MJ's ye olde video guide

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MJ1284

Member
My old video making guide



I'm getting wee bit tired of reposting this to every darn new forum, hope this'll be last time I have to serve copy pasta for dinner.

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Hello! I'm actor MJ1284. You may remember me from such films as "Legions: Proximity Zero" or "Legions: Divided".

Today I'm here to tell you how to make your own videos. I haven't received requests for a guide, but I'll gladly share my (severely limited) wisdom on this matter. For this guide, I'll have the screenshots taken from programs that I use, you can use different softwares but their user interface may differ from the ones shown here.

Let's make a checklist before we get started. You'll need the following:

1. Screen recording software (FRAPS, Hypercam etc.) *
2. Video editing software (for example, Windows Movie Maker) *
3. Video footage (Well duh)
4. Song for the video (duh again)

Optional, but HIGHLY recommended:
1. VirtualDub Mod for encoding your recordings to smaller clips.

* I'll put couple freeware programs on bottom of this guide, assuming you don't want to spend $$

And now, we'll start cracking:

1. After you've aquired screen recording software, go around and get some footage you want for your production.

This is the most time consuming phase, possibly taking even months is you're ambitious & patient enough to go for it. More time you spent on recording, more likely you'll end up getting good stuff on tape. For beginners, I'd suggest you'll spend couple days on recording before touching the video editing software. For more advanced users & experienced players, I'd say atleast one week.

Screen recording software used: FRAPS

frapsh.jpg


These are the current settings I'm using for recording. Notice that I've set it to 50 FPS (which is a fine balance with fluent FPS rates ingame & FPS rate on film), I've also checked "No sync" for FPS reasons. Normally it's useful to prevent video from "speeding up" here and there, but I rarely have that issue with 50 FPS. Note that the FPS rate you set here is straightly relative to your max FPS rate ingame, so don't set it too low!

"Half-size" records the footage on half resolution, making the video look bit pixelated. However, it has a major impact on ingame FPS rates, so I'll much rather take that than having to play constantly with 20 FPS.

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*NOTE* Try to set your "Folder to save movies in" somewhere else than C: partition, I've noticed this'll effectively choke up your whole computer in no time. This is caused by large file sizes, on C: partition it can be devastating. If you're having no problems with the hard drive space, skip to section 3, otherwise take a look at section 2.

*NOTE2* ChampBob pointed out couple things about recording:

Quote from: ChampBob on 11.17.09 | 01:44 PM

Recording takes up a huge amount of memory (Many gigabytes of it) even if you only record 10 minutes (which can end up as, say, 3.9GB).

One more thing: I can't help but think that people will try recording when they can't get a good amount of frames per second on legions in the first place, you REALLY should have a good computer to record. FRAPS is usually the thing to record with as well. I have tried Hypercam 2 with Legions, and it turned out pretty horrible with bad desync, and any other recorder I tried really just doesn't compare to the quality of FRAPS.

I haven't tried other screen recording software than FRAPS, but I'll take his word on it. If any of you are suffering horrid FPS losses while recording, you might want to edit prefs.cs or try out Legions Lite:
http://forums.legionsoverdrive.com/threads/legions-lite.24/


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Your graphs will take a hit, but in return your FPS rates will receive a major boost. Use with caution.

2. [OPTIONAL] Compress your movie clips

Raw footage eats up alot of hard drive space, unless you have dozens of terabytes I'd suggest you'll start compressing your recordings to smaller bits. Not only does it save up space, your video editing software has much easier time handling your files. For this cause, I'll use a program called VirtualDub Mod:

virtualdub.jpg


Looks one scary mofo, doesn't it? No worries, it's much much simpler than it looks like.
It does have some degree of complexity, so here's a link to a guide: http://www.divxland.org/video_edition.php

You'll only need to worry about these sections
"3. Cut / delete a specific portion of a video"
"5. Convert any AVI file using DivX or XviD compression"

You'll also need a video codec for the decoding procedure, I prefer XviD or DivX but there are plenty of good codecs for this purpose.

This is one of those programs that are best learned with trial-and-error. It's not really that hard to learn despite the crude looking user interface.

You can always take the easy way out and use your video editing software for the same purpose, but I find VirtualDub superior in every aspect. This is a good time to start cutting your videos to smaller clips, make sure you leave enough space in beginning and the end of the "scene" you're picking, it'll make it alot easier to sync it up with the song when you're doing the video editing itself. I've preferred 3-5 seconds spare time, best advice I can give you here is to judge the lenght yourself.


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*NOTE*: Don't forget to give your compressed clips names that'll make them easy to identify! This'll make your job MUCH easier. I've made the error of naming my clips as "MidAir_1" and "MidAir_2" when I could have named them "MA_guest" or "NadeMid_guest"... when those similarly named clips starts to pile up, you'll be looking a needle in a haystack before you know it.

*NOTE 2*: If you've used "Half-Screen" on your screen capture software (FRAPS), you can partially fix it.
Video -> Filters... -> Add -> resize. When you're asked for new width & height, just enter your current ingame resolution here. Your video will look more pixelated than if you had recorded with "Full-Screen" right off the bat, but I don't see much of a difference between the two. If you really want to go for top quality, feel free to use "Full-Screen".

YOU SHOULDN'T DO THIS PHASE UNLESS YOUR VIDEOCLIPS WORKS STRANGELY WITH WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER! Streching it will hamper video's quality.

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3. Video editing software

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for! For this, I'll call forth Windows Movie Maker:

wmmi.jpg


This piece of software is very easy to learn and comes with every Windows (screenshot taken from Windows Vista version), but it has it's own stability issues... still, it's a viable choice for video editing.

In a nutshell, just import your (compressed) videoclips to your editing software, drag them on the timeline bar titled "Video" on the bottom and the song on "Audio/Music" bar. Special effects/titles/transitions are included either on the left, or in the drop menu "Clip".

Best advice I can give you here is to fiddle around and see how you like the effects, but DON'T GO OVERBOARD WITH THE EFFECTS! Not only does it add up eyestrain, but you might get sued for causing epilepsy to your viewers. Try to use them sparingly, prefertably so that the effects sync up with the musical notes. That's what separates the artists from rank amateurs.

4. Publish your movie

After you've finished your editing with all it's fancy eye-candy, you'll need to publish your movie. Assuming you're using Windows Movie Maker, click File... -> Publish Movie... -> This computer & Next. After entering where you want to save your finished movie, you'll run into a screen that gives you the following options:

publish.jpg


If you're not interested in all the numeral mumbo-jumbo on bottom of the screen, just select one of the HD profiles and get on with it. For best results, try to pick a profile that nets you a resolution close to your compressed video clips resolutions (See Display Size). You can safely ignore "Frames per second" here, in case you're worried about your recorded clips.

After all this trouble, click Publish, fiddle your thumbs for 5-15 minutes (depending on your video lenght & computer's CPU and memory) and PRESTO! You've just got yourself a video.

What to do with the video? Show it to your friends, your loved ones, or put it up to YouTube so we can all bash your creation that took you countless hours to finish. It's up to you.


There, I think I covered up the whole thing. If you see some parts in this guide that needs adjusting feel free to notify me. That's all I can teach you, young padawan, so go out there and make me proud!



Short list of viable freeware programs:

VideoPad Video Editor Software
XFire <- "Gamer's messenger" & comes with screen recording tools​
 

Jazcash

Member
Very nice stuff. I'll probably follow this through one day when I've got some decent footage to shoot. It's a shame it's fallen so deep in the forums, if I was you I'd be a bit disappointed nobody had replied by now. This should be sticked. Else, make a sub-forum for user-creations or guides or even make a directory post with links to all useful topics.
 

WildFire

Warrior of Linux
You should really update the guide with videopad, its a hell of alot better than movie maker, and it even has a feature where you can install virtual dub plugins (for effects and whatnot)
 

MJ1284

Member
You should really update the guide with videopad, its a hell of alot better than movie maker, and it even has a feature where you can install virtual dub plugins (for effects and whatnot)

Maybe, but honestly I have little experience with VideoPad (and correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you allowed to download the shareware/trial version from the homesite?). Yes, it's more reliable than WMM (Then again, ANYTHING is more reliable than WMM) but that's pretty much all I know about VideoPad so far.

How about you do that? Apparently you're quite experienced with it. MJ1284 would surely be happy to integrate an alternative to WMM into the OP.

Yes, definitely. Feel free to make a separate guide and I'll either put a link to it or integrate it on the OP (whichever you prefer).
 

Zhou

Private Tester
Not to advocate piracy in any way, but I tend to prefer vegas to those listed above for my stuff. Premiere is also a good move, and after effects is for those who really want to nail their effects.

I'm sure if someone were to contact the right person (not via this forum) they could find links to such things on the internet.

Just saying.
 

MJ1284

Member
Not to advocate piracy in any way, but I tend to prefer vegas to those listed above for my stuff. Premiere is also a good move, and after effects is for those who really want to nail their effects.

I'm sure if someone were to contact the right person (not via this forum) they could find links to such things on the internet.

Just saying.

Zhou has a point, those softwares are considerably better for editing.
While making this guide I tried to keep in mind that not everybody is willing to pay 200 $ just so they get to make one video, hench I listed freeware programs. Considering the hefty pricetag piracy is almost justified (pfft) but don't come crying to me if your computer gets infected with viruses and malware after installing a pirated software and keygen on your computer... you have been warned.
 

Zhou

Private Tester
What MJ said, anything you pirate is a risk to you. Nevertheless, its the only way most of us are going to get our hands on the better editing software.
 

TheWimp

Member
tl;dr my laptop wont run that *chocolate cookies* i dont think but its a nice job to help others make some cool demos.
 

WildFire

Warrior of Linux
You're on a limited account on your computer, get the admin to install the program.

EDIT: Ninja by radio :(
 
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