Help me with the trailer!

I now have a LOAD of raw footage. it's gunna take me a month to compile it all.

If i had all the raw demo footage as AVI right now, then the trailer would be complete by next weekend.

so what do I want? I want to be able to send people chunks of trailer, THEM to compile it (just set it to start compiling it when you don't really need it), and then they send the AVI footage to me.

all you need is: some free time, a computer that can run empires at full specs.

VIDEO TUTORIAL of same stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4MK_XJeNqA

here's what you have to do. I know it looks like a lot, but most of these steps take one second to do.

1-6: Download the demo that i give a link to, and put the demo in your empires folder.
7: Turn up the graphics as high as you feel like. KEEP RESOLUTION TO 1024x760
9: cl_drawhud 0
10: Type in the console "startmovie movie1" **
11: Type in console "playdemo game1"
12: The game should pop up in a few moments, and it will seem SUPER laggy. This is totally normal. The audio will be off, the frames will be laggy, that is OK! Don't worry.

12b: get a book or something. unlike every other mod, empires has menus that need to be manually closed WHILE GAME IS VIEWING THE DEMO. this is a real pain but thankfully 90% of demos i took dont have any menus appear. I won't send you demos where a menu is opened, ill do those ones myself, but just take this in mind.

13: After you are done getting the action and/or the demo finishes, type in console "endmovie"
14: Exit game.
15: Open up Virtual Dub Get it here: http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.17.zip
16: Go File>Open Movie File
17: Find the folder that you recorded in to. Use this guide.

Gmod9 - Steam\steamapps\SourceMods\empires

18: Click on movie10000.tga. (or [whatever the name of it is]0000) Wait.
19: When a picture from the movie appears on screen, continue.
20: Click on Audio>WAV Audio.. ***
21: Click on movie1.wav. It's in the same folder as movie1000.tga
22: Click on Audio>Full processing mode
23: Click on Audio>Compression...
24: Click on MPEG Layer-3 on the left hand box.
25: Click on highest quality setting on right hand box.

which will be: The highest audio quality I have available is 56k/bps.

26: Click OK
27: Go to Video>Compression
28: Find either "XviD MPEG-4 Codec" or "Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V3". Both are good. Xvid is a bit higher quality video, but takes a little longer to process. Microsoft is really quick, but takes a tiny small video quality hit.****
29: Hit OK
30: (Last Step!) Click on File>Save as AVI... Or just hit F7. Wait for processing, and now you have a perfect quality movie file in .avi format.

31: (other last step!) go into your empires folder, delete all the "screenshot" files (not your actual screenshots, but the mass of images in your empires folder.

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that's it. If people do this, ill find a way for them to send it to me. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but if people do this it would help me LOADS.

thankyou to 'hat' whose tutorial i just stole and edited most of.


thanks to all those who took part.
-----------------------------

demo list: if you start one of these, then post that you are going to do it so other people don't also do the same one.

I have just noticed that theotherJMS is recording files in widescreen! because he has already done and sent so many, If possible I would like him to continue. People without widescreen should not though.

i just learned that menus never appear, so no need to watch.

(link = name)
http://www.mediafire.com/?7tuve2g5mdo = trailer2
http://www.mediafire.com/?2s1mgjbsayn = trailer3
http://www.mediafire.com/?am2zitjnygq = trailer4
http://www.mediafire.com/?5g1owolg2rw = trailer5
http://www.mediafire.com/?0z3lsxzyrmm = trailer6
http://www.mediafire.com/?29onmtse54t = trailer7
http://www.mediafire.com/?ct9wejlatmx = trailer8
http://www.mediafire.com/?783zxj9cmnm = trailer9
http://www.mediafire.com/?2dptyesgm9e = trailer10
http://www.mediafire.com/?5pmmt90mjut = sniper me (accidently deleted from the old list before it was compiled)

 

Awwright I compeltely missed it

 

I'll try the tut out, and if I can get it to work, i'll help.

[Edit] I got as far as #25 before running into any problems. The highest audio quality I have available is 56k/bps. Then the next problem was that nether of the preferred video codec are available.[\Edit]

 

It's worth pointing out here that when rendering the footage you don't have to be able to do it in real-time. In other words you can run it on settings as high as you like (much higher than you'd normally play with), and the finished product will still be dead smooth (and better looking).

Good luck with shifting all those GB's around sandbag That said, you're probably making the right choice by avoiding uncompressed AVI's.

 

for the ones that don't have menu's, why don't you just do them all in 1 night (leave your computer on).

 

One thing you gotts watch is if different people use different settings "eg" screen size or compresions rates, then when you try to append different segments together it wont work Sandbag.

 

that's true melee, thankyou.

I want everything at 1280x760. not higher. it REALLY won't look better, because i'll be compressing it down to 1280x760 and lower anyway when i get it.

"The highest audio quality I have available is 56k/bps." yeah, that's what I want you to use. Ill correct the confusing statement in the guide.

 

Is it 1280x768 or 1024x768?

 

1280x768 doesnt exist me thinks, 1280x800 is the widescreen version of 1280. most likely 1024x768

 

It's definitely 1280x 768.

 

I just compiled canyonattack on 1280x768 with full details, using xvid. The avi is 193 MB big. I'll look for a place to upload when I've done secondattack, canyon one and epic.

 

as long as its under 100mb, use http://www.mediafire.com/

 

I love media fire.

From their FAQ: Why can't I upload files larger than 100mb?

That takes up too much bandwidth. For instance a 200mb files is twice as big!

 

Lol!
Unfortunately only one of the four is under 100 MB. I still haven't compiled epic.dem because my harddrive has no more room and instead of a nice little error message Empires decided to crash when the HD was full.

 

Can they be uploaded to Youtube?

 

Ok, I have compiled the following:

Canyon_One - 61 MB
Canyon_Attack - 193 MB
Canyon_Secondattack - 270 MB
Epic - 556 MB (epic size)

using Xvid and 56 kB/s
I will upload them to megaupload now. For the last one I will use a .rar that is broken up in two pieces.

Next I'll compile a.dem, b.dem and f.dem

EDIT:
Here is Canyon One. I'll upload the others from the university on monday, because I only have 18 kB/s upload from home.

EDIT 2: Completed. Now working on alamotwo.dem, alamothree.dem and drive.dem.


EDIT 3:
I have rendered all videos from the list. I'll upload them on monday around 2 pm CET. I haven't had any menus popping up, but in the Canyonattack video the upper right part of the hud (the ticket counter) is still visible.

 

Do the people who took park in the movie get a 5second credit screen with 40name squashed together?

 

Tssk..it's too bad that my new graphics card taps out my power supply if I put settings at high :/

 

You're all going into your Empires folders and deleting the big mass of screenshots after you've compiled them? right?

gah! i keep forgetting to add stuff like this to the guide.

sorry

but also:

THANKYOU

theotherjms, you're definately going in the credits now.

I still need some demos from people that were in xray squad when we did the dust storm sniper scene

edit: new demos uploaded

 

I hope that !