Author Topic: Hblair, pls read. (Read 272 times)

mason22 · « **on:** January 09, 2001, 03:00:00 PM »

hye HB...

the FDB's are gettin in to the movie bidness. had a few questions:

where most of your vids made from films (.ahf) or in real time in the other arenas in order to get the exterior view? (i know that the films play back kind of jerky, kinda like when your attached to another player in flight)

how much planning of the "scene" did you do, or was it more of a "i dunno, you get on my 12 and i kill you" kind of thing?

i have my own ideas, i was just wondering if there was anything you could share or might suggest that was a major headache or any "bugs" you might have worked out??

thanks for any help HB.

-mas

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #1 on:** January 09, 2001, 03:13:00 PM »

The movies are made from .ahf files. I have not noticed "jerkiness" in film playback.[list=1]

record your flight
Hook your pc-video out to a VCR
Load up the film view and determine what veiw aspect looks best
Play the film with the proper view and record the output on the VCR
Hook the VCR video out to the Video in on your PC.
Play the VCR tape and use a video capture program on your PC to capture the input video
decide what size you want the file and encode it apropriately[/list=a]

Another option:[list=1]
record film in AH
Hook video out option of one PC to video in option of other PC
Play .ahf on one PC and capture video output on the other PC.[/list=a]

Don't confuse the fact that just because it looks simple.. it is simple. This is alot of trouble and takes quite a bit of work to make a small film. Thanks to those that have taken the time and effort to do this.

AKDejaVu

hblair · « **Reply #2 on:** January 09, 2001, 03:16:00 PM »

Ok, who went and bought the card??

I found that you prolly want all your cockpit shots to be live, simply because you can tell its live, blackouts, view switching watching cons, etc. I also run the aces high film utiltity so I can go back and get some outside shots later if they look good enough.

Planning of the scene varies, in my first one, I just went in the training arena and got regurge to let me bounce his arse several times, filming the bounces live on the VCR. Then I spliced that in with some film I had of Afrika corps, and some WWII stuff. I would only use the .AHF for takeoffs and landings, formation shots etc. Nothing beats the live stuff.

You'll find that you'll spend a lot of time on your first film, getting it right. A lot of it is trial and error. I was fortunate enough to be able to learn from milenko's movies.

<shameless plug> The movies I'm talking about can be downloaded off the assassins website by clicking below...

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EMAIL assassins@aceshighcs.com
EMAIL hblair@aceshighcs.com

[This message has been edited by hblair (edited 01-09-2001).]

mason22 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 09, 2001, 03:31:00 PM »

thanks guys...that's exactly what i wanted to know!

milnko · « **Reply #4 on:** January 09, 2001, 03:34:00 PM »

HBlair wrote:

Quote

You'll find that you'll spend a lot of time on your first film, getting it right. A lot of it is trial and error. I was fortunate enough to be able to learn from milenko's movies.

Thanks for the props HB

Mason,
One thing that is the BIGGEST headache is selecting the proper CODECS to make a quality movie, that isn't huge to upload/download.

MS recently released MPEG4, which is pretty good, and MPEG7 is due out shortly.

For a good write up about MPEG codecs can be found on Tom's Hardware site; http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/00q3/000913/index.html

Of course the other way is to do as HB and I have, to make an avi, then use Real Producer (it's free) to make a realplayer movie out of the avi, even still the WHOLE TRICK is to balance size and quality by how much compression to use (i.e. connection speed) as you will find out.

Any questions feel free to drop us a line.

------------------
"Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant"
-WW1 German ACE Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen

<< MILENKO >>
ACES HIGH ASSASSINS Website
WB/AH ASSASSINS Website

Tac · « **Reply #5 on:** January 09, 2001, 04:03:00 PM »

Hblair, you should look into BLINK software to make yer movies. Its REALLY good quality.

The WW2Online film was made with blink..and it looks exactly as if you were watching the game on your own screen (no pixelation, nothing...a clean, smooth video).

hblair · « **Reply #6 on:** January 09, 2001, 04:38:00 PM »

How long are WWII Onlines movies? Do they have stereo sound? How big are they?

My last one is over 5 minutes long.

I had a "guru" at the local puter store try to talk me into using this cutting edge new MS codec, which wasn't worth fediddlein with to start with. He told me of the amazing compression qualities, etc. Then I saw a 300 meg AVI he compressed to 5 and it looked like pure D sh*t.

Realplayer does way better than it did.

My first two movies were a learning experience. The quality is not as good as I would like. But at the time I thought that a higher quality movie would be way too big.

I think I'm gonna stick with realplayer for now. Lotsa people use it, and its just practical.

mason22 · « **Reply #7 on:** January 09, 2001, 04:43:00 PM »

hey HB,

i'll try that Bink thingy out...i know real player works, ( we use it at work here) , so i'll let you know how the Bink turns out.

-mas

Dux · « **Reply #8 on:** January 09, 2001, 04:51:00 PM »

Hey guys, there is an application out there called "Camtasia" that will make movies out of whatever you display on your monitor. It outputs to .mov or .avi files, plus other formats.

We use this at work to make training clips to demonstrate software. It works very well. You may want to consider making your montitor size 640x480 or else you'll have some HUGE movie files.

BigGun · « **Reply #9 on:** January 09, 2001, 04:57:00 PM »

Instead of going onto a VCR, can it be played onto a digital camcorder & then edited?

mason22 · « **Reply #10 on:** January 09, 2001, 05:01:00 PM »

dux,

tried it...don't really like it,

plus, i planned on using Adobe Premier for some editing and effect stuff. <crosses fingers>

milnko · « **Reply #11 on:** January 09, 2001, 07:44:00 PM »

I'd like to try Quicktime to make videos, but haven't gotten around to it yet...........

------------------
"Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant"
-WW1 German ACE Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen

<< MILENKO >>
ACES HIGH ASSASSINS Website
WB/AH ASSASSINS Website

Dux · « **Reply #12 on:** January 09, 2001, 09:13:00 PM »

Mason, Adobe Premiere is a great program... you should have pretty good luck with it. Although I must clarify that I work on the Mac version... PC version should work just as well (crosses fingers).

Let me know if you have any questions about it.

cwbeals@sprynet.com

mason22 · « **Reply #13 on:** January 10, 2001, 01:02:00 PM »

HB, Milinko

one last question: what resolution where you flying in? i know that the video out needs to be like 800 x 600 or 640 x 480, did youhave to drop your screen res on your monitor to the same as the videro output resolution?

milnko · « **Reply #14 on:** January 10, 2001, 03:43:00 PM »

800X600 for the finer resolution.

But if ya reallllllly want to do it right
LOOK HERE:
avermedia_500

AND WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAVING FOR:
avermedia_300

Either one of these will help up the rez. plus enable ya to leave the monitor as the output, insteada placing a TV within reach of the PC

------------------
"ASSASSINS have BIGGER Joysticks!"

<< MILENKO >>
ACES HIGH ASSASSINS Website
WB/AH ASSASSINS Website