Workstation upgrades & tax paperwork week (1/2)

Good evening folks. So this is one update 1 of 2. I figured I'd split them up so it's not present one gigantic wall of text.

I'm pleased that Random Pavlov bullshittery last week was so well received. And thanks for supporting me and letting me make it, I had fun with that one. I've actually managed to complete a bit more pre-production efforts for parts 2 and 3. Which means that the editing for those episodes can start at the drop of a hat. A lot of clips have been properly nested and stored. I look forward to next time.

So to summarize this week immediately following Pavlov, on Monday and Tuesday I took a bit of a break to recuperate. I saw some family and took the dog for a nice walk in some woodland. She chased many a squirrel and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Then on Wednesday and Thursday I started looking to perform a long overdue upgrade on my PC components. Some of the parts are more than 4 years old now, bought before I had even gone full time, and they're struggling to cope with some of the more demanding games I stream - VR ones in particular. I usually have to drop the resolution down to below 40% in VR just to get a suitable frame-rate. And as you can imagine it doesn't produce very satisfying looking videos to edit after the fact. This is something I've been needing to remedy for some time now. Arma 3 showed it was problematic, but VR is the tipping point I reckon.

The outdated hardware is also presenting problems during the editing process. As After Effects in particular is very demanding on the RAM and CPU, since it's having to link out to numerous small compositions in Adobe Premiere and render them on the fly. I often find I need to wait a while for my PC to catch up before I can review something I've done. So I'm hoping this should fix things and undo some bottlenecks in the process. 

Also it should open up some additional options insofar as types of games I can record, and therefore make highlights from. Since this time I'm going for a dual-machine setup with a capture card, I should be able to record high-quality console footage this time and utilize studio standard audio equipment, rather than the Xbox microphone and streaming plugins that proved woefully not up to the task. Many of the funny moments from the planned first Red Dead Redemption bullshittery were outright ruined by extremely low bitrate limitations at the time of recording.

So, lots of individual parts are on the way and many Twitch viewers in particular have been very helpful with advice. If you were one of those people then thank you. Your guidance has been invaluable.

In addition, on Thursday and Friday I took some time to complete some UK taxation related paperwork in advance of next February where a hard-deadline is imposed. This is where one needs to legally declare all of their earnings so that correct tax percentages can be calculated. I left this to the fairly last minute last time and it proved to be a headache.

So all in all, it's been a week of 'housekeeping'. Tasks that needed to be done lest I put them off even longer. I hope you approve :)

The next message is to do with the next project starting next week, on which I could use your opinion. Many thanks!