How do I get started on YouTube?

Thanks!
These are my laptop's specs according to Windows.
Component Details Subscore Base score
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2350M CPU @ 2.30GHz 6.7
4.6
Determined by lowest subscore
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 5.9
Graphics Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 4.6
Gaming graphics 1664 MB Total available graphics memory 6.1
Primary hard disk 419GB Free (457GB Total) 5.9
Windows 8
System
Manufacturer Dell Inc.
Model Inspiron 3520
Total amount of system memory 4.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 2
Storage
Total size of hard disk(s) 457 GB
Disk partition (C:) 419 GB Free (457 GB Total)
Media drive (D:) CD/DVD
Graphics
Display adapter type Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000
Total available graphics memory 1664 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 32 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1632 MB
Display adapter driver version 9.17.10.2849
Primary monitor resolution 1366x768
DirectX version DirectX 10.1
Network
Network Adapter Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller
Network Adapter Dell Wireless 1703 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz)
Network Adapter Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
Network Adapter Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter
 
Those system specs are really more for mainstream computing and not for any dedicated video editing work.

An i3 is really minimum for real HD but can be done nonetheless. Your chip has hyperthreading so it has 4 threads (2 cores + 2 virtual cores) essentially making it 4 CPUs. It's probably better to get a system with dedicated quad core or more. Still its better than what I used to use back in the day. I use to edit videos on a system using two single cores (multicore CPU's weren't available then) and then on a dual core Core 2 processor and even then at certain times it was a struggle.

What's gonna be a bottle neck here is the hard drive, RAM and possibly the graphics component. There's only one hard drive which is being usesd as a primary drive having your system OS and programs on it. Its best to at least have a system drive + one dedicated drive for video editing capture/editing at minimum, 7200rpm or better. That's of course minimum, to get even faster speeds, a RAID setup is a must (striping two or more hard drives of the same size together) [i.e. system drive + dedicated RAID 0 {drive 2+drive3}] [Usually people will do system drive + dedicated striped RAID + cache drive + optional backup for storage].

A single SSD can work but the expensive cost per capacity will be the compromise. Capturing uncompressed HD requires huge amounts of space typical file for 720p footage @ 59.94fps is about 105MB/sec = 370GB/hour. At these rates, you definitely need a RAID or SSD to do any real work. However, due to this, a lot of people offset these large space requirements by using a real time conversion encoding method in what's called "intermediate codec". These are usually packaged with your capture software or can be bought separately as a plugin for your system or software if supported. But this will further require the need for a stronger system, because it will require more CPU and system resources to perform the encoding on the fly while capturing to disk.

Video editing applications are usually memory hungry and having 4 gigs of RAM shared on your system with onboard graphics will leave little to work with. Having more will always be better. These days, a lot of modern graphics cards have an added ability to run complex calculations so can act like a CPU alongside your main CPUs (for Nvidia using CUDA and AMD video graphics using OpenCL). They have the added benefit of not only driving video on your screen but doing some of the hard math run in the background that may be useful for video applications such as rendering effects or allowing smooth editing, scrub and playback if supported.

If you don't plan to upgrade the system or get a better one, then its probably best to get a consumer capture solution. As stated earlier, many of those solutions should be fine for general Youtube uploads. But your system as it is will probably not be best for professional grade video applications.
 
How about mine?

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: HP ProBook 4540s
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3230M CPU @ 2.60GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000
 
That fares better having a 3rd generation core i5 Intel processor. It's still a dual core processor but has hyperthreading so basically 4 processors. BTW, you can look up any Intel CPU specs at http://ark.intel.com

You didn't list what kind of storage you have but seeing that its a laptop, I'm assuming you have one system drive. Again, this can be used but it's not gonna be ideal for real dedicated video editing since all the resources will be shared across the system, reading and writing simultaneously to disk. For professional work, you want a dedicated drive just for captures and editing content. On mobile computers, you maybe limited in options since everything is internal and not as user friendly to swap out drives. There are external solutions, even external RAID arrays and such but you'll need to be able to interface with them on a fast line using either USB 3.0 or something better like Thunderbolt depending on whether or not your laptop has those connection ports available.

You can check how many CPU threads and their activity by going into your task manager on Windows (Cntrl+Alt+Del, start task manger or right click on task bar, start Task Manager).

10ie5js.jpg



The screen on Win8 will look different but I don't use that operating system. Same method to get to the task manager but it simplifies the screen showing a graph with overall CPU processs. It'll list things like # logical processors/virtualization, cache as well.

Those boxes on top indicates the number of CPU threads. On this screenshot above, you see 12 threads on mine - it's a hex-core i7 - 6 CPUs with hyperthreading, essentially 12 CPU's or 12 threads. When something is running you'll see a graph generated showing your computer and any activity across each one of those cores. Usually only a few of these will have any activity but it depends on the software you're running if it supports multithreading.

The graph on the bottom shows your memory RAM usage including how much you have installed in your system. On mine, its about 24GB which is enough but when doing some heavy post editing activity like FX work on Adobe After Effects, I can definitely use more. In the screenshot above, it appears 4GB is already being used by applications loaded at the moment {OS general system resources, a few web browsers open, anti-virus software, other apps running in the background, mp3 player, etc.} leaving only 20GB free in this state. As you can see, having more is always better in any system regardless if its for a dedicated gaming rig or digital content creation.

Having a fast CPU and lots of available RAM is a general rule of thumb. Most systems these days are capable to greater or lesser extent. Higher speeds of a processor is always a plus as it will allow faster renders. But this can also be offset or improved dramatically by multithreading by having extra CPU cores do some of the horsework in parallel (if your software supports it).

The bottleneck is always the storage system in your computer. Hard drives are mechanical so take time to read and write data off its platters, with optical disc like DVD/Blueray, its even slower. That's why more people are opting for solid state drives like SSD because it's more like RAM in its reading/writing which is almost instantaneous because of its much higher speeds. Someday I think mechanical hard drives will be obsolete and disappear all together but right now are still more cost effective given the size you get per Gigabyte/Terrabyte.

Blackmagic has an excellent disk speedtest program that can determine how fast your hard drive is and what kind of uncompressed video you'll be able to capture. The standalone program unfortunately is only for Mac. For Windows, it's included in their bundled software that comes with the Intensity. You can still download it for free, but it will install all the drivers and such. If you're curious you can try it, test the speed of your disk then uninstall it afterwards.

http://software.blackmagicdesign.com/DesktopVideo/Blackmagic_Desktop_Video_Windows_10.0.zip

There's other programs out there that do speedtests so you can google them as well and check against the requirements for video storage space for uncompressed video here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompressed_video

Remember this for uncompressed video capture which is raw but as I stated earlier, you may opt for some kind of "intermediate codec" which will encode on the fly requiring less storage space. That caveat however, it'll use up more CPU/Memory resources in order to do that so you'll need an overall robust system to handle that depending on what kind of video codec you're using.
 
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Depends if you plan to upload a game from a computer or a console.

If Console: Then you need a mic while playing and recording, so i would suggest to "press record capture card and record mic from Audacity" at the same time when it comes to console LP.

Computer: If you plan to record from your computer screen, then "Bandicam" is a good software. It doesn't make your computer lag, its unlikely atleast.
 
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