However many views your uploads have are counted from the moment the upload started, not from when it's done processing. I've had uploads that had around, say, 20 views in the first 3 hours, but 1 hour was taken up by uploading and processing (there could be other factors, but I hope I was able to convey my point). I know when I started watching the latest episode, it had 8 views. At the end, it had 25.
For me, it is about the podcast first, gameplay second. While I understand that you want to have quality, I don't think you need to go through 15 hours of rendering your own footage. I don't know about the rest of your viewers, but for me, I don't watch the podcast for the gameplay. Your previous episodes have shown that you don't need to have high quality gameplay to have high viewcounts.
Unless people are asking for only high visual gameplay, then I don't see why you should go through rendering 15 hours of gameplay. If you can still achieve the same amount of views or greater with user submitted gameplay and if takes less time to render the whole episode, then I would do that. My opinion of course, take what you will.
