Originally Posted by stabiz

:rotfl:No, not that many issues, just the owner visiting dodgy sites. Anyway, this reinstall was long overdue, since "My Computer" have been showing a floppy drive I didnt have and som other ghosts. Pheww.

LTD.KUNNINGHAM:

This is a sort of guide how to make movies, but remember this is how I do it, not necessarly how it should be done. If you are new to this, it should prove useful anyway, as some of these things took me a while to see.

*An idea. Yes, pretty obvious, but if you know what you want to shoot it is(often) a better end result.

*Record with fraps (or something else, I dont know of any other), but check the "half size" option, and personally I limit the recording to 50fps. Any more are wasted anyway, and just makes the video file bigger than it needs to be. I also always record with sound. It can be muted later anyway, should you want to.

*Always record alot, there is no such thing as too much footage. Just bin useless clips, thats much better than to suddenly be short of footage.

*When you think you have all the footage you need, the real job starts. I use Ulead Videostudio 9 myself, but anything I suggest here can be done with Windows Movie Maker.

*First I import all video files to the editing program. Then I watch every single one, and cut out portions I dont need. (Scissor symbol in Ulead, dont know about WMM) The thing most do "wrong" in movies is to let one scene last forever. I noticed that something as "boring" as a uboat gliding through the water can be much more entertaining for the viewer if you show this from multiple angles, and as a rule of thumb I seldom let a scene last for more than 5 seconds. The reason for this is that even if you are showing the same thing all the time (in this case a uboat), the different angles lets the viewer look at different things, and this keeps the viewer with you.

*Next up is transitions. (the effect between clips) In my opinion special transitions should be kept for special things, and because of this I seldom use any others than the fade option. In my first vids I used all transitions in every single vid, but trust me, this gets annoying after few minutes of watching.

*Okay, now you have a complete video file with transitions, but you are definately not done.

*When adding text, I usually remember to make a long recording of the deep water in sh3, without subs or action. I use this dark ambience shot as background to any text at the start and/or wherever in the video. The text itself is pretty basic, click the appropriate button, type text, place it wherever in the frame, and edit lenght and attributes. (With that I mean how the text behaves, does it fade, etc)

*Finally the most difficult part, but also the single most important part of the vid: Music. A really good video could be boring and let down if the music is wrong. Personally I would like to recommend Hans Zimmer, you cant go wrong with his music. (The last Samurai, Batman Begins, The thin red line, Hannibal, etc)

To get the music to fit I first check how long the intro music has to be. For instance, if the start text, slow uboat footage etc, etc lasts for 1.21, and then the action begins, I try to find something fitting at aprox that length to portrait the mood of the beginning. When its imported, I check if the dramatic parts of the music fits with the video. They rarely do, so the next thing is trimming the video to fit the music. The easiest way to do this is to increase or decrease playback speed of individual shots. (Right click and "playback speed" in Ulead, probably something similar in WMM). You cant dramatically alter playback speed without the viewer noticing, but if that gets to be a problem, just alter speed of two clips. (or three, and so on) This way you video will be longer or shorter, but the music file stays where it is, and thus you can easily adjust to fit the music.


Okay, say this part is done. Now you have 1.21 of finished video. This is how I do it, start with the beginning, and work my way through it.

Lets say you torpedo a merchant at 1.22. Find a track that starts really dramatically, and adjust it in the timeline, so the beginning fits the shot. This way you get a nice effect.


Then you do the adjustments to make the new track fit the rest of the video, just as written above.

*Of course, there are tons more you can do, such as adding video filters and adding external audio (like all the good audio you can find on the das boot soundtrack, or all the brilliant audio hidden in the sounds folder of sh3), zoom, add old film layers, etc

*When done, I usually save the vids in three formats. Small, medium and large. The small one I upload to youtube, the medium one to filefront, and the big one I hide beneath my pillow. :rotfl:When it comes to streaming, keep the file as small as possible. Although f.i youtube allows 100MB files, a file that size will look much more ugly than a 25MB file, due to compression after upload. Personally I save my small vids in 800kbs, and 350x255, or something like that. (Will check) These convert well to streaming sites.


Hope this helps!

Edit: OMG! Long post!