. ;)
Visit her channel here!
youtube.com/user/Scooblee1

~Excal

[MIDI cover/Tab] Rope - Foo Fighters (with actual vocals!)

Excal! 2017-04-28 | Just something that I was really proud of finishing the other day~

--=={ Download links and stuff }==--
OGG (with vocals): dropbox.com/s/n2pz8v8t1r3sr9d/ropemix.ogg?dl=0
MIDI (instrumental): dropbox.com/s/3x1vcfmzplrp4m0/rope_final.mid?dl=0
Guitar Pro tab: dropbox.com/s/gib7lrau7kwkl5q/rope2.gp5?dl=0

I had the separated stems for the song at hand. It started with me looking at the Pro Guitar chart of the song in Rock Band 3 and using that as a reference for the guitar track, ended up doing the rest of the song because damn, that chart was very accurate.

Decided to not use any soundfonts while making this, no regrets at all. It sounds perfect, and sounds almost exactly like the original, composition-wise. Really proud of the accuracy here.

I have an earlier version of the instrumental uploaded to my Soundcloud, which you can check out here:
soundcloud.com/2007excalibur2007/ff-rope-midi

I overlaid the chords that were used on video if you wanna try playing along on guitar, but you can check out the rest of the tab on the link I've given above. The chords shown on video are pretty much the only ones used throughout the song. :p

Anyway, I hope you guys liked this!
~Excal

SEASON 7 OF HORSE?? ALMOST HERE???

Excal! 2017-04-02 | I may not have been able to put out a lot of videos lately, but rest assured that I will keep this tradition going. c:

Looking forward to the new season~

We Are Number One But Every Instance Of Number One Is Replaced With Dave Grohl Yelling THE BEST

Excal! 2016-11-19 | HAVE YOU EVER CAUGHT A GOOD FOO LIKE DAVE GROHL

Original: youtu.be/PfYnvDL0Qcw

--=={ shamelessly copy pasta'd from Crowne Prince }==--
Stefán Karl is the actor for Robbie Rotten. In October he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Right now he is recovering from surgery and preparing to go through chemo and radiation treatment.

The GoFundMe campaign already paid for the $12,000 operation - which was the original goal. If you still want to see the page, it is here:
gofundme.com/2tm9tqk

Daniel Ingram - The Magic Inside [RB3 Custom; Keytar FC]

Excal! 2016-09-12 | A filler of sorts to tide you guys over for now. I decided to upload this to here instead of Lunar Phase because I feel this song is special. :3
Good chart, good song, good FC. It's all fun~
Apologies for the audio clipping, it was already like that in-game when I put the song in. (*gives Linos a stare*) :u

Also wanted to take the opportunity to give a little shoutout to Linos Melendi who made this custom. If you have a thing for Rock Band customs and liked what you see here, definitely check his channel out for more:
youtube.com/user/Xemnas879

And please check out my Lunar Phase channel if you wanna see more FC runs like this~ We just started doing osu! runs on there too if you're into that:
youtube.com/c/thelunarphase

See you guys again in December (still)!

~Excal