Two ways to get around Nintendo Content ID claims.

• Use the best possible cables when recording. I.e. HD is better than component, and component is better than composite.
• Make sure you have enough storage space on your computer. Otherwise, your video will end prematurely.
• Many video authoring programs offer a free trial. Try them all before deciding which one suits your needs best.

It's been nearly a month now since Nintendo announced that for the Let's Players out there on YouTube who are using Nintendo footage, that they're going to start doing content ID claims on the videos themselves. One thing that must be pointed out is that this will not result in your video being taken down and having a strike made against your account (unlike what Sega did).

Rather, Nintendo will have their own ads placed on your video and thus they'll make money from it instead of you. This is actually pretty rotten on Nintendo's part. Whilst I can totally see the point in the tv, film and music industry doing this since you're ripping off their material and posting it online for your own financial game, video games are different.

No playthrough of a game will be the same twice, and as such, it's really a unique experience that people can't copy like for like. Whilst it's true that Nintendo does own the copyright, under fair use, you're still allowed to use their footage (as reflected in the fact that they're not pulling the videos from YouTube.

However, since these LP's contain an audio commentary, you could argue that you know own the rights to the work since you're adding your own creative twist to it. Sadly, Nintendo are still going to be making money from this. However, there are a few ways to prevent them from making money from your work. The content ID claims are an automatic process that are based on two factors which are discussed below.

One of the key things that's flagging up the automatic content ID claims system is the audio in your LP's. By audio, I don't mean your commentary over the gameplay. Rather, it's the soundtrack of the game, as well as speech (like Mario's catchphrases). The simple way to get around this being the reason for your video having a claim marked against your video is to remove the audio during the editing process and solely leave your commentary on it instead.

For my gameplay videos, I usually do the commentary after the video is recorded so that I can delete the game audio and put mine in instead. However, for those that do a live commentary whilst playing the game, the solution is still pretty simplistic. By muting the game audio, be it via the emulator, or on your TV if you're using a capture card, it'll stop any audio from being recorded and thus saved to the video file. By doing this, it should help prevent Nintendo making money off your video by them placing their adverts onto it.

After doing a bit of research, it appears that longer videos are more likely to have a claim marked against them, and thus you'll be losing money. This is in conjunction with long portions of game play audio being detected. However, that problem has been resolved as discussed above.

When it comes to the duration of the game play (or review if your a journalist), try and keep this to a minimum i.e. under five minutes in length. In a way, Nintendo may have helped you here if you do LP's. Normally, it'll be an entire run through of a game. By uploading the game play in smaller parts such as five minutes compared to ten, it'll effectively double your video count. The good thing about this is that it'll also effectively double your revenue since you'll have double the amount of ads to make money from.

This can also be seen to be a good way to have a fail safe against Nintendo. They would never dream of putting ads on every single video you have. Therefore, by having smaller videos, it's minimising the chances of a whole game walk through being wasted in terms of you generating an income from it if they decide to add ads to some videos. You might have a 30 minute walk through of a level that you upload in one piece and they could earn money from that.However, if you split the same 30 minute video up into six parts, they may still only do a claim on one part of the level and thus you'll still be making money from the rest of the level.