The Official Movie-Making Discussion Thread

[Jazzie]

Allright, since the old one got locked by no apparent reason I'll start a new one. I suppose this is what Meist0r intended to create with his thread.

Please ventilate your opinions on anything that's on-topic with quake2 movie-making. Here are the various discussion points that Meist0r posted to get it started.

- recamming
- effects
- speed / slow motion
- soundtrack / sound effects / art of syncing
- quality / compression rate / file size
- duration
- what is more important 4 u - content or editing or something else
- what is a must be, what do u especially want?

And here are some more:
- What program/s do you use?
- What format do you use?

Personally I'd like to say that a short movie with spectacular/odd frags and/or events in it is much better than a long one with just a huge amount of fillers. And I'm talking short as in say five minutes here.


If by any reason the mods should find this thread superfluous please feel free to delete it, but if so, re-open the old thread.

[Meist0r]

Allright, since the old one got locked by no apparent reason

hmmm, kinda strange (:

What program/s do you use?

After a lot of testing I figured out that everything u can find is definitely a low budget PC solution. Professional soft is only availible with extremely expensive hardware . From the progs I've tested (Premiere, Sonic Vegas, Sony Vegas, Avid Xpress, Pinnacle Liquid Ed) Pinnacle Liquid Edition seems to be the best one, unfortunately i still have problems to keep it running properly . It is very fast, has an very well thought out user interface and tons of complex editors and effects.

What format do you use?

I prefer uncompressed AVI and its my main editing problem, cause all of these progs seems 2 be trimmed for DV video only . Until now I've used Vegas, which is starting 2 lag now feeded with 60 GB of footage. Also it has no time warp build in.

Personally I'd like to say that a short movie with spectacular/odd frags and/or events in it is much better than a long one with just a huge amount of fillers.

Yo, same opinion. My first movie was 4.5 mins long, the trailer 2.1 and the coming vid wont take longer than 10 minutes. Imo generally as long as u can shurely attract viewers attention - and 10 mins is already a big value.

[arild]

I would say about 10-15 min's is perfect for my part as long as it is entertaining. And I really like if it is about any tournament or whatever. Because watching 15 min's without any main theme besides frags is kind of boring.

-Arild

[PanConLonga]

- What program/s do you use?

Vegas is the best for sync the music, and general edit. Its easy to learn and the results are pretty good. And if you wanna spice up the video, learn a little bit of Adobe After effects. Lots of tutorials with cool stuffs on the net. You can use premier instead of vegas, but after testing both, I think vegas is the better choice

- What format do you use?

I used Xvid at maximun resolution for video footage
here are my settings

Rate: 100000(maximun)
Quantization: 1
Max I-frame: 1
Min I-frame: 1
Max P-frame: 1
Min P-frame: 1
Max B-frame; 1
Min B-frame: 1

so the result is allmost as good as uncompressed, but smaller file. If you have lots of hardspace, just go with the uncompressed file until the end. try to use maximun AA and antisotropic filter, it helps a lot.

to the final render I used this settings:
target rate: 2150 (you can change it to fit the best size/quality)

and the important settings that everybody should use...
Max I-frame: 1
Min I-frame: 3
Max P-frame: 1
Min P-frame: 8
Max B-frame; 1
Min B-frame: 8

fps: 25 of course

lenght: from 1 to around 15 minutes is ok....

filters recams and all of that stuffs: Up to you.

[Clown]

You know. I don't think it's what he intended. I think he wanted help making his movie and when he didn't get the answer he was looking for, it changed into the thread that this is about. I don't know why the other thread was locked, but I'm sure they had their reasons.

[Meist0r]

...

[n99]

Who cares what the intentions of the original thread were, and whether or not it was warranted to lock that one and create this one. That is up to other people to decide than you or me, so either actively partake in this particular thread or don't post.

As for my opinions, the only thing I would like to add is my love of in-game sounds. I don't have to hear everything, but with key-grip you can remove what is not needed; footsteps and weapon sounds are a big plus, especially in rounds with two survivors playing cat and mouse.

I don't mind music, but I generally disagree with other people's tastes so I would like to see background music. Music should be used to supplement the footage, not the other way around. Alot of soundtracks from modern-day high-budget games are very good to use, and so is alot of minimalist instrumental music. Even better is music written specifically for the demo, but I can imagine that can be hard to arrange unless you know people in the film-clip industry.

Proper syncing isn't something I could do myself, and that's also a pointer: unless you're sure you CAN sync properly, don't do it. Fade-in, Fade-out, properly selected non-desprict music sounds so much better than a lot amateurishly cut cliche garbage.

And to come back to the cat-and-mouse thingy. Two of the most important concepts of movie theory, suspense and surprise, are greatly overlooked in game-movies. Sometimes it's actually cooler not to have the best vantage view in a movie, and present an entire view from, for instance a fixed view or even the view of the 'victim' (probably the poor guy eating the boomstick).

I'll think of more when I have the time, hope people appreciate this post.

[arild]

i locked it because people discussed someones typing that doesnt have a thing to do with the actual topic...

-Arild

[Dimmo]

meistor what do you mean with time warp?

[Jazzie]

Yes but it was locked just as we had succesfully re-railed the thread

[Meist0r]

meistor what do you mean with time warp?

-> time warp == non linear timescale, really nice feature, u see sometimes in Hollywood productions
-> in Vegas or so u r able just 2 in / decrease the speed of the whole clip, but not 2 say: at this keyframe slow linearly down, from the next speed exponentually up and so on...

[alekchi]

I like about 5min movies, they should be short like music videos, unless they have something really special in them. But I guess everyone has their opinion on this.

[angra]

Because watching 15 min's without any main theme besides frags is kind of boring.

hmmm, i think theme movies are the most boring thing, not many realy nice kills, and thats why i watch movies to see nice kills. And its mostly fun for the players that are in the movie. fragmovies 4-8 min just nice frags, thats love!

[maGro]

meistor what do you mean with time warp?

-> time warp == non linear timescale, really nice feature, u see sometimes in Hollywood productions
-> in Vegas or so u r able just 2 in / decrease the speed of the whole clip, but not 2 say: at this keyframe slow linearly down, from the next speed exponentually up and so on...

Meister, right-click a movie, select remove/insert velocity envelope and leftclick. There you go.


However, i got another question to PanConLonga, you used vegas i think... how can you slow down the clip that much with vegas? the usual ctrl+leftclick+pull the mouse can just slow it down to... 1/4 speed or somethin? did you use the velocity envelope? im way to stupid to handle it

[imeiz]

he might've used timescale in quake, 0.2 or something? dunno, but it's an option