Has It Been So Long?

Wow, if I waited just a couple of months this would almost be a year "in progress".

Well, not quite "in progress".
Real life and my own requirements for quality meant I had to wait for a hardware upgrade before I could start properly.

Well finally the hardware upgrade is complete.
Here are the specs in all there shining glory:

Intel C2D E6600
4gb PC-6400 RAM
Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
Geforce 8800 GTS 320mb
1 x 74GB Raptor
1 x 150GB Raptor
5x500GB Samsung Spinpoints = 2TB Raid 5

So what does this mean for the movie?
Well, I can now capture at 1280x720, 60fps solid with Fraps.

People put the application down, not sure why. For me, it means I can capture at full speed and not have to do any post-processing. Personally, the moment you take source footage and have to change it before you can even work on it means you are always going to have decreased footage quality to work with.

Anyway, thats enough chatter for now, time to find some inspiration :)

Quality - Part 2 ...

OK so now I've decided to use Fraps, whats next for quality.
Well quite a few things:

• Game engine output
• Graphics card handling
• Editing software handling

For Part 2 of Quality I am going to concentrate on the game engine output.

For the UT engine there really isn't a whole lot you can do to make your settings any better than someone elses. Unlike Quake 3 which seems to have almost limitless configurable options when you see the movies, UT has nearly none in comparison.

To get what I believe is the maximum quality within UT I do the following:

• First and most importantly, make a second copy of UT. This allows you to edit the user/unrealtournament ini files without worry and also remove files not needed (eg. maps)
  
• Install S3TC textures, but also keep a backup of the old ones for them "corrupt" demos
• Install the latest opengl driver from mindspring
  
• Install EyeCandyLightHQ (see bottom of the page for your version, I used the first one)
• Go through each preference and turn them on or off (eg. coronoas on, decals off)
  
  
• Force the refresh rate of UT to be the same as your capturing refresh rate (eg. 60fps)
• Make UT run windowed and full screen at the same resolution (eg. 848x480)

The last 2, although not majorly important will help you if you are going to be using RypelCam.

Now comes the boring bit, start doing test captures.
Do them over and over again until the output matches what you want to see.
I am a great believer in doing as little post-processing as possible, so for example if your in-game colour looks superb but your capture colour is too dark, make the game lighter.
Once you are happy with the output make backups of your user.ini and unrealtournament.ini
Also make your current ones read only as the last thing you want is them getting corrupt or knackered and all that hard work going to waste.

Anyway enough rambling, Part 3 will deal with Graphics cards and possibly the editing software.

Quality - Part 1 ...

Firstly before I get into quality, a quick demo update ... 28 ... this now includes some Assault runs but still no CTF runs.

OK onto quality.
For me this is what should make up a large part of your movie making time.
Its one thing to have great frags and great cams, but if the final quality is poor then no one will notice.

First thing to work out is how you are going to capture, for this you have 2 options.
First one is to use something that will dump frames to bitmaps (eg. movieunreal++), second one is to use something that interfaces with the graphics API (eg. Fraps).

Now, wherever you go people will frown upon Fraps saying that quality is bad or that there are framerate problems. Fortunately I have no such problems. This may be luck or it may be down to spending time working out resolutions and configs and limitations.
Because I don't have any of these problems I can choose which solution is best for me which can easily be worked out with pros and cons.

Movieunreal++ Pros:

• Can slow game engine down to do frame-by-frame output up to around 240fps
• Can output to uncompressed bitmap, compressed jpegs or avis (not that I've ever had avis work)

Movieunreal++ Cons:

• Does not record sound
• When slowing the engine down can cause inconsistencies (rockets going through people, projectiles not hitting the player when they do etc)
• When capturing the colour is not WYSIWYG, generally it is dark which means you then have to post-process
• Slow
  

Fraps Pros:

• Records sound
• Colour is much closer to WYSIWYG
• Fast recording of clips

Fraps Cons:

• Requires a fast PC
• Needs a lot of messing about to get the right fps
• Can do any fps but I've never managed better than 60
• If your PC cannot keep it, fps fluctuates rather than the game engine slowing down

Conclusion for me is that I will be using Fraps.
Combining slomo 0.5 (game speed is half speed) and capturing at 60fps with Fraps gives me 120fps realtime playback.
I do not have to post-process colouring, nor do I have to wait for clip rendering. I also do not have to post-record the sound and match it up to the clip.

If you can get Fraps to work for you, demo capturing time I would guess is cut by between 500% and 1000%.

For the people who say Fraps is bad quality, I submit to you the 2 videos I've previously done.
Phoenix Alliance was totally done with Fraps and its quality is far greater than Revisionistic.
As you will also see in Revisionistic I suffer badly from rockets going through players.

Demos ... So Far

Well its just over a week since my mass forum/demo requests posting and up to now I have 22 demos. Not bad really but could be better.

Frags still remain the leader of demo types with no real AS or CTF runs yet ... think I need to go and prod some cup channels or something.

Next post I make should hopefully deal with my efforts for quality ... what methods I've been trying, why etc

Music

Music can literally make or break your movie and of all the things you put in, its the one thing that definitely won't please everyone.

Ive pretty much settled on my intro track unless I find something better. I also have the concept of the intro I want to use but need to start pulling in some favours to help bring the idea to fruition.

When doing a movie audio track its hard ot please everyone. Because of this Ive decided to go down the Tricking It 2 route and do multiple audio tracks.
How many being done is down to a mate who needs to make them all work ... good luck Kris :)

There will be one extra audio track though, which I've been dying to do for a long time which is a collection of previous movie classics.
If you have a favourite you can help influence this audio track by commenting in the thread I made here.

Demos

Well my post went up and demos have been coming in, 13 so far which isn't too bad but still a fair way off the amount Im going to need.
All are pretty much DM though with some CTF , still waiting for the AS guys though some of the community are checking demos to send on.

And so it began ...

This is the day the movie project starts and this the entry that says so :)

First thing any movie needs is demos so I best start posting around the forums.