[MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

**SaladFork** · 05-08-2006, 03:49 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Footage was okay, music was common (nothing really unique to stand out), and the story was a little hard to follow.

My main issue with watching this is that the computer used to record the footage is not capable of filimg high-quality films. At the VERY least have shadows on so it doesn't look like a big bright plastic playground.

Other than that, it was pretty cool. Good start if you don't have much experience with video editting programs.

~Salad

**Mattc0m** · 05-08-2006, 04:02 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

That's odd... settings should on high...

Maybe BattleLauncher didn't load the right profile... that would explain a lot.

**Sir. XaliaS** · 05-08-2006, 04:32 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Yes, there is a profile issue on BL, where you can't just change the settings before rendering.
I would always double check in-game before rendering; make sure that the shader optimisations run during the loading.

Well done for your movie and in Vegas. (Which I wholesomely support)
I see you found the panning controls lol.
Which the particular use fits well, but watch it, for you can go overboard on this where you think other effects come substandard, they do not. Keeping the screen crisp and clear is just one effect we all admire.
Titles are good, Camera placement was good, and I also noticed in-game audio of high quality! It's nice to hear that in a video for once, rather than drowning out audio with music, it was good choice.
Keep up the good work.

**Mattc0m** · 05-09-2006, 01:08 AM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Glad to hear you liked it. Instead of going through and redoing all the footage for this film, however, I think I'll just keep moving on and try to get out some other short films. I love doing films that are 2-3 minutes in length, as they can be achieved in a reasonable timeframe, are simply easier to create, but also I can really focus on quality over content, as well and really finetune things a bit more than I can with longer stuff. Still, I'd really like to finish a larger lengthed video with perhaps a real plot.

Anyway, my next project is going to be a bit different. I'm going to focus on the following
- Better / smoother plot
- Higher quality / sharper visuals
- Perhaps tweaking the colors, or perhaps trying to bleed them a bit, to give a more atmsopheric feel.

One thing I really hate is the in-game camera. It makes recording a true pain in the pass - getting sharp, smooth footage is near impossible.

Anyway, yeah, this film could use a bit of a workever in some areas, but it's pretty fun to watch I feel and though not much happens, it's a nice flick.

EDIT: It's 2am and I can't spell.

**BlitzWarTank** · 05-09-2006, 04:55 AM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

I cant seem to download the wmv version... It gives me a 155 bytes file.

**Mattc0m** · 05-09-2006, 11:03 AM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

The streaming file on putfile is of exact same quality ... there is some issues on the HK server for some computers since it redirects to the ftp server I believe.

**Mattc0m** · 05-12-2006, 04:49 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Okay, well, I was orginally planning on doing a different clan video (8v8). However, the team we played last week did not supply us with a demo, so I decided to redo the 5v5 video.

I decided to do a lot of different things this time. I was going to use BLauncher to render instead of FRAPs (I used BLauncher tracks + Fraps to record, since it included audio & video), add in some sound effects, work in some different angles, add a few new elements to the movie, get better quality footage, a better plot, ect, ect. I was basically trying to go a bar or two higher with production values.

From the first movie, I soon discovered I had indeed been using Low settings, which is why it was so ugly. I tried to make the footage as nice looking as possible - I seriously thought I was dealing with Medium/High footage, and Dalian plant just had bad lighting or something. Boy, was I wrong.

My first goal with this new version was getting an interesting opening scene / intro piece. I like the montages that zoom around the battlefield, showing the place off. I decided to combine that with a bit of a "tutorial" to explain about the various points scattered around the map.

My next goal was to get BLauncher working. Well, my recorded track didn't work as I planned. Apparently, if you record a track with 10% speed, it'll default again to 100% in the render. Sadly, that didn't work out too well for my montage. I *really* liked my tack, though, so I decided to render it in FRAPs instead.

BattleLauncher is not without it's problems, though, and it gave me a huge headache. First off, when I tried to record audio, I got this repeating error about not finding a specified wav file, and I had to reboot the computer. Then, the track I recorded for the infantry, which I was going to render, dies out about 15 seconds in. I finally figured that it kept dying in the same place after about 40 minutes of trying to get it rendering. Ugh!

Anyway, after all this, I finally decided to focus in and just make a kickass looking intro piece. Well, I was kind of surprised about how cool it turned out. Watch the intro here: http://media.putfile.com/5v5-Infantr...2---Intro-Beta

After you watch it, go over some new things I've done below

New Music - I picked a somewhat "surreal" piece of music. Don't think this will actually make it to the final version, though.
Sound effects - My favorite part is the new sound effect - whooshing when you go near large objects at a fast speed. This is actually an F15 flying by sound effect, which I edited over and over again to make it sound very "wooshy" and it doesn't sound like a plane at all. In fact, I bet if I didn't tell you it was a plane you wouldn't have known.
Fast foward - Yeah, I added a bit of fast foward to get around places. I couldn't really do that in the original, however, as I didn't have enough tracks recorded.
Video Effects - I added a slightly glow to the entire thing, and it turned out quite while by my books. Nothing over the top, just a subtle yellow glow throughout.
Voiceovers - That's my voice, with the bass, pitch, and other sort of things tweeked out to give this sort of creepy monotone voice.
New Video Panning - I felt like adding a lot more "angle" to the videos, making them tilted within the pan. I also made a lot of the pans a lot more subtle over more time, so it's not so jittery.
FRAPs - Well, FRAPs isn't perfect. There's a few points where you'll notice a slight pause as FRAPs tries to catch up. I tried to fast foward through those sections so you don't notice them, however they are still noticable occassionally. My video card simply doesn't have enough ram to hold all the data from all the terrain, which is why it's there. I'll probably redo the track with BLauncher if I can get it working with my tracks.

Anyway, tell me what you think. Not a lot yet, just trying out a lot of new things.

**Sir. XaliaS** · 05-12-2006, 06:33 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Well I don't know what you mean by making the panning less jittery because that was was stood out the most imo.
Are you sure you've got the diamond keys set to "smooth" or other, and not just linear...
I know this wasn't FRAPS lag ether because I can definitely tell when that is lol.
Also, good work for not over doing the glow, I know allot of people make mistakes here and It wasn't overdone here, just right *thumbs up*

Edit: Going back, I would sharpen the image a bit too, unless the dream-like look was deliberate.

**Mattc0m** · 05-12-2006, 06:43 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

It wasn't the panning if your seeing any jittery-ness. Just watched it again myself and it seemed quite smooth to me, anyway. The last bit where it twirls around there's a bit of jitteriness, but that is where FRAPs really started to "wig out" on me. But overall I just don't see how jittering stands out, overall the feel is quite smooth except on some parts where the game chokes a bit (like the part zooming from USMC main to Main Entrance).

http://www.fileden.com/files/2/editing1.jpg

Here's an example of the opening "scene" from the start > the reactor tower flag, it has the most changes. As you see, they're all about 3-5 seconds apart and there's no sudden zooms, pans, or angle changes that I can really see.

**Sir. XaliaS** · 05-12-2006, 06:48 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Yah, it's definitely on linear...
Click on the first key > hold shift > click on the last key, or any other method to "Select all"
Right click on one of the keys and select the smooth transition, the key will turn purple in Vegas 6.0.
Highlight that section and press Shift-B for the RAM preview and see the difference.

**Mattc0m** · 05-12-2006, 06:50 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Alright, thanks for the tip. It was on linear. Are any of the options there worth using, or is smooth pretty much always your best option?

I also just put on a basic sharpen on Video FX (just a bit below medium), and it made it look a lot better. I guess the combination of glow + fraps footage + motion blur made it seem so blurry, but I liked the effect so I didn't really bother changing it. But now with the sharpen, I think it looks better.

Thanks again!

**Sir. XaliaS** · 05-12-2006, 07:12 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

No problem, I'm always here to help.
If you look in the help files theres a little section about the "smooth" panning on line graphs, the graphics give a better understanding of what the settings do than I can explain here.
There is just one other thing in the panning controls mind...
There’s a dot in the centre that you can pull around to extend the line circle on the outside. It creates an automatic shaky motion within the boundaries you set. There are many ways in which this function can be used, so play around.

Good luck, and have fun!

**Mattc0m** · 05-12-2006, 08:26 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

http://media.putfile.com/5v5-Infantry-Battle-v2---Intro-Beta-2

Okay the only difference in this version is the added sharpness, and the "smooth" panning. However, the more I watch it, the more the little "blips" of lag becomg apparrent. I'm more than likely going to be completely redoing the in-game footage from the opening using pure Battlelauncher (that'll mean a new track, however, but I had quite liked that track.)

Oh well, I still think it's quite spiffy.

**imported_John-Paul** · 05-12-2006, 09:12 PM

Re: [MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

Originally posted by Mattc0m

Oh well, I still think it's quite spiffy.

Agreed!

I really enjoyed the original movie you posted, Mattc0m. Not too many people have used the panning controls in BF2 movies and yours proved its entirely possible to use those controls effectively to replicate the sorts of movements seen in the official EA videos.

The version 2 introduction, though, was particularly good. I loved the combination of that gentle flying-around-the-landscape camera movement and the music. The 'whoosh' was a very nice touch, too. (I never would have picked it as a reworked F15 sound!) What a pity DICE didn't introduce us to the vanilla BF2 maps twelve months ago using a similar approach. The Dalian Plant map has never looked so good ...

Anyway, keep working at this all-new version and don't settle for anything less than what you consider ideal. I'm sure the end result will be terrific and well-worth the time and effort.

[MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

[MOVIE] 5v5 Infantry Battle

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