Author Topic: Video Quality Test (Read 272 times)

Fulmar · « **on:** May 14, 2007, 06:28:19 PM »

I will be hopefully working on my first AH film this summer. I've done quite a few films for other games in the past, mainly Day of Defeat (WW2 multiplayer mod for HL and HL2). Anyways, in that community the grading curve for quality of movies is quite steep (mainly because its a fan base quite larger than Aces High). I digress.

Unwillingly I will be using Fraps for the video recording (to my dismay, I'm used to taking 90 frames per second individual bitmaps screenshots and rendering them, I'm a quality junkie). I recorded this test movie at half speed in the film player and then doubled the speed in Adobe Premiere (giving me roughly 60 FPS), full resolution as well.

Just looking for opinions on the video quality and cinematography (I know its only 11 seconds). As for the music, just threw some random stuff on there, not set in stone by far. The movie is probably going to be themed around the Fw190-A8.

Right Click - Save Target As
http://derstuhl.com/ah/AHTest1.wmv

TinmanX · « **Reply #1 on:** May 14, 2007, 08:10:31 PM »

Yup, looks to be about as good as we are going to get with Fraps.

I too hate that we have to use Fraps, however, there is hope on the horizon;

"We've shelved that for now until we can do some more improvement to the film viewer. We're not happy with the quality of the output that the film viewer provides,
it's just not smooth enough to give a good reflection of the game." - Pyro in an email from a while back regarding film making.

I believe this implies not only the obvious but also that the film viewer export will improve, hopefully to a state where we can abandon Fraps altogether and not lose the clarity, detail and vibrancy that Fraps ignores.

I too, for the moment, am stuck halving the speed and then doubling up post capture - which is apparently as close as Fraps will let us get to making decent quality films.

Fulmar · « **Reply #2 on:** May 14, 2007, 08:41:56 PM »

I would look forward to a view system that would allow me view the films from a none fixed position (i.e. free floating). I nice fly-by view would we swell. You can't find a dogfight movie without fly-bys!

The film viewer is bugging and rewinding is a pain. However, I've never came across a demo/film view that was excellent by any means. They've always been notorious for crashing or devlop bugs.

TinmanX · « **Reply #3 on:** May 14, 2007, 10:17:09 PM »

At the moment, I'd settle for being able to pause and play in full screen. It rankles me that I have to start my clips 30 seconds before I need to and then hope that all the tiles load and that I cover all views before my actual clip starts so that they are all loaded.

To be able to pause and then play again in full screen mode would halve my capture time.

Fulmar · « **Reply #4 on:** May 14, 2007, 10:59:44 PM »

In mine I did not capture the video in fullscreen. My monitor resolution allows me to capture about 1300x700 (widescreen) in the windowed mode. For all intense purposes the if a good quality for a 720x480 Widescreen output.