1. Make a 30 second .ahf film for testing purposes using your Alt-R key sequence. Find it by sorting the film directory newest to oldest and rename it to duh TEST.ahf
2. While making your test film make sure you transmit and receive on ahv, fire your guns and anything else you can do within 30 seconds.
3. Run you film in the old AH film viewer to see what it really looks like while you're flying. After the test, when you graduate to making an actual film clip you would note on a piece of paper what you want to actually put to .avi from your .ahf
4. Close Aces High and go to Start - Programs - Aces High - Film Viewer if you haven't already made a shortcut and put it on the desktop.
5. In film viewer go to the file menu - open and the AH film directory will open up. Find test.ahf and double click this opens it in the film viewer. If you're inclined to do so press play again and look at it in the film viewer. The film viewer allows various views shown on the radius buttons and also by double clicking on the different pilots on the right panel you can switch between various airplanes. Looking at the film gives you one more time to think about the shots you'll want in your .avi
6. When ready to make an .avi click on play and the film will start playing
7. When you get to the part of the film you want to save to .avi click on select - this sets the start point in the .ahf where the film will be converted to an .avi If you don't select at all I'm assuming here that the entire .ahf will be copied to an .avi file
8. When you get to the end of your selected sequence click on end select
9. To create the .avi click on Save as .avi
10. You will then be given a dialog box to set your codec (compressor/decompressor). There are a number of choices. The ones that have worked for me are the second Mpeg and no compression. When this process starts it's going to take some time this is why for experimentation purposes you only want a 30 second film
11. You will also be asked what size you want your .avi to be. My purpose is always to create video that I can watch on a TV so I always pick 640 x 480 the standard resolution of a TV Set. FYI so you're not disappointed the final product is going to look no better than if you set your monitor to 640x480 instead of 1024x768 or above as no doubt you're doing right now. If anyone can tell me how to get the higher resolution out to a TV please let me know.
12. You'll also be asked for frame rate. Standard NTSC (USA) broadcast video runs at 29.97 fpms so 30 is close enough for government work.
13. After making these 3 selections and clicking OK your film will appear to start running again. However, it's not really running, it's rendering the .avi One hell of a lot of data has to be run through the CODEC so you will notice that the takeoff run for instance takes forever. Reason is, you're rendering frames to .avi at a rate of I'm guessing 7 frames every second. Just like the MA on Friday night. You will find that your tiny 30 second video takes about 2 whole minutes to run from beginning to end. Again this is why the clip is so short. For learning and experimentation purposes. With a short clip you'll be able to try various codes and combinations till you get what works for you without spending all night cussing out HTC.
14. While the film is rendering, you may change views by using the selections on the film viewer or by using the arrow keys on your keypad (joystick will only work in the old AH film viewer not in here that I know). While switching view remember this very important point. You're running at 7 fps Your views have to be held at least 4 times longer than normal or you'll get dizzy watching the final film switching views every second. Hold a view for 4X as long as you want it to appear in your final video. Remember that people win Oscars for cinematography which is the science of letting the editing help to tell the story e.g. a shot from the enemies perspective is always interesting just before or after you have a shot of your plane desintegrating. Experiment with your timing.
15. When you get to the end of the film - You're done. Close Film Viewer and using explorer find test.avi in the AH Films directory and double click on it. The film will be automatically loaded into your default .avi viewer e.g. Windows Media Player - you've got a real .avi file
If anyone can get the sound to record let me know. Haven't succeeded yet.
Hope this helps those who were looking for help and motivates others to also share documented (no opinions please) things you've found on how this works.
Beeg
