Workflow for making movies

[Drano]

OK so I've been messing around with making videos out of my films. I've watched Fulmar's video on using the viewer to set up shots and I've had some success. Not mastered it yet but I'm getting the hang of it. I have Fraps and have been able to use that to capture stuff and the quality of those .avi's seems OK.  I've converted them using either Handbrake or Virtualdub in order to use them in an editor or upload to Youtube but I'm finding the image quality gets pretty much mangled going to H.264. I think. Seems blurry to me. At any rate not as crisp as the originals. Here is one of mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etNbhIVrISI

My question is what are you guys doing in order to get from a Fraps avi to something that can be put in an editor to put to Youtube that keeps the quality? What's your workflow? Some of the videos here look fabulous! I've obviously gotten something wrong. I'd like to string together several clips of say, a frame of FSO. I'm thinking I want to keep the clips as high a quality avi as I can while editing the files before compressing the whole project as one. That right or have I got it all wrong? Are there any editors out there that will work that are of the free variety? Got kids in college. My mad money is sparse to say the least. This is just the next thing that keeps me off the streets.

Thanks in advance.

[coombz]

Hiya,

I did a lot of experimenting at first, and found the best way for me to get good quality on YouTube (starting with a FRAPS recorded .AVI file) was to export into the .FLV format.  

I use Adobe Premiere...my workflow is pretty simple, chuck the FRAPS footage (made either from AH film clips, or recorded directly in game) into Premiere, edit as needed, export media as .FLV

My YouTube channel is coombzy283, there are a bunch of vids up there of various games including AH so you can see the kind of quality that you can achieve with this method. You just need to select one of the higher resolution options once you have started loading the YouTube clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISviFJZks_8

Unfortunately I believe Premiere is quite pricey (if you actually pay for it).


edit: after looking at your linked YouTube clip, your quality seems about right. You just have to click the cog in the bottom right of the window and select 1080p.

[HL117]

Watched your video coombz, good stuff, transitions went well.


HL

[Rob52240]

I use virtualdub.  It's free and easy.

[Drano]

I use Adobe Premiere...my workflow is pretty simple, chuck the FRAPS footage (made either from AH film clips, or recorded directly in game) into Premiere, edit as needed, export media as .FLV

Yeah I was thinking editing should be done on the full avi files first so I'm on the right track there. I was using MP4 as the final as I read somewhere that's one of the formats Youtube uses. I compress to the H.264 codec in that. I'll try saving in .FLV. So what I have to do is find an editor that will accept the Fraps files and I oughta be good to go. I'm OK with putting the files together and making transitions and such. Pretty self explanatory there.

My YouTube channel is coombzy283, there are a bunch of vids up there of various games including AH so you can see the kind of quality that you can achieve with this method. You just need to select one of the higher resolution options once you have started loading the YouTube clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISviFJZks_8

Yeah it looks good. Nice quality. I notice I have a similar problem with the icons looking just a bit blurred as compared to watching them in the viewer or live in-game.

Unfortunately I believe Premiere is quite pricey (if you actually pay for it).

I'll have to scrape up some extra bucks then to do this properly. I could do it with what I have but I don't like the image quality at all.


edit: after looking at your linked YouTube clip, your quality seems about right. You just have to click the cog in the bottom right of the window and select 1080p.

About the only thing that bugged me about those clips was the odd irregular concentric bullseye shapes in the water. It just doesn't look right. That's why I was looking to do it differently. I have an add on for FF called Youtube High Definition that sets Youtube video quality to 1080 (or max res) automatically.

[LCADolby]

Dolby's work flow.

PC on -> click -> open AHFilm.exe -> click some more -> curse AHFilm for crashing -> fix a drink -> record some scenes -> curse AHFilm for crashing -> return to try again the next day (start at beginning until enough scenes are recorded)-> put scenes in Sony Movie Maker Platinum -> Add FX -> Render -> watch and note errors ->fix errors -> upload to youtube -> Yell Yahoo! -> Watch the view counter climb slower than paint drying -> Cry.

[Vudu15]

record with FRAPS put in Sony Vegas edit and make, I finish mine in 1080p and wmv format.