Need A Cool Movie From A Pc Game?

[mojoman 0]

Heres the process+software I used to make the vid, i did it with a game called: MTW. Basically I did it with a replay from a game but use have to use the same method with any other game. (NOTE: if your doing in in-game it might lag) gl guys!

 

Step #1 Recording

Using Fraps I made the screen captures of the MTW replay.Its an extremely easy program to use, the default key to start/stop recording is the F9 key, your footage is saved in AVI format in the Fraps folder.This raw footage will already be playble thru Windows Media Player (WMP from now on) but will most likely have a largish file size(more about that in a sec.

Fraps needs your in battle screen res set at 640X 480 to record so re-adjust that in MTW options before playing your replay, once done then play the replay and record what you want. That is the hardest part, finding the scenes and shots but practice is what its all about in this part of the process.

 

Step #2 Editing

 

Once you have got your footage its time to edit it to remove things like the odd stray mouse pointer, the paused button/box and to crop down the viewing area so you remove unwanted/unnecessary background goings on.Cropping and also resizing the animation dramatically reduces the file size which is very important too, the smaller the file the better.

The program I used for this was Jasc's Animation Shop which comes with Paint Shop Pro so if you have that, then you have Animation Shop(AS).

Once you fire up AS, its a matter of choosing the File menu/Open/then browse to wherever you have the AVIS(normally in the Fraps folder as mentioned above)then choose which one and click OK to open.

From here you can view the animation before deciding on what to crop out with the crop tool and choosing what size you wish to downsize to with the Animation Resize tool(found in Animation menu).

Once you are happy with your clip its time to save it in its new form.Now, someone has mentioned about the clarity of the video and its time to admit that I forgot to follow the Golden Rule of editing, which is when saving your altered file, be sure to rename it and preferably save it in a different folder otherwise you will not be able to start afresh on that clip if you feel like something hasnt worked out as best as you'd wish in hindsight,I rather hastily saved over my original clips during various tests on quality vs file size and in the end was stuck with the last result

In AS once you are happy with the file choose Save As and here you will be given the choice of various formats (avi,gif etc) to save to( I choose avi), 8bit colour or 24 bit etc etc.Its all easily followed from there and just a matter of experimentation again on what you find as an acceptable quality vs file size.I used the Full Frames Compressor at the appropriate prompt during saving but again experiment to get the best results.

 

Step #3 Composing the Movie

 

For this I used Windows Movie Maker( comes with XP I think)

to load the clips into the sequence I wanted them to play in and also add the soundtrack (optional )

When your happy with the assembled clips etc save the project from the File menu and choose Save Project(so you dont have to manually reload the clips again if you dont like the finished project after saving) then after that just press the Save Movie button and follow the prompts, at the playback quality section I chose Setting:Other and Profile:Video for BroadbandNTSC(2Mbps total) but again its our old friend Experiment , for best results.Movie maker automatically plays the saved movie in WMP once saved (I think) so its best to have a peek and see if the quality #is to your satisfaction and if not Open the Project in WMM and the clips will be in the order you assembled ready to save again in different settings etc.

 

WMM dramatically reduces the file size of your finished article compared to the original files/clips #combined file sizes.And thats that... almost.

 

Additionaly I used Ulead VideoStudio 7 demo to compress the files size #further still but it isnt necessary in every case ,just depends on how ambitious and long/big your movie is in the first place.In Ulead I #just loaded my WMM made MTW.wmv #movie then saved again choosing streaming Windows Media(wmv again) and it reduces the file size again .

If you have video editing software similar to Ulead VS7 then you can bypass the Animation Shop/Windows Movie Maker steps and do it all from your Vid Edit software in the first place or AS/WMM suffices if you dont have any vid edit software.

 

Step #4Upload to your webspace and then share with the World #

 

Hope that makes sense but if not feel free to ask if theres anything I need to clarify or explain better.

 

Notice from saint-michael:

If you going ot be copying and pasting from other sites make sure to quote it. Warning issued.

[Dagoth Nereviar 0]

I think you may have copied that from here.

If so, you should put a refferal to that page, put it into quote tags and say you got it from there.