Morrowind in danger

You might not like what you're about to read.  Consider yourself warned.

For the past month, I've been desperately trying to get Morrowind's recording to work again.  It's not a codec issue or anything, it's just that what allows me to play Morrowind in my Mac environment is conflicting with my recording software.  I can play and record Mac games just fine but Morrowind footage ends up being black.

I guess the clue was that Morrowind was running surprisingly smooth until I start recording - which turns into a hideous slideshow... that records black.  So whatever made Morrowind run better on my Mac is making recording essentially impossible.

You know the saying "Don't fix what ain't broke"?  Well it partially applies in this situation as I updated a few softwares.  The thing is, I don't know which software is the culprit.  You see, I updated to Mac OS X Lion the moment it was available, I then updated ScreenFlow which allows me to record my videos so that it could run on the new OS and I did the same thing with Crossover Games (which makes Morrowind-on-Mac possible).  So, basically, every software that made the Morrowind LP possible was updated and something in the mix is failing to work harmoniously.

You might be thinking "why don't you simply revert them back?" well, that's because the saying only PARTIALLY applies?  My computer WAS broken and desperately needed the update(s) for many aspects of my life; be it work, casual computing or even gaming.

... it just fails for Morrowind or, more specifically, it fails for the Lets Play since the game runs like a dream when I'm not recording.

What's putting even more fuel to the problem is the issues I've been getting with my Youtube channel lately.  Granted, I haven't been very frequent with my uploads but I had my reasons.  It's not like I don't WANT to play Morrowind or Oblivion, it's just that I COULDN'T.  Well, nothing stops me from uploading some Oblivion videos other than the fact that Morrowind's LP would remain broken.

These days, I'm either exhausted from work or troubleshooting my LPs or, worse yet, trying to moderate my channel.  It probably has been just as frustrating for me as it has been for you.  I know how frustrating it is to not have your show available (a show that you invested time in).

Something needs to be done on all fronts or else Morrowind's LP is canned.  On the first front (and this is a personal thing), I need to try and do less stuff each day.  If I do get home by 7pm, I should take an hour to eat and go to bed at 10pm at the latest and maybe then I'll have the energy to play Morrowind once or twice a week or god forbid every day like I want to.  Because, right now, I'm less productive by trying to stay up all night to do productive stuff... a vicious circle that CAN be broken.  So I'll try to work on that.

The second issue is probably the most complicated one to tackle as it is technical in nature.  My setup HAS to change somehow because this roller-coaster of a technical mess isn't working for me.  The first step will be to go back to my original Parallels Desktop setup, the end result is slower than Crossover Games but it causes less issues with recording.  The reason why I haven't done that yet is simply because my Parallels Desktop client needs to be updated as well... or else you would've seen Morrowind videos already.  Unlike the others, this update is expensive.  It's expensive because what I get out of it isn't worth the money as I don't use Windows on my laptop to work anymore... and all my games work on Crossover Games if they're not already native to OS X.  Not to mention that there's no guarantee that it would work either.

So why not just Bootcamp and go directly in Windows?  Ever since I started my Oblivion LP, I've been thinking it.  Why I haven't done so already is simple: because I'm stubborn.  The picture-in-picture that I'm known for has to stay.  I know other LPers managed to get a webcam setup in Windows, I just haven't figured it out yet.  This is probably the best solution as it'll also help my future Skyrim LP.  If I can get it to work for Morrowind, it should work for Skyrim as well.  I need something that won't require me to sync 4 tracks at every session.

As for my Youtube channel, I have done a lot of thinking and the answer is unfortunate but simple: I'll just have every comment go through the validation process.  More work for me, you say?  Maybe.  The way I see it, it'll just take a lot of time before I get to approve your comment(s).  There is the ban hammer to consider and I am willing to wield it with brutality but, since I have ZERO patience with that sort of thing, I might end up banning my entire audience.

So what am I doing?  I don't know.  I suppose I can start uploading Oblivion more regularly for a bit and then work on fixing Morrowind every once in a while.  That's what I did last time...