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#76 09/14/08 04:09

paradox-01
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 01/14/07

Re: Anniversary Edition trailer

You don't like it, ok, then you surly don't want it to appear it in the AE trailer draft. You know what? Me too. It will take ages to complete this mod so why should we show such stuff in the trailer when then the final version isn't available? I really appreciated interest and help in this project but this asura vid would be only a hype right now.

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#77 01/28/09 04:01

cr08
Member
From: Ohio, USA
Registered: 01/27/09

Re: Anniversary Edition trailer

Sorry for bringing up an old topic, but I felt compelled to reply here. Unfortunately I won't be as indepth as I wanted to initially since my original lengthy post started coming across a bit condescending which I wasn't aiming for and I just erased it.

Essentially I wanted to cover some concerns here which seem to be indirectly limiting the quality and breaking the focus of this project. Primarily is the idea of relying on other people to submit clips to the editor at hand which is introducing a number of problems. With the ease of modding with Oni where a stock backup of the game can be loaded at a moments notice, it should be a piece of cake to do all the captured clips by the person doing the editing and bypass all the problems: Connection bandwidth, codecs, reliability of game framerates and related issues. For example: Capture some footage of the stock game, exit, throw in some scripts and mods, capture new footage, exit, copy over the stock backup if desired, etc.

As far as the limited video quality, the ideal solution should be a high-res HD source from the game either 1280x720 or a 4:3 capture like 1024x768 then take that into editing. All done at preferrably 30fps mind you since 15fps is borderlining unbearably choppy. Any fairly recent machine should be more than capable than recording this with a fast, defragged hard drive and the fairly low processing overhead from the game. I've done games from the same era at 1024x768 with little trouble and 30fps locked. Then from there it's smooth sailing. If the game captures are done at the editing site, you can do full uncompressed or lossless without fail.

I say all this because I have done loads of machinima in the past and know how this all goes down trying to coordinate other players sending in clips, making it all look uniform, stuff like that. Unless you are doing multiplayer games, it's usually much less tasking to do the capturing and editing in one seat and keep it all fairly uniform.

I'm a bit burnt out on this stuff at the moment doing this stuff (editing primarily) in a professional term, but if there's any way I can be of help or offer more insight here, lemme know. When it comes to this stuff, I tend to be a little quality anal and like to see it done right the first time. wink

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#78 01/28/09 09:01

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Anniversary Edition trailer

Hi, and thanks for your thoughts.  The trailer project is currently on hold because of "artistic differences".  Yeah, it's true that it would have been simpler for just one person to record all the clips, but the one who initiated the project preferred to direct the assembly of the clips but not actually do the editing of the video or very much recording, either.  What really held up the trailer wasn't even the footage assembly as much as the nitpicking over each clip's minute details.

Right now we're all too busy to work on the trailer, but since the overall project "deadline" (if there is one) has been pushed back, we don't see a need for a trailer at this moment.  Things could change, though.  Thanks for the offer of help.


Check out the Anniversary Edition Seven at ae.oni2.net!

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#79 01/29/09 06:01

cr08
Member
From: Ohio, USA
Registered: 01/27/09

Re: Anniversary Edition trailer

Ahh. Yeah, I've slowly been reading through this thread and the associated wiki article and it's all making sense. It's all unfortunate the project's been headed by someone who, for lack of a more polite term, is fairly inexperienced with the subject outside of the game. No offense meant, btw. But moreso the 'too much chefs in the kitchen' saying comes into play and probably needs straightened out. Do something like delegate out the different roles needed in the project to different people and keep them focused.

Maybe one bit of advice on the larger problem of trying to cram in all the relevant clips/exhibitions within the limited length of the music you have chosen is to essentially think outside of the box. Use more than one piece of music to lengthen the video out, maybe mix the two pieces together somehow. Or even use something totally different not in the soundtrack that has a more suitable length to fit everything? The soundtrack for all intents is pretty generic and an outsider wouldn't be able to tell otherwise. Keep the same 'feel' with the music, but something of better length.

And another thing I wanted to cover is final distribution concerns just for future reference for when this gets back to business. While youtube is the defacto video distribution service these days, there are many other options out there that can be used. Some of which are higher quality. If you really want GREAT quality, a good scenario is this: If the host of oni2.net is willing to cover the disk space and bandwidth involved with a properly encoded divx/xvid video (I'd estimate 30MB video size maximum if done right), encode the final trailer to xvid with a well configured profile then set up a page or a wiki article and utilize the divx web player to play back that file in a browser window just the same as every other video site, buffering and all. And if that doesn't play out, there are YT-like stage6 clones out there that utilize the same divx web player setup that can be utilized for this if so desired. And to keep the wide publicity in check, you can upload the resulting file or a higher quality copy to youtube. The HD 720p and High Quality video options there are not all that bad and the links in Menhjun's 'Onie AE Run' thread here showcase that very well I think.

And lastly, just an interesting thought for the game clips that may add some nice touches to the final trailer: mod the game to cut out/mute the music entirely to the point it's just sound effects and record those as well. Play around with the idea and see if those sound effects would play in well super-imposed over the music in the trailer. If not, it's a piece of cake to mute those during the editing process.

Beyond all that, indeed it's probably going to be smart to wait till some of the more visually changed in-scope AE modifications get finished or worked on (ie: high quality textures, beefed up character and level models, attack animations, stuff like that.) before this Trailer project is jumped into on an official basis.

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#80 01/29/09 09:01

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Anniversary Edition trailer

Yup, thanks for the tips.  As far as quality goes, YouTube isn't bad with the new HD option -- although it wasn't in existence when we started the trailer, so all footage would have to be remastered to make an HD video, regardless of what site we put it on.  We would probably use an external site to host the trailer, in any case, to spare our server some activity, just as a courtesy to the administrator of oni2.net.

Also, yes, I kind of felt, towards the end of the work on the trailer, that it made sense to wait longer for more content to be done.  There was some confusion as to when we could expect the AE to come out, and how far ahead of that we wanted the trailer to release.

Anyway, I think we'll know when the time is right to resume work on the trailer.  So far I'm not even close to getting any bells going off in my head saying that it's time to think about it, but when certain things behind the scenes are in place, we'll have a better of idea of timing and planning.


Check out the Anniversary Edition Seven at ae.oni2.net!

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