Video making... whats your step by step process?

[ShinjiGohan]

For me, it depends on if its a combo video (without ingame sound) or a match vid (with ingame sound)

For match vids the latest one that I did was as follows

Capture it in mpeg1/2 in Asus DVCR on highest quality settings
Import it into premiere and directly export it to avi (so music stays in sync)
open it up in virtualdub and select the matches indiivually to save.
Later on I can then append them together in virtualdub.
Open up the big files in tmpeg and encode in mpeg1 for file size and ease of use for users to play.

Problems with above though
can't deinterlace well (just ends up making a copy of 2 frames, so you can still see the blended interlaced)

For combo vids

capture it in ASUS DVCR in AVI, highest settings, no audio
rename the clips to capture and use the method from 100fps to deinterlace correctly
cut and edit each combo and append them together in virtualdub
save in several formats, xvid, mpeg1 etc...

how about ya'll?

[jchensor]

- Decide I'm gonna do a combo video.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Actually start doing SOME thought about what to put into it.
- Think about it some more.
- Start playing Training Mode a whole hell of a lot.
- Think about it some more.
- Sit on the idea.
- Begrudgingly begin the actual capture process.
- Go absolutely bat-shit insane and become obsessed, capturing clips even up until 3:00 a.m. and keep dreaming up new ideas while sleeping, in the shower, at work, while driving, etc. and not stopping until you've recorded the aboslute perfect clip, being completely OCD about stupid things like making sure Combo says "First Hit" or that the "Recover" message isn't on screen when you started the combo or that the characters are properly centered in the stage or that there is enough dead space before and after each combo, etc.
- Become sick of game, never want to touch it again for a while, and move on to something non Combo Video related in my life.

And now for the more serious answer: ^_^

- Capturing clips. This is done with the default program that came with my Pinnacle (Studio 9).
- Click record, and start playing away, hoping to get the combo within 10 minutes or so (if not, click stop, click record, and go again).
- Using Studio 9 again, trim the clip so that I cut out all the failed combo attempts beforehand to isolate the video to just the combo.
- Repeat this process until I've recorded enough clips.
- NEW: Go through deinterlace process to generate uncompressed, deinterlaced version of the clip (this, for me, involves using VirtualDub).
- NEW: Put them on SonicHurricane Forums to see what others think.
- Pick a song I really want to use. This oftentimes happens even before I even start capturing. Edit song in any way I need.
- Import clips into After Effects and go at it. Do all the fancy editing I want.
- Record new and/or change any combos I need to work with the music more.
- Render uncompressed version of my video in AVI.
- Encode into wmv format, since wmv format seems to work really well and is guaranteed to play on all Windows machines by default.
- NEW: Put it on SonicHurricane Forums to see what others think.

My Match Video process is pretty much the same. Though because for Evo East, all the footage is from my camcorder, I don't need to worry about the Deinterlace process. If it were direct feed footage, I would probably use the deinterlace process as well. Also, I don't need to worry about music or any fancy editing. Right now, I just have my template that I just plug match videos into for the Evo East stuff. I'll probably reuse it all for Evo West.

- James

[Magnetro]

GOLD JERRY. GOLD

Wow, great answer.

I'd pretty much say the same thing except I'd take off a few of those "Sit on the Ideas" since I have more free time than almost anyone here.

For the start-to-finish process it's something like.

Have an idea for a video (usually happens after I mess around in training mode or something interesting happens in match and I explore the idea)

Start messing around with ppads and seeing what happens when I do ____ etc.

Record ideas. Search for music if I don't have a song already. Ditto to what james said about being obsessed with the quality in your captures (meter/lifebars etc)

Get ideas randomly while doing random things (like what james said). Search for music if I don't have a song already.

Record more stuff. Post it here for people to see. Search for music if I don't have a song already.

Clip and re-encode everything so I can use it in Premiere and AE (Adobe Dynamic Link FTW). Search for music if I don't have a song already.

Get frustrated that I don't have music for the thing even though it's been months since I've started.

If I find the music, start the editing.

Post it here for people to see (although I don't expect much feedback on the game content since it's MvC2 :^[ )

Finish editing - If I have AE files I export them as Huffyuv for Premiere and then work them into Premiere. Export them with DebugMode Frameserver (a favorite for almost 2 years!), encode it with VirtualDub/TMPEGEnc depending on what I want to do with it. // Build the DVD project --> burn

Post it here lol

At this point I'm usually tired of doing what I'm doing with the game. For instance, if I'm doing a tutorial non-stop, I'd be sick of it at this point and would want to do something different in the game... Best case scenario is when I'm doing like 3 videos at once so I keep having ideas for different kinds of videos (of the same game lol).

Not worry so much about what people think of the video/DVD (haha, I'm one of the few that can say DVD ) as long as I tried hard and it came out like I wanted it to (I wish I could say the same for all things relating to me)


Kick myself because I didn't date my video. ugh.

-

Matches = WMV or AVI. WMM2 for WMV and VirtualDub for AVI. Not like I record matches though (for good reason).

[laugh]

This is what I do I record combos or matches.

-Think and "plan" for the longest time without doing anything except occasional scribbles in notepad.
-plug my cheapo S-video & Composite cable into my PS2 or DC.
-Plug the S-video from the cable to my camcorder (my TV has S-vid input but no output) and plug the audio to the camcorder from TV's output ports.
-Do the combos on my stick on the TV through composite+audio setup while recording everything i do on the camcorder. It takes a few tapes usually to get everything I need.
-Connect the camcorder to my capture card and fire up VirtualVCR.
-Capture footage with either Huffyuv lossless or other lossless video codecs out there with under 3 frames dropped (usually I try to get 0 frames dropped till about the 8th try and I give up and take the best try under 3 frames)
-I just keep the captured clips on my computer as is and make changes on premiere (like deinterlacing, which I learned is poorly done through premiere)
-Edit the whole thing.
-Output the finished product with a lossless codec.
-Start encoding with x264 and find the best bitrate for both quality and file size.
-upload


I haven't made a single video since my last video (I got sick of making videos for a while) but when I make another video, a new step would be to upload here before deciding on the final video for feedback.

- Decide I'm gonna do a combo video.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Sit on the idea.
- Actually start doing SOME thought about what to put into it.
- Think about it some more.
- Start playing Training Mode a whole hell of a lot.
- Think about it some more.
- Sit on the idea.
- Begrudgingly begin the actual capture process.
- Go absolutely bat-shit insane and become obsessed, capturing clips even up until 3:00 a.m. and keep dreaming up new ideas while sleeping, in the shower, at work, while driving, etc. and not stopping until you've recorded the aboslute perfect clip, being completely OCD about stupid things like making sure Combo says "First Hit" or that the "Recover" message isn't on screen when you started the combo or that the characters are properly centered in the stage or that there is enough dead space before and after each combo, etc.
- Become sick of game, never want to touch it again for a while, and move on to something non Combo Video related in my life.

LOL. That is so me. For my last video, I even threw out every clip I had captured and re-did every combo all over again using a better capture method and incorporating as much variety in the stages/colors/groove bars/positions on the screen/dummies as I can while sacrificing a whole weekend for it.

[Xenozip.]

I seriously procrastinate a lot, and then gaming gets in the way of creating. And then when I finally get around to working on it I know if I don't finish it as fast as possible then I'll drop it and forget about it (done it several times).

But then when I feel stuck I branch out to a new game as a way of avoiding the project, and then end up spiraling down a long trip of total obsession with the new game. I learn everything about it, I get good at it, I try to find as many top players to play against as I can, etc. Then I reach my apex/limit of knowledge/skill and kind of trail off, and then go back to the first game and kind of half-ass the first project.

Basically it'd look like this:

- Play
- Play
- Play
- Think of a project
- Play
- Start recording clippits
- Play instead of working on it more
- Play
- More clippits
- Organize some of the clippits
- Play
- Get stuck
- Play a different game, forget about project
- Become insanely obsessed with new game, start project for that
- Learn every possible thing there is to know about new game
- Play game vs humans till skill level raises to acceptable heights
- Lose inspiration, go back to first game
- Finish project for first game in one week or less