Creating a Movie

[Al Shama'ar]

To CA:

Is it possible to make a little utility available that will convert a battle save file into a movie (mpg, preferably)?

Sometimes it's just not possibly to watch a battle, 'cause you're at work and you have MTW installed at home, or you just want to show how an MTW battle is fought to a friend or coworker and you dont have an easy way to do it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

What do you guys think?

Al Shama'ar

[Gregoshi]

Hmmm, this was asked not too long ago. I don't think there was an answer to the question.

[The_Emperor]

Would be cool if they implemented a conversion feature like that into RTW...

[Shahed]

Surely there is a screen capture program that does motion clips. Anyone know of one ? We could then record while playing, and view later in .avi .mpg etc..

[Sjakihata]

just take a lot of screenshots and make a .gif animation http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Quote[/b] (Al Shama'ar @ May 22 2003,05:27)]Sometimes it's just not possibly to watch a battle, 'cause you're at work and you have MTW installed at home, or you just want to show how an MTW battle is fought to a friend or coworker and you dont have an easy way to do it.

Al Shama'ar
Naughty naughty Trying to watch MTW battles while at work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif What would your boss think? Oops, here comes my boss, Got to go.... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Alrowan]

ive been thinking of making a MTW movie... but the oly way i can think of so far is by using a video camera

[Shahed]

Quote[/b] (Sjakihata Akechi @ May 22 2003,14:46)]just take a lot of screenshots and make a .gif animation http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Al Shama'ar]

thnx for volunteering Alrowan, http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

just pass the camera around http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Al Shama'ar

[KukriKhan]

Some of our more-talented graphics guys have been discussing this in the Tavern, here:
http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....;t=7144 (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=7144)

Apparently taking 100's of screenies & pasting them together isn't as silly as it sounds.

[Al Shama'ar]

thnx Kukri http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif


Quote[/b] ]Apparently taking 100's of screenies & pasting them together isn't as silly as it sounds.

No, but, apparently, a lot of hard work. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif (No pain, no gain, right?)
Until some enlightened mind finds a more automated way of doing all that stuff, i guess we're stuck. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Al Shama'ar

[solypsist]

it's easily possible with a prog that can record the screen while you're actually playing - then just convert/export it as a flash file. adobe premiere works. i'm seriously busy but i might try and get around to it in a month of so just to show you. but something like this goes beyond a five-minute committment, if you were thinking of it as something quick to do.

[Shahed]

That's exactly what I was talking about Soly. I think there are also some programs that can motion capture what is happeneing on your screen. I will loook for a guy from an IL-2 forum who made this neat movie called requiem. He may know a prog for this.

[Kraellin]

first off, the replay files are not video files, they are essentially control code files, from my understanding of what CA has told us. in other words, they dont actually capture any video, they only record control codes. when you play back a capture file, these control codes are used to re-enact the battle through the game and essentially re-enact the battle, not replay it. thus, taking just the file and converting it to an .avi or .mpeg would be almost impossible. it just wouldnt work.

what you'd need is a camcorder of some kind and just point it at the screen while the replay is replaying, or, an s-vidoe out and send it to your tivo or vhs recorder and then play that back as a capture file into the computer, or, a program that worked in the background that was like a constant print screen thing or F2, recording so many frames per second or whatnot. you might also be able to do a thing thru a tv out that simply inputted directly back into the computer, but that gets a bit trickier.

this is actually old technology and been around since the 8 bit days. we'd take a rf converter and plug the computer into the tv, record it on a vcr, then play the vcr back into the computer and capture it that way. with today's tv tuner cards and s-video in and out, i would think that would be the easiest way, especially if you had something like tivo that can capture and store digitally. heck, you might even be able to simply route it to your harddrive or a second harddrive as the capture, or, if you have computers networked, route it to another computer on your network. oh, and this could get even slicker if you have broadband; route it to a server on the internet and then download it back to yourself ;)

what i did with this one http://mizus.com/kraellin/Eng-Frnch-into-1a.gif was to simply take a bunch of F2's and convert them to .gif files and then link them all together with animation shop 3. simple stuff.

K.

[Alrowan]

wow.. that looks awesome

now the tirck is to do it while units move

[Al Shama'ar]

Sinan

any news on that motion capture software?

soly

i'm prepared to spend some time doing this stuff, it just doesn't appeal to me hitting F2 (hundreds, thousands of times) while fighting a battle.
That motion capture software would do the trick, though http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

Anyway, thnx for ur assistance and ideas http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

Al Shama'ar


PS: If anything new comes up, feel free to let me know. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flirt.gif

[Maurits]

Hello to all,

I have read what you have been busy about and I was thinking about a solution. I came up with the program Snagit. This program can take snapshots of any picture on the window. I searched deeper into the subject and there is indeed a program which can capture like a video what is happening on your screen. It is called: Camtasia Studio. Look at the website of http://www.techsmith.com about the programs snagit and Camtasia studio.

Good luck to you all.

[Al Shama'ar]

thnx m8

i'm d/l(ing) Camtasia Studio this very moment. Hope it works when I get home. i just have some doubts about MTW's environment not being a native~Windows one.

Well, we'll see...

Again, thnx for taking the time to help http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

Al Shama'ar

[Eyeswater]

Hi, long time lurker first time poster http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

There is also a program called Hypercam Hypercam (http://www.hyperionics.com/)

which is another screen capture utility similar to Camtasia.It saves your clips in AVI format which you can then edit in something like Jasc Animation Shop etc.
Also if you have Windows Movie Maker you can then set a sequence of clips in whatever order you wish and add a suitable soundtrack to compliment your masterpiece and then save as a Windows Media file playable thru Windows Media Player (believe it or not http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif ).
There can be a lot of trial and error in setting things up to your satisfaction but it can be worth it in the end.

Prior to the release of IL2Forgotten Battles, the developers of that game held a Fans Movie Making contest and some of the movies were outstanding pieces of work, I mention this as IL2 uses the same sort of system as MTW for saved replays and the same sort of principles apply in making movies of both games replays.



and a link to a Full length Windows Media file.
* edited out movie* Click on the picture to start the movie in Windows Media Player.Its a 6.5MB file so 56k'ers beware.
That was a poor first attempt but with a little more patience and time , the results get a lot lot better.

If you are lucky enough to have a digital camcorder I'm positive there is a way to record your replays direct to your camera and then back to your PC for editing.A few guys at the Il2 contest made their movies that way but I am unsure of the exact method that way.

Hope that may be of some help also.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Edited by Gregoshi: fixed Hypercam link.

[Eyeswater]

Another good program for screen capture is Fraps from Fraps (http://www.fraps.com).

Nice smooth results with this program.

[Gregoshi]

Thank you for de-lurking Eyeswater and sharing that with us. That looks great.

Thanks for the contribution and welcome to the posting side of the Org. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Kraellin]

good stuff, guys. i've downloaded both fraps and hypercam. might try them out. (mostly, i'm just a packrat that has all sorts of non-installed stuff lying around :)

K.

[Eyeswater]

Thx Gregoshi for both the welcome and for fixing the Hypercam link. I am by no means an expert at making the movies but since I've gleaned a fair bit of info on MTW from these boards I kinda felt honour bound to return the favour (so to speak) as best as I could.

I would recommend Fraps over Hypercam myself after doing some fooling around with it last night.Fraps seemed to give a better recording all round and without the need to edit out blank frames which Hypercam generates occasionally.
That said tho' an Animation program is handy to crop your frames down to an acceptable size(as it records in 640 x 4--?) to help reduce the final file size.
I will try to upload a couple of small MTW clips onto my webspace sometime soon so those who are interested in this kind of thing can get an idea of what its (Fraps) capable of and a complete step by step process from start to finish on how to do it and the programs used etc.

[Gregoshi]

That would be great Eyeswater.

I had downloaded Fraps a couple of years ago but never did anything with it. I thought it just told you your frames per second while playing a game. Now I know better.

[Eyeswater]

Sorry to take so long to get back to this thread, Ive been hard at work with a couple of things but here is a movie of whats possible.
MTW Movie (http://www.damonf.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Me1page/Page_1x.html)
Click the MTW screenshot to start the WMV movie in Windows Media Player.It is a 10.8mb file so 56k'ers beware, alternatively right click the screenshot and choose Save Target as to download the movie if you prefer.

Sometime tomorrow I will post the list of programs I used and the steps I used to create this movie and some of the pitfalls to avoid.
With a bit more time+patience the quality could be a whole lot better but all will be explained tomorrow.
If anyone watches the movie feel free to give an opinion, good or bad, any help and advice is gratefully accepted. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Gregoshi]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

That was great I take it the Spanish king fell to longbowmen/archers? Very nice work Eyeswater. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Eyeswater]

You guess correct on the Longbowmen http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif But only after the Billmen had done their bit too http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Thx for your kind words http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/redface.gif

[Kraellin]

very nice and i look forward to your explanation of tools and techniques. only thing i saw was the clarity could stand to be a bit sharper, but nice editing otherwise. good variety of shots and movement. i'd have gone for something more along the lines of a heavy german march for music, but that's just a personal choice ;) love stuff like this.

K.

[hrvojej]

This is excellent And personally, I like the choice of music, as it gives a barmy feel to the slaughter. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Great work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Duke John]

That music made it a 10 I don't know if you edited to match the music but there's a part in in where the lone enemy general starts running away while the music plays: Over the hill, Over the Hill and then he's shot dead and it goes Huraa Huraa http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

And thanks for the link to capture program

Cheers, Duke John

[The_Emperor]

What was the song title? I wanna download that one http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[frogbeastegg]

That was great Was anyone else thinking 'A knight Tale II' with the combination of music and medieval knight action?

[Shahed]

WOW I never did find that guy who made the movie for IL-2 i mentioned earlier. But seems that one like him found us. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

That was GREAT

Thanks a million.

[Eyeswater]

Thx people for your responses http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

Heres the process+software I used to make the vid,

Step #1 Recording
Using Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/) 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 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/redface.gif
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 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif )
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 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif [B]

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


Happy movie making people, now after all that I'm going for a beer and maybe kill another Spanish King if I get lucky
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Shahed]

Somebody buy this man a beer

[The_Emperor]

One Question... How on earth did the Spanish get the Chance to Invade Scotland?? Seems a bit of a difficulty strategically http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Alrowan]

wow, nice, i think its time someone made an actual story film... would be most interesting

[Kraellin]

most interesting, eyeswater, thanks. i believe i've got all those tools cept the last one, the ulead one.

oops. nope. dont have the windows movie maker. guess it doesnt come with all xp machines :( ah well, i think i know another way.

K.

[Kraellin]

never mind. windows movie maker 2 is a free download from microsoft. got it and the creative fun pack add on, also free.

K.

[Shahed]

Hello All http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

I have started my hand at movie making. You can view a sample here. (http://webplaza.pt.lu/shahid/downloads/aaomovies/RTTEST2.wmv) (rightclick, save as) This is just a brief test to see what can be achieved. It's some footage of me running like a headless chicken in the game America's Army. The music is Persian folk, by Aref & Dariush (and no I don't expect you to like it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif ) . I am making some more and will post on that later.

Now what I would really like, and would love any pointers on is:

- A screen motion capture program which can record in higher than 640*XXX resoultion. This is becuase I have a reasonably good graphics card and it makes little sense to record on such low resolution when the end product can be considerably enhanced with better resolution.

- In ddition to the above I'd like to capture the sound as well. SO I need a program that can capture the soudn too.

-I'd now need a video/sound editor capable of filtering the screen capture sounds and merging it with my own music or voice/sound files.

Any additional pointers to the excellent posts by Eyeswater, would be most appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Shahed]

Hello Everyone I made another short movie.
Any feedback would be MOST welcome.

You can download it in a zip folder, by clicking the link below:

California Dreaming (http://webplaza.pt.lu/shahid/downloads/aaomovies/California%20Dreaming.zip)

That took me ages, but finally I got it done.
Would love some feedback. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

--------------
http://webplaza.pt.lu/shahid/images/sigpics/aaosigpic1.jpg

[frogbeastegg]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

First film.
Very funny Sinan Loved the way you just dodged those bullets http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif It was like watching myself - I suck at dodging in FPS games The footage came out nice and smooth and the music wasn't bad, for some reason it sounded quite familiar but from where.....

Second film
Er, I don't get any actual film with this one, it's just music.

[Shahed]

Yes the first one is a bit of a tragedy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

I for got to mention something You must have DivX codec installed to view the second movie California Dreaming (http://webplaza.pt.lu/shahid/downloads/aaomovies/California%20Dreaming.zip), since it is compressed using that codec.

You can download DivX directly by clicking the folowing link:

DivX Pro FREE bundle (http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXPro51GAINBundle.exe)

DivX is good to have since a significant portion of online media are coded with this.

Cheers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[frogbeastegg]

Ok, got the second film to work by playing it with VLC media player. You did a little better that time - you survived http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif Once again it came out nice and smooth, no hiccoughs or anything. Nice shooting BTW. When's the next film due?

[Shahed]

Great

Thanks very much for your input Froggy. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

About the next one: I would like it to be longer, about 5 minutes should be good. I am still trying to keep it as compressed as possible without losing picture and sound quality. I have not understood how to do that very well, yet. Once I got it under 20 megs, it's ready for publication. I may have another few short ones in before that. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Quid]

Great job Sinan You might just have persuaded me to go out and try something on my own as well...

The first one seemed to be a lot smoother than the second one...(with, however, a more tragic outcome http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif). I did enjoy both, though. Keep up the good work

[Alrowan]

Quote[/b] (The_Emperor @ July 04 2003,20:49)]What was the song title? I wanna download that one http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
sorry to take so long on the reply, the song is Sowrds of a thousand men i think thats it, correct me if im wrong though, im at uni so i dont have access to my CD collection, which is where i too have a copy of the song

[Al Shama'ar]

Grand

Nice work Sinan

2 things i'd like u to answer to:

1 - Explain, with some detail, how u did it.

2 - The reason I started this thread was that we would be able to exchange our battle tactics in a visual way. It's like they say, An image is worth a thousand words.

So please DO use MTW as subject of your testing and experimenting http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif


Al

[Quokka]

Does anyone have a link or copy of the movie Eyeswater made?
I was still just a twinkle in Gregoshi's eye way back in July.

[Gregoshi]

It looks like it is gone Quokka unless someone else saved it.

[Gregoshi]

I'm moving this topic to the archive for inclusion in the Table of Contents topic of the Main Hall.