[SD] movie

[Ben]

Hey,

Few weeks ago i had time to learn some videoeditting programs and i managed to create a (in my opinion) quite good movie.

Most things you see are from Hamburger Hill matches, 0 respawns. The best mode in GR btw - no camping like in LastManCamping

I used:

- Fraps

- VirtualDub

- Sony Vegas 5.0

- Adobe Premiere Pro

- Shineplugin for Premiere

- Cool Edit Pro

- Ghost Recon

- tagaming.com tracermod

Hmm, that's about it.

Big thanks to

Slayers From the Past - [sFP]

http://www.slayers.se

Enemy Offline - [EO]

http://www.enemyoffline.com

http://www.ghostrecon2.org

=SVAF=Speed

http://www.svaf-clan.wz.cz/

=WO=Scorpion & =WO=Jenny

http://www.warrior-online.com

{B:P:R} MiK

http://www.british-paras.co.uk

=Rage=Iron Man

=Rage=DxmR

Gorgo.nl

HDS

voor

Stats:

------

- 34.8 gb uncompressed captured video

- 22.979 frames

- 343 mb's

- 15:18:07 seconds

- Little over 1 hour encoding (XviD Two-Pass)

- 39 replays selected

It's 332 mb zipped!

Want the link? =D

100mbit powered by EO

ftp://ftp.enemyoffline.com/gr/sdmovie.zip

2-3mbit powered by SFP

ftp://sdmovie:sdmovie@sfpfunkill.dns2go.com:2121/sdmovie.zip

Read the "readme.txt" for more info/problems.

I suggest you install the codecs (latest XviD codec, and DivX codec), and to be save to a reboot. It should work then...if it didn't work already =P

You need the latest XviD codec to see it, you can download it here:

http://files.divx-digest.com/software/code....1-05062004.exe

(It's also included in the zip)

I *think* (not sure) you also need the DivX codec, most of you have it already i think. Anyway, if you're not sure then download this:

http://www.divx.com/divx/download/

Get the latest Windows Media Player (version 9) here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...ies/player.aspx

If you see a "shocky" - "stuttering" screen, reinstall the codec(s) and reboot your PC.

If you see a green screen, reinstall codecs .

If you reinstalled everything 2 times already and you rebooted, but it's still not working, try Windows Media Player 9, if that's also not working. try to play it with another player, like Winamp player, or bsplayr (if possible).

I heard from 3 people so far they had some problems, but they solved it with a little help from me . But i think there are enough people here that know it better then me when it comes to this, just google a bit =D

I've heard very positive feedback so far, i know some people watched it more then 15 times now , if you're gonna make your own GR movie you'll watch some gamemovies again and again and again to see how they did it =D

Please let me know if you got any problems watching it or if you have any questions ofcourse. Thanks for watching, and sorry to all 56K people

Any questions?

Ask me here or :

MSN: clan_alliance@hotmail.com

Email: thealliance@home.nl

If someone can host it somewhere else, that would be great. I don't know how many people are planning to download it, i think i had about 150 downloads so far

Edited July 29, 2004 by Ben

[Ben]

Some other movies:

SVAF movie - 33 mb

http://student.fsid.cvut.cz/~hodik/img/gho..._svaf_movie.avi

SVAF vs Rage movie - 40 mb

http://student.fsid.cvut.cz/~hodik/img/gho...n_clan_svaf.avi

=Rage=Dox movie - 93 mb

http://student.fsid.cvut.cz/~hodik/img/doximor.zip

[Rocky]

Cool, I love GR movies, one day I will finish mine

That's some pretty heavy hitting tools you've used to make it. I am downloading it now and will watch it in the morning, thanks for the info. (nice download speed too, cool).

[Ben]

I only made the SD one, SVAF Speed made the 2 SVAF movies and Rage Dox made his own movie. Just showing some others

There's another one, uhm...let me find the link again:

http://nato.daddeln.de/pv/index.php?nav=fi...=detail&id=2690

[Rocky]

I've watched the 300Mb one, very nce job. Nice use of effects such as slow-mo and nice music selection too - great job well done, I enjoyed watching it.

[Ben]

Slomo's was a lot of work

I had to capture the video twice

Once at normal speed

and once at 0.25 speed

You can slow down the replay as well, but then you see [x0.25] topleft, and that's something i didn't want.

Glad you liked it

[Rocky]

Slomo's was a lot of work

I had to capture the video twice

Once at normal speed

and once at 0.25 speed

You can slow down the replay as well, but then you see [x0.25] topleft, and that's something i didn't want.

Glad you liked it

That's a shame, there is a really easy way

I use Uleads Videostudio 8, with that you simply isolate the section you want to be slowmo (using the scissors), right click on it, select playback speed, and move the slider to faster or slower, by whatever degree you want.

[Ben]

Yes, but then you lose quality

Let's say you have 30 frames per second

If you slow it down 1/3 then you only have 10 fps per second.

When i did my slomo it was still 30 fps all the time - problem was i had to zoomin exactly the same as before when i captured the 1x speed part . And i had to slow it down some time before the actual kill to make sure the [x0.5] [x0.25] disappeared from the screen.

...right?

I actually used 20 fps as far as i can remember lol, 20 or 25.

I tried all those great editting programs because everyone seem to use them, i didn't use to much effects because if you make a 15 minute movie, it's just a lot of work to have all the material in raw video, and then i had to learn how to get started, so i tried to do some little effects, i tried some transitions with premiere but i didn't really like them.

I listen a lot to music, so i tried to pick some cool music, i was quite lucky with it, i only had to do some extremely small adjustments in 3-4 parts of the movie to get the music synched with action/kill

Anyway Rocky, just hoping you or someone else will make another great movie, it's vacation now, so enough time Once you're started ...

[Rocky]

Yes, but then you lose quality

Let's say you have 30 frames per second

If you slow it down 1/3 then you only have 10 fps per second.

When i did my slomo it was still 30 fps all the time - problem was i had to zoomin exactly the same as before when i captured the 1x speed part . And i had to slow it down some time before the actual kill to make sure the [x0.5] [x0.25] disappeared from the screen.

Ah, hang on I think I see what you are saying, this is interesting. Are you saying you recorded the replay file playing back at slowmo, rather than use a video application to slow it down, and that way you got a much better quality slowmo?

That is ingenious!!! It will help ALOT with one particular shot I was trying to pull off but was always to jerky.

[Ben]

Yeah

So, you capture a certain kill at x1 speed, and also with 0.25x or 0.5x speed, the hard part is when you need to zoomin exactly the same as in the 1x part, it took me 3-4 times simetimes.

Then you use VirtualDub to paste the slomo in the normal speed video, find a point where both frames are the same, for example look at the ammo, or at the start when someone is reloading (you see the reload sign). It's not that hard, but it's just more work

lol, i don't know those programs very well, that's why i use these ways to get it done, also encode the videos with XviD Two-Pass, you need to render/encode it twice then.

first you do "two pass - 1st pass" and you save the Avi, then you pick "two pass - 2nd pass" and you overwrite the file again, use the same settings as before. I used a bitrate of 3000. I tried to keep it around the 1 minute = 20 mb for good quality.

I can only tell you what i did, i dont promise this is the best way to do it If someone is using Sony vegas, you can choose "draft - preview - good - best" somewhere. I got some strange video with Good and Best, so that's why i used preview quality, i didn't really see the difference in quality, but with Good/best you had some kind of ghosting-effect.

Only thing i couldn't always solve was "DEFEAT!" thing in the end of a replay, tried editting the replay, found the text where it said "defeat!", editted it, but it keept crashing my Ghost Recon, opened Ike log, and fixed every error, when i did that it keept crashing till i got no errors anymore

[Ben]

Here's a little tutorial i made after i finished the movie when it was very late It's for the people that are interested in making a movie, but don't know how to start. I wanted to do Sony Vegas as well, but i uninstalled it again, and i deleted all raw video (about 35 gb), otherwise i could show you how the complete movie looked like on a timeline in Vegas. Just experiment a bit

FRAPS

The first step is capturing the video, you need a program like "Fraps" to capture the replays on video. It's quite easy.

Make sure you use 640x480 settings, with 20-25-30 Frames Per Second (FPS). I used 25 fps.

Configure your hotkey, make sure the destinationmap has enough space left on the harddisk. You need about 5-10 gb minimal if you're making a normal movie.

I used Fraps 2.0.0, but Fraps 1.9D ( http://www.fraps.com/download.htm ) is also good. 2.0.0 also has an option to record the sound, but i guess you want to have a nice soundtrack in your video, so that's why you really don't need to record the sound.

Leave Fraps running in the background, now Start Ghost Recon. Use 640x480 and put everything on high, if you want to capture some nightmap replays, make sure you have "Effects Texture Detail" on LOW. This will give you a clearer view in nightmaps, if you use nightvision ofcourse.

In the mainmenu, go to replays, and start a replay. If you don't see any. Get the replays from a match you want to show us and put the *.rpf" file in your Ghost Recon/data/save/replay/ folder, if you don't have that folder yet, just create one and call it "replay".

When you press your hotkey fraps starts to record everything what you see ingame, if you close Ghost Recon it stops recording. Fraps records only when you see that little fps counter on your screen. If you close fraps you don't see it anymore. So, don't worry that it's a part of your video.

Now you have to zoom-in and show the map to give your viewer a good idea of what's going on. Remember, fraps records everything you do.

Check your controls, there are a couple of functions in Ghost Recon that allows you to switch cameraposition or slowdown/fastforward the replay. You can't rewind the replay, so if you missed something (this can happen alot if you want something done perfectly - you have to start the replay again)

I used the TaG Adminmod to show tracers on all bullets, if i am correct you can download it from www.tagaming.com, install the mod, and activate it.

A couple of tips:

Try to avoid having "[x0.25]" in your video. It's the yellow text you see topleft when you slow down or fastforward a replay. Make sure you slowed down the replay long before the part you wanted to record, so the [x0.25] already disappeared from your screen.

If you want to slow something down in the middle of something, without having the [x0.25] speed in the replay you have to record it at normal speed and also once at 0.25 speed. Later you can edit your movie and you can insert the slomotion in your video.

I removed the Ammunition and Nickname displays sometimes, i left the little radar in the middle because then you can still see all names from your teammates, if you remove the HUD (HeadUp Display) completely, you don't see those names anymore. I wanted to keep those names, so it's clear for the viewer who he's watching.

To remove some parts of the HUD check your controls in options to see which button is assigned to these functions.

I think that's about it what you have to know about Fraps.

Well, maybe 1 more thing, after closing Ghost Recon i found out i had like 5 videofiles instead of the 1 i captured. I think it's a bug in fraps, sometimes it creates some 0 kb moviefiles. It gives you an error when you try to open them, just remove them.

VirtualDub

VirtualDub is one of the easiest editting programs for videos, and also one of the most basic programs, so if you need something more complex, with more options, then you need Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas. I think for beginners Sony Vegas is really easy to start with, but if you're used with working with Adobe photoshop Premiere might be a better choice, but i can't really say, i like Sony Vegas a lot

Anyway, back to VirtualDub

Situation:

You recorded the Map with 8-Speed, and you want to show the kills you made in between. For example, you were playing a Clanbase-mode type of game: Hamburger Hill without any respawns, it's 1 vs 5 and you manage to eliminate the whole other team, it's the best day of your life bla bla bla

How do you make such a movie?

Example is based on this movie:

ftp://Cheats:Cheaters@sfpfunkill.dns2go.c...own_dcmatch.avi

First you record with fraps the map only, do it with 8speed or if you killed all of them rather quick you can do it with 4-speed. But remember, people don't really like to see players moving on the map for 3 minutes long, and in most cases the kills aren't that spectaculair, it's more your achievement by killing all your opponents that's so great.

But, it's your video and you want to do it that way

Then, also make sure you capture all kills with Fraps, try 0.5 or even 0.25 speed, or chasecam/3rd person cam.

You have 6 huge files now in your Fraps directory (let's say it was a 5vs5 match)

File #1 [map]

File #2 [kill1]

File #3 [kill2]

File #4 [kill3]

File #5 [kill4]

File #6 [kill5]

Open [map] with VirtualDub

Maybe you want to cut the beginning away, it takes to long before you made the first kill.

Search the frame you want to begin with, use your left and rightarrowkey, or click on the bar with your mouse.

Then decide the begin and endpoint of the area you want to select, press "Delete" to remove it. Or use Edit->Delete.

#2 shows you the (<-) beginpoint-button, and also the Endpoint-button: ->. With the pointer (#1) you can check where you want to put begin and end of your selection.

- Note: As long as you don't save the orginal avifile, nothing will change.

#1 = Beginpoint of selection

#2 = Endpoint of selection

So, now we removed the boring beginning, your endpoint should be the point where [kills1] movie starts, let's say you started to capture about 5 seconds before you made the kill, find that part in the movie and remove everything that comes behind it.

This means you only have a video that shows the map for about 10 seconds, and then it stops before you made your first kill. Now, go to "File" and choose "Append AVI segment". Choose the video that shows Kill1. You just added [Kill1] behind the editted [map] movie.

kill1 was captured perfectly, you don't have to remove anything. Kill2 was almost 5 minutes after you made the first kill, so to give the viewers a good idea what happened you show the map again. Choose "Append AVI Segment" again and choose File 1 (Map) again. Remove everything till after Kill1, only keep the video between Kill1 and Kill2. You can remove the rest with the beginning and startingpoint again.

So, after adding Map again you have the following:

[editted-map] - [kill1] - [map]

The whole mapvideo is added again, so find the beginning of [map] again (that you just added) and remove everything till after kill1, keep the video between Kill1 and Kill2.

This leaves you with

[editted-map] - [kill1] - [editted-map]

Or in words:

[begin -till before Kill1] - [Kill1] - [After Kill 1 -till Before kill2]

Example:

So, in short:

1. Open Map with Vdub, select "Map 1", remove the rest.

2. Append Kill 1

3. Append Map, select only "Map 2", remove everything around it again. Don't remove the "Map 1". So, you have now: Map1 - Kill1 - MapVideo

4. Append Kill 2

5. Append Map, select only "Map 3", remove everything around it.

You have now: Map1 - Kill1 - Map2 - Kill2 - MapVideo -> Edit the MapVideo part and select only the "Map3" area, remove the rest of MapVideo.

6. etc etc etc...

Only remove the parts from "MapVideo"

This way you can edit your movies quite easily, if you want to save your completely editted movie you made from a couple of different other movies.

Go to "Video" -> "Compression". You see a list of codecs now, some are standard and some of them are codecs you downloaded, like DivX and XviD.

Click XviD MPEG-4 Codec.

If you don't see it, then install this:

http://files.divx-digest.com/software/code....1-05062004.exe

We're going to encode it with XviD, Two-Pass mode. Two-pass gives you better quality.

Encode it with "Single Pass" or "TwoPass - 1st pass" the first time, click on Ok, and save the Avi file.

Now you have a encoded movie, which is about 100x smaller then the uncompressed avi Fraps made.

After encoding, go to Video -> Compression again, pick XviD again, and choose the same settings again, now select "TwoPass - 2nd pass" and save it again, just overwrite the previous file you saved.

When you select "TwoPass - 2nd pass" you see you can edit "Target bitrate (kbps)" or "Target size (kbytes)". I like to work with Bitrate, because i know a Bitrate between 2500 and 3000 gives me very good quality, a bitrate of 1500 is also very good for nightmaps, for nightmaps you can use a lower Bitrate, but i'd say it's better to use 1 bitrate for your whole movie, because sometimes editors can't add movies with different bitrates or with different fps (fraps). So, make sure you use the same settings for every movie you make.

Effects

If you want to add little effects, go to "Video" -> "Filters...". Just experiment a bit.

You can also add a musicfile with VirtualDub, just try some things out, trail and error .

I only used VirtualDub to make 1 file from 5 smaller moviesfiles i had from 1 match or from 1 kill.

For example, i recorded my first person view, but also his view, or a slomotion.

So, to order my uncompressed videos a bit i merged some little movies together in 1.

[my-1stpersonview] - [slomotion] - [Opponeny-dying] -> Save as AVI. And you have 1 movie instead of 3,

I used that single movie in my whole project, later when i worked with Sony Vegas. I found it easier to merge those little video with Vdub instead of Vegas/Premiere.

[Rocky]

Wow, that is remarkable. Nice work, very nice.

If you look here you will see a step by step guide for shrinking down avi movies to fit on PDAs - you will notice it is the same two pass technique you use. I thought you might like to see that

[TRC]

Very nice Ben. Looks like quite a bit of effort. Especially liked the tunes you picked out. Thanks for the entertainment.

[Aequitas]

Very interesting to be sure, but it just isn't the same without the in-game sound (shooting, etc). I tried this out with Fraps w/sound and the end result is the sound being lagged but the video itself runs fine. Did you have the same problem Ben, or did you just choose not to use it?

I'd love to make movies with the sound.. is there any other way, like perhaps adding in the gun fire while editing the movie? That would be exceedingly frustrating though I'd think.. Any ideas on that would be appreciated though.

[Rocky]

Very interesting to be sure, but it just isn't the same without the in-game sound (shooting, etc). I tried this out with Fraps w/sound and the end result is the sound being lagged but the video itself runs fine. Did you have the same problem Ben, or did you just choose not to use it?

Fraps recourds the sound perfectly for me, you could add it afterwards with video editing software but that would be quite tedious I'd think.

[Aequitas]

Adds it perfectly? Ah, perhaps I'm missing a step or three here..

Rather, here is what I did. I loaded Fraps, started up the replay file I wanted, recorded, closed GR and opened up the new movie file in my Fraps directory. Video was fine, audio was lagged pretty bad. Is it my machine having problems, or do I need to take this movie and do something else with it?

Thanks in advance!

[Rocky]

Adds it perfectly? Ah, perhaps I'm missing a step or three here..

Yes, perfectly.

[Enviro]

Great tutorial Ben

I`ve always wanted to make my own GR-movie. Thanks

-Enviro

[Ben]

Fraps with sound

I had some problems with that as well, i tried to record the sound, but i only got the environment-sound, but no gunfire. Could be my soundcard, i tried to record it on another machine with almost the same specs, also didn't work there.

Then i tried it on a little bit more outdated machine with my old soundcard, it worked fine there.

About sound lagging, hmm.. Fraps is very intensive, if the framerate goes to 0 or 1, i think your machine can't handle fraps, trying a smaller fps maybe.

Hmm, with "Cool Edit Pro" (Now: Adobe Audition) you can also record sound, you can try that, you can add the sound with the video later. Maybe that works for you

@Enviro

So, we can expect a movie from you soon?

[Aequitas]

Don't think my framerate is going that low. But yeah.. I'm using Video Edit Magic to put everything together and no matter what I find that the video looks smooth, but the in-game audio is off by about 6 seconds. I heard the gunfire and what not fine but there is a delay.

I'll try my other computer and see what happens. Hopefully I can get it working as I think it would be a lot of fun to work with.

[Ben]

Try capturing the sound of the replay (i suppose you use replays) with Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Adition. It's not that hard, install it, find the record button, press it, start GR, start Replay, Play it.

Close GR, go to Audition, Select the begin and end point of the part you need, cut it, paste it as a new file. Then save it as wav or mp3

Now you have to put it in your movie, i did it with Sony Vegas. You had a video and a soundtimeline, very easy.

I would leave the ingame sound out of the video as much as possible, try to find a nice soundtrack. It doesn't really has to fit extremely well, but if the music sounds good with the video, then you found a good song. If you want it synchronised with the video at a extreme high level, you have to make sure you capture enough video, so you can remove and add some parts, or make it a little but longer.

I just put everything together and started to important some songs i like, and to my surprise they fitted quite good, i did maybe 3-5 little adjustments.

[Enviro]

@Enviro

So, we can expect a movie from you soon?

Hehe, I am just a beginner but I hope so. At least my head is full of ideas. Unfortunately life`s not only Ghost Recon...

[Ben]

Vacationtime huh

We'll be soft on your video then

[Aequitas]

Thanks for the quick replies Ben.

I'll try that when I get home tonight. I've got Cool Edit Pro, just never thought of trying that. With luck all will go well!

But I don't know, I'd think the more in-game sound the better, as that's what counts. I've already tried using some soundtracks and it's awesome. I can make movies like the one you have but it just isn't the same without all the in-game sound effects (imo).

Thanks again for the help, you've given me new hope.

[Enviro]

Vacationtime huh

We'll be soft on your video then

Jepp And then I have to finish my mission-mod (The Showdown), I wish every day had more hours...