Author Topic: Movie Making Help (Read 1145 times)

o0Stream140o · « **on:** October 12, 2004, 06:08:33 PM »

*Preface*
I don't claim or think I know everything there is to know about film making with video software. There are many people out there that can probably do it better than I can. I just wanted to put this out there for the beginners, like I was at one time, to help them out. Maybe Pyro or Skuzzy will sticky this if it is good enough. This is the way I do my movies:

1. Formulate a plan.
First off you need to think of what you are going to do. Film your flights. Watch them a couple of times, and see what in that AH film you think is good enough to put onto video. Write down something like a script so you can see what your going to do with it.

2. Music Selection.
Music selection is a big thing, it will make or break your movie. Music has a major impact on how you make your movie. Listen to it a couple of times.. believe me you will get sick of it by the time you are done with everything. Pop songs are good, but if you want to make an impact, look for something other than that. For something quick it will work.

3a. Capturing AH films.
There are many ways of doing this. One way is exporting your movie to AVI from the film viewer. First you want to set the time at which point you want to start the AVI, and then set an end point. Before this first you want to take out the voice chatter, it will take out the annoying name that comes up in the top right corner of the screen. Watch it a couple of times play with the views that you want before you save as an AVI. After you have that all set and done, save it as an AVI. It will ask you what codec you want to save it as.. that is up to you. Play around with it and see what is best for your computer. As you are saving it as an AVI make sure you do all the views that you were using before. Keep it down under a minute or you will get an error message in your default AVI player (AH1) I don't know if it is the same in AH2. It should save to your films folder in HTC.

3b. Fraps
Fraps is another option to use when capturing video. Fraps is a screen capture program. You can get it at http://www.fraps.com, there is a free version (1.9) or purchased version (2.0). The free version doesn't record sound. Make sure you don't record for very long in fraps because it does take up a lot of memory and it will run into the Gigabytes. It will record game screen res from 1024 x 768 down to the smallest res, but the best res is 640 x 480. It writes the code to a file and will fill up fast. Using with AH viewer it is easy. Load up fraps then load up film viewer. You should have a number come up in the top right or left hand corner showing frame rates of the film. When recording it will slow down to the filming speed. You can set hot keys so all you have to do is push it and it will start the record.

4. Virtual Dub
I am still learning myself about this, but you can take the film you recorded from fraps and compress your AVI to the codec of your choice. The most common is Divx and Xivd, available at http://www.divx.com. There are add on filters that you can us with it to smooth out some of the rough stuff in your video. Just play around with it to get to the point where you want it.

5. Film Editing
This is the most common question asked. Most people use Windows Movie Maker to edit their video. You can go from the top, Adobe Premeire and Sony Vegas, not cheap, to Sony Screenblast and Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker is a free download from Microsoft site. I am still making my videos with movie maker. It just depends on how much you want to put into and spend on it. The artistic content of your movies is up to you. The only thing I can add is, don't rush it to get it out... I have done that a lot. Take your time and make sure YOUR happy with it.

6. Hosting
Hosting a film is something of an easy thing. You can get a website or FTP site that will allow you to broadcast it across the web. Just watch if you do make a quality movie you will take a big bandwidth hit. You can also look for some site that hosts films like NetAces.org. There are some free sites that you can use to broadcast it over the internet.

Here is an example of a project I am working on. It is just a movie trailer. Movie Trailer

You need Divx to view. You might have to play it in Windows Media Player because it is a .wmv file.

Hopefully this will help out some of the new guys getting started in this. If you have any question I will try to help out as much as I can. There are a lot of guys that do films that have a lot of knowledge also. If I have missed something please feel free to comment on it.

Stream14

United · « **Reply #1 on:** October 12, 2004, 07:01:35 PM »

Great info there! Thanks for posting. I know absolutely nothing about making movies and this seems to be a good reference point for someon just starting out.

mechanic · « **Reply #2 on:** October 13, 2004, 04:37:25 AM »

great tips, thanks for the help.

should be a sticky as many people ask these questions

~~batfink~~

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #3 on:** October 19, 2004, 06:54:10 PM »

Stream, you said keep it under a minute or it will produce an error when recording if over a minute, I have tryed to save numerous films as avis all over 4 or 5 minutes, I keep getting an error , something like d3d.dll error or something of such. Is this what you are refering to?

I have got my friend to give me his premeire 6.5 since he does not use it anymore.......

I just can not get my avi's from my films :-(

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #4 on:** October 19, 2004, 06:56:37 PM »

Stream,
your Fraps link is unable to be found btw......

o0Stream140o · « **Reply #5 on:** October 19, 2004, 09:29:32 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by TequilaChaser
Stream,
your Fraps link is unable to be found btw......

*Edit to orginal* Sorry I got a , in it... http://www.fraps.com *Edit*

o0Stream140o · « **Reply #6 on:** October 19, 2004, 09:31:29 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by TequilaChaser
Stream, you said keep it under a minute or it will produce an error when recording if over a minute, I have tryed to save numerous films as avis all over 4 or 5 minutes, I keep getting an error , something like d3d.dll error or something of such. Is this what you are refering to?

I have got my friend to give me his premeire 6.5 since he does not use it anymore.......

I just can not get my avi's from my films :-(

Yeah, when I saved it as an AVI with AH1 film viewer, I would get an error message that it couldn't play the selected track in it's AVI form. When I cut it under a minute it did it fine. Try a different codec if that doesn't work.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #7 on:** October 20, 2004, 10:47:47 AM »

thanks Stream, now tell me why I do not hear my engine in my films? yet I hear everyone elses engine! I hear my engine fine while in the game.........

man this film to movie process takes a while huh!

o0Stream140o · « **Reply #8 on:** October 20, 2004, 11:07:12 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by TequilaChaser
thanks Stream, now tell me why I do not hear my engine in my films? yet I hear everyone elses engine! I hear my engine fine while in the game.........

man this film to movie process takes a while huh!

That would have to do with the film viewer it's self. Mine does the same thing. You would have to ask Skuzzy or HTC about that one. I use fraps (2.2) and I can record sound... so I get the other sounds other than my plane.

In AH1 when you came into the game, you had the option of watching the video that way.... That's how I recorded my movies with that. I got all the sounds using fraps. Hopefully they will make that option avaibile again in the future.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #9 on:** October 28, 2004, 11:58:56 PM »

ok you Movie Makers, what is the best screen res to use? that 340x230 (?) the other one 640x480 or the lil one? what FPS do you use 30? 25? or 12? and if I am using Adobe Premiere to put it all together, which codec or compression should I use? or do them all uncompressed and then let Priemere compress it all?

Mak333 · « **Reply #10 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:05:58 PM »

I prefer 800x600 then record at half size with Fraps so the product resolution is 400x300. I then set that for my resolution in Premiere. With Fraps I record at 30 fps. If your computer "stutters" at 30, turn your display settings down. 25 is ok to use but it wont look as nice as 30.

I would either use the Divx 5.1 codec to compress. Or you can save the file as an original (or divx) and then open up Windows Movie Maker. In Windows Movie Maker you would then put your final product into the timeline, then export your movie to save as a .wmv file. Although .wmv files have less quality, it compresses the file size by more than half the divx size in most cases.

o0Stream140o · « **Reply #11 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:18:37 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Mak333
I prefer 800x600 then record at half size with Fraps so the product resolution is 400x300. I then set that for my resolution in Premiere. With Fraps I record at 30 fps. If your computer "stutters" at 30, turn your display settings down. 25 is ok to use but it wont look as nice as 30.

I would either use the Divx 5.1 codec to compress. Or you can save the file as an original (or divx) and then open up Windows Movie Maker. In Windows Movie Maker you would then put your final product into the timeline, then export your movie to save as a .wmv file. Although .wmv files have less quality, it compresses the file size by more than half the divx size in most cases.

I would have to agree with Mak333 on this one, but the only difference I would do. I would record in fraps at 15 frames per second, so I don't loose any frames, then take that and convert the frame rates in Virtual Dub. I myself am still learning how do do this. You might get a little studder with the frame conversion but you will get better frames with the 15 fps.

Then all you have to do is import it to your video editor.

The only thing I do different than Mak is that I leave it uncompressed, I think he said he changes it to divx before he imports it. It seems to give you better quality when you do your final render. I think that the Divx 5.1 pro codec is better res compression than the free one.

Stream

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #12 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:46:10 PM »

ok, but I do not have movie maker , I am on win98se, so that moviemaker I do not have, I can only use the old version of fraps for win98 the 1.9 version.......

I read somewhere that you should leave them uncompressed if you gonna use an external editor, so with the AH2 film viewer, Fraps 1.9, and Adobe Premiere 6.5 with all the plug ins how would you go about it?

I fly in 1024x768 , so that is what my films are in, if I drop back to 800x600 or 640x480 will my films change or be able to be viewed at this resolution?

say go 30 fps? Stream I do not see a setting for 15 fps, is that setting in FRAPS?

I've spent alot of hours just making short 1min clippings of film to convert to avi, all I need to do now is convert ( you say convert to divx5.1? or uncompressed in AH2 film viewer?) then let Adobe Premiere do the final compression rendering?

if I use the AH2 filmviewer what size would u suggest I use viewing wise? 340x230 (?) the other one 640x480 or the lil one? and say 30 fps? or 12?

thank you for all the help guys

o0Stream140o · « **Reply #13 on:** October 29, 2004, 09:06:11 PM »

Okay let me restate what I said.... Okay just record in fraps at 30fps or 25fps like Mak stated, since it's your first time..The 1.9 might not have the option to record at 15fps. I am not to familiar with Adobe, I use Sony Vegas 5.0. I think what Mak was trying to say is when he does his final rendering there is an option that he can save it at 30fps, so the editor is converting the frame rates. I just use a thrid party converter called virtual dub. You want your video playing at 30fps, that is what is normal viewing speed.

I personally, after I record them in Fraps, leave them as uncompressed frames, and import them into my editor. I use the editor to compress the whole film to the codec I want. Some people that use the film viewer save their AVI in the codec they want then, instead of holding off till the final render. Movie Maker that most people use doesn't have that option so they have to to do it that way. Adobe and Sony you can do that after your done with the whole film.

Okay, when I record with fraps I try to make my screen in the film viewer the size of 640 x 480 and record at full version. 640 x 480 is usually the norm with High quality videos, 320 x 240 is usually for the lower quality bandwidth, so people with the lesser internet connection can download them without taking 3 days to download it.

Rendering, you should have an option that "Render As" or "Save As" in Adobe, you want to set your codec then. It will compress the whole film then.

What I do is capture it at 640 X 480 save as uncompressed frames in Fraps, import it to my editor, edit my movie, and then compress it to Divx @ 30fps.

Hope that doesn't confuse you more.

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #14 on:** October 30, 2004, 12:02:41 AM »

nah Stream, that was perfectly clear thank you,