My avi tutorial

[Pablo999]

http://rx.konspiracy.org/avi_tutorial.doc

http://pablo.poundit.net/avi_tutorial.doc

It goes from setting up TFC to some used transitions and other neat things that I've seen in avi's. Plz give feedback as eventually this will be going on tfcustomized.com site and I can still edit before its up.

[Pablo999]

figured i'd add a post telling u what's in it before downloading, here is table of contents so far.

Setting up TFC
• FSAA
• custom sprites/models

Recording
• Resolution
• clearing screen
• playing & recording demo
• in-game sound recording

Building avi (VideoMach)
• open pictures
• Define output
• start processing

Video Editing
• gamma/picture quality
• transitions
• slower/faster video
• removing deinterlacing

Audio Editing
• fade in/out
• editing sound quality

Compressing avi
• video compressor
• audio compressor

Titles
• Photoshop
• creating rolling text (credits)

[`Spook]

its the best one ive seen imo ty pablo

[Milosenpotion]

Ya I'm surprised it didnt get replies...it's VERY good. gj

[JFreak]

Wow man, that is insane. I scanned over it tonight, but will read and critigue it tommorow.

[Unbroken]

Wow thats awesome dude, thanks.

[Headshot]

Very nice indeed.

[JFreak]

Just a few things I noticed, good and bad going by sections:

Setting up TFC: Very good advice with the nearly default TFC as sprite laden avis are quite nauseating. The video settings steps are quite trivial, but I have never actually messed with them enough to see a difference.

Recording: I would strongly advise against using any resolution over 640x480 for capturing the bmps. Some comps (mine) can lag greatly when viewing 800x600 videos at 30 fps. Quality is also sacrificed as the resolution gets bigger. Good mention of the commands, but I would supply a .cfg they can simply stick in their TFC folder and be done with. The one I use is compliments of HLMP and looks like this:

scr_connectmsg 0
crosshair 0
cl_showfps 0
net_graph 0
hud_centerid 0
hud_saytext_time 0
hud_deathnotice_time 0
hud_draw 1
r_drawviewmodel 1
default_fov 100
lightgamma 1
brightness 10

The only commands you really missed involve brightness, etc. There are very important to the overall look of the avi. As I have always said, brighter is better in most cases (this doesn't include directed avis). Very helpful stuff on the in game sound recording.

Building avi: There is one absolutely detrimental problem here. You are advocating using the DivX codec twice!! ICK!! Instead, you should first go from a bitmap to an uncompressed avi format using Videomach. Then stick the uncompressed avis into Premiere and do all your editing there. Then and only then should you use the DivX codec to compress. You should NEVER EVER use above 1800 kbps in DivX. The filesize/quality ratio isn't justified above that point. All you are achieving by compressing twice is a great loss of video quality while saving maybe 2 MB for a 100 MB movie.

Video Editing: Pretty much all good tips here.

Audio Editing: Again, decent tips but you could beef this section up a little bit.

Compressing avi: Decent tip of the keyframes, but again you are using a kbps that is WAY to high. A 4 minute at 60 MB is not exactly excellent compression or anything of the sorts.

Titles: Again, good tips.

Just fix the fatal problem of using DivX twice to compress and advocating the use of extremely high kbps and you have a pretty well-written tutorial. If I was really picky I could have found quite a few more errors, but I respect the time you spent on this so good work to you.

[schtoofa]

In your tutorial you mention that your visibile FPS can sometimes slow down to 4fps while recording -- does it still successfully write the correct # of .BMPs / sec to disk? I'm assuming the highest, best case scenario fps one can record at is:

Hard Drive Xfer Rate / (size of [in your example] a 640x480 .bmp) = max fps.

My HDD/CPU combo should be fast enough to reach 30 but I haven't tried in a while (it seems doggish - my system needs to be refreshed ;p). I tried going the easy route with FRAPS about a year ago and got discouraged when the best I could do with that was 15fps.

Have any tips for people with less than super PCs who still wish you make a "good looking" AVI? I'd like to not limit myself to a first person view and with even 4fps it'd potentially be difficult to maneuver around in, say, free look mode while writing screenshots.

[JFreak]

The good thing about HL is that you don't need a super computer for avi editing. You can record at 2000000 fps if you want but it will just take a really long time. Essntially, the more fps you record at the slower it will be, but it will still look the same in avi format.

[Pablo999]

Updated what u commented on Jfreak, I did change the bitrate, and the reason I had such high bitrates was when I made my avi i used 2000 Bitrate and people still complained a bit about the quality, but then again that's probably because I compressed the avi's twice.

Any more comments u guys can come with would help, also when it's on TF customized I can add url's to configs and examples of avi's using what im talking about.

[Headshot]

it says no longer available D: noo!

[schtoofa]

Originally posted by Headshot
it says no longer available D: noo!

i was looking for it this weekend

[Pablo999]

sry my link is down, here is what it says minus the nice font and pretty pictures, enjoy

Setting up TFC
• FSAA
• custom sprites/models

Recording
• Resolution
• clearing screen
• playing & recording demo
• in-game sound recording

Building avi (VideoMach)
• open pictures
• Define output
• start processing

Video Editing
• gamma/picture quality
• transitions
• slower/faster video
• removing deinterlacing

Audio Editing
• fade in/out
• editing sound quality

Compressing avi
• video compressor
• audio compressor

Titles
• Photoshop
• creating rolling text (credits)

Setting up
-First step is optional, only if your computer can handle the extra load, you will want to go to your video settings. To do this right click on your desktop select “properties”, next click on the “settings” tab and click on the “Advanced” button.
-The next tabs title can change depending on your graphics card, it’s usually named after your graphics card (i.e. GeForce4 Ti 4400) now you will have to look around for any of the following: Antialiasing options, Anisotropic Filtering and Texture Sharpening or any other features your card may support, put them all to as high as you can (as long as your comp can handle it).
-All these options should either smooth out your frames, smooth your textures or make textures look more sharp which will in will help your avi look just a bit smoother/clearer.

Summary
-Right click desktop>properties>settings>advanced>graphics card tab>turn on FSAA, AF and TS

Next we will want to make our TFC default (most of the community likes this), fastest way I suggest is to drag your “sprites” and “models” folder from your TFC directory (C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\email\team fortress classic\tfc). Next move you “tfc.wad”, “tfc2.wad”, “openfire.wad” (if your playing demo on openfire, download the original openfire.wad) from your TFC directory and also “halflife.wad” from your valve directory to your desktop.

Summary
-Move sprites and models folder to desktop>move tfc, tfc2, openfire & halflife wad files to desktop

Recording
-First we will want to have a demo, either you already have one (most likely) or you need to record one. To record demo type “record name” and when you’re done type “stop” to end the recording. You can record a demo at any resolution as it won’t change the demo for when you make it into a movie.
-Next we will want to go into TFC and change its video settings to that of the avi, I suggest either 640x480 or 800x600 (Higher the resolution, the slower your computer will record). Now we will want to start playing the demo, I suggest “viewdemo name” the reason for viewdemo is it allows u to freeze, go back and change the speed of your demo which is very handy when making avi’s.
-Once we’ve found the part we want to record we want to clear our screen of garbage you can do this either selectively piece by piece or just a few commands removing everything, here are the commands.

lightgamma 1- This will increase the gamma in HL
brightness 10 – This will increase the brightness in HL
scr_connectmsg 0 – This removes the messages when people connect to a server
hud_draw 0 – removes HUD (health, armor, grenades, other icons on screen)
crosshair 0 – removes crosshairs
cl_showfps 0 - removes the FPS indicator in the top left corner
net_graph 0 – removes net graph completely
hud_saytext_time 0 - takes off mm1 & mm2
hud_deathnotice_time 0 - removes the death messages at the top right
hud_centerid 0 – removes name and health of people when your crosshair is on them
r_drawviewmodel 0 – removes your weapon models in first person
voice_enable 0 – removes icon showing which person is talking
default_fov 90 – changes fov back to default

Now were ready to record, in console type “startmovie name fps”. I tend to use names related to what I am recording and I always record at 30 FPS as that is normal. You know it’s recording when your frame rate drops from what it used to be (as low as 4 and maybe as high as 35). When finished your “scene” type “endmovie” and that will stop your movie recording so u can go to your next scene and record it.

In-game Sound Recording (optional)
-Next part is for recording in-game sounds, it’s optional for those who are creative and can use in game sounds in their avi. First you must either download a program (AudioMagic) or you CAN use sound recorder but it is limited to 60 seconds maximum of recording.
-After installing AudioMagic start it up, and click on the green circle on the top left corner of the program and go to “Volume/Mixer Control …”. Then select the slider called “Stereo Mix” or “Audio Mixer”
-If you can’t find it go to option menu and click on properties and check it in there. Now start playing in MP3 in another program and record with AudioMagic, play it back and keep changing the volume till it sounds similar to original.
-Next we need to disable voice comms in TFC otherwise it will select mic as recorder instead of Stereo Mix stopping us from recording our sounds. To do this type “voice_enable 0” in console. Now start the program recording and play your demo from the part you wish, although if your computer can I suggest getting your demo to the part where u want to record, ALT+TAB out, start recording sound and ALT+TAB back in and play the demo. To record voice comms do same as stated before but select “Mic” slider instead.
-Now you can either crop your sound with a sound editor or just use premiere and razor(discussed in video editing), make sure you line your sound up with your video and it should be no problems. After making the recordings just put them in premier in the audio bars, if you using comms u need 2 separate audio files and wherever u have the comms actually speaking I recommend using the razor feature to the game sounds at that point and lowering there volume (simulating how the game does it).

Building avi
Now were ready to start putting this avi together, at this stage though were putting a whole bunch of pictures together into 1 file per scene. When we typed “startmovie” what it did was took screen shots the number you put per second (startmovie scene1 30), were going to take these pictures, put them into a program called VideoMach. This program will string together the pictures and output them into 1 file as an avi.
First download VideoMach and then install it. Once you it opened click on the folder button and choose the pictures you recorded in your TFC folder (C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\email\team fortress classic\tfc), this is where naming your scenes when you recorded them comes in handy. Each file will be named something like name#####.bmp where the name is what you called the scene select every one named from the same scene, select first/last one and then hold shift and click on opposite end of pictures (i.e. if you select last picture, hold shift and select first picture).
Once the pictures are selected you can select each one and delete the unnecessary pictures (ones showing console, useless footage, etc.), now were ready to export this as a movie. Now click on the disk button here is a menu for us to configure what end file looks like and few other options. Select “Video Only” (we’ll do audio with premiere), find a location and type a filename appropriate to this scene and make sure its saving as an avi.
-Now click on the “video tab”, assuming you recorded in TFC at the resolution you are doing avi in you should need to touch “resize” (if you do its fairly simple, but you will lose quality when resizing), you can crop your video as well, if your looking for a widescreen style movie or just want to cutout some pieces around the edges. You shouldn’t need to touch the other options except “format options”, after clicking it you will get a new menu showing you a list of compressors. For Building the individual scenes however you don’t want to compress it as if you compress twice you get same file size but lower quality. This will create extremely big file sizes so make sure you have a Hard drive that can hold them (at least 10 GB free).
-Now were ready to spit it out into 1 file, select ok to everything until you get back to the main menu, now click on file and select “start processing” it will now create the avi with the name u specified, in the spot you specified with the settings you chose.

Video Editing
We now have lots of small little movies, that will in the future be 1 big avi for everyone to adore/know of/flame you for (if u think your going to get flamed, just say it’s your first time, works like a charm :P). Once opening premier you’re presented with a screen asking “Load Project Settings”, click on “Custom” and you can now set your output settings and make it a selection (handy if you’re going to open premiere a lot for making TFC movies).
-Click on drop down menu where it says “General” and change it to video, change your compressor to DivX latest version you have .
-Click on “configure” and you will have a new window which somewhere it will say “bitrate”, this sets how much you compress the movie, lower the # higher the compression, however you lose quality as you compress more and more, I personally suggest 1800 bitrate for movies, it has reasonable quality while really small sizes. I don’t suggest you use a bitrate higher than 2500 or any less than 1500, you won’t be able to really tell a difference for the growth in size.
-Now change the bitrate to 1800 - 2500 and click ok, change your frame size to either 800x600 or 640x480 (the size you recorded you bmp’s as unless u recorded them above 800x600) and change your frame rate to 30. Now change to Audio, change rate to 44100Hz, format to 16 bit stereo and compressor to uncompressed, now click Save and call it whatever you want (i.e. TFC).
-Now click on File>Import>file and select all the files your going to use in your avi (they should all be small avi’s or pictures that you’ve made for titles). After imported its fairly simple drag and drop system, drag video/pictures to a video timeline. You can chop files in half, or cut off the ends by using the “razor” tool which is extremely handy for getting audio/video synchronization.
-If you ever import a video file that has an audio file with it and you don’t want them both or don’t want to edit one while editing other, Right click on it and select “unlink audio and video”.
-Transitions are very handy for going from 1 video to another without any jerkiness. There are many different transitions that can be used (similar to ones in power point, or any other program that has them that you have used) I recommending using either fading or cross fading, there simple and effective. I also recommend that you don’t just use different ones that are all very different, they look good on their own but when all together they lose there effectiveness and begin to look messy. Transitions are found in the transition window and are added when 2 clips in separate timelines overlap, drag the desired transition to the transition timeline where the clips are and it will add it between them. There are tons of transitions and too many to go through other than the ones I said as it is used most, try them out yourself and find ones that suit your avi.
-On top of transitions you can change the look of the picture in your avi, adding brightness, make crisper colors and blur images are just a few examples. These can be final touches that perfect an avi as well as show your creativeness.
-You can also change the length/speed of a video by right clicking on it and selecting speed, lowering the number makes the video slower and longer, while increasing it over 100 will make it shorter and run faster. Although, if you do slow down a clip considerably it can make it choppier as it doesn’t make new pictures, but slows down how fast it plays them, if you’re going to slow down a clip ALOT, re-record that section in TFC at a slower rate.
-But if you can’t record at a slower pace, then u can limit the choppiness by doing the following. Right click on your video file>video options>field options, then uncheck “Deinterlace if speed is less than 100%” and you will get a smooth video.

Audio Editing
Click File>Import>File and select the music/sound files you want to import, they must be in mp3 or wav format I believe. Also I recommend you use songs that will work well for your avi, if you’re doing a slow avi you should choose music that is slow, not heavy metal, also when your music climaxes so should your video, and lastly, synching video and audio together can greatly improve scenes. Now on to the editing…
For fading in out music, select the triangle beside “audio1” or whatever one your audio file is in, you now have a red straight line, this is the volume of your music, and every time you click it creates a movable red square. So to create your fade in/out make a square where u desire and drag the one at the start/end down to the bottom, the music will now die down/increase until the next red square.
-To cross fade music from one to another, put 2 tracks in 2 different audio timelines overlapping, then fade one in and the other out where they overlap, simple and effective.
There are a few tools that will edit sound for your avi, I haven’t tried them out but I’m sure you can find someone on cats/IRC that will know what these do or just try them out yourself. Sorry I can’t help, but most of them will increase clarity/balance your audio left and right. HF!!!
Compressing avi

Video
These have been talked about before but I will go into everything together so it’s easy to find and remember. First we must export your movie as a whole File>export timeline>movie, if you configured your settings before it should be all ready to go otherwise click on settings. Make sure export video and audio are both checked then change it from “General” to “Video”, under compressor select DivX than click configure, on the first page select 1800 bitrate (best quality for file size, never go below 1500 or above 2500, both are a waste) then find where it says “Keyframe interval” (video tab for DivX 5.1.1) and change it to 300, this will decrease your file size, and doesn’t harm your quality at all, it reduces the ease of flicking through the movie.
Click ok and then change your resolution to either 800x600 or 640x480 and frame rate to 30, now change it from video to audio. Make the rate: 44100Hz, Format: 16Bit – Stereo, Compressor: Uncompressed. Now click ok and save your avi, this will make the movie really small, but still 1 thing left that will make the biggest difference.

Audio
Download VirtualDub then open it, next import your new avi file, File>Open video file. Now select “Full processing mode”
-Under the audio menu and under video menu select “Direct Steam Copy” , now select “compression” in the audio menu. You are now presented lots of compression options, select MP3/MPEG Layer 3 then select 128kb/s, 44100Hz, Stereo, 16KB/s.
-Then go to File menu and select “Save avi as”. With these settings a 4 minute movie should be about 60MB which is extremely good compression and excellent quality. I personally use the Radium MP3 compressor although you can download others which can increase compression or quality. Look around, there are many audio compressors around.

Titles
You can make text in almost any program, however quality and additional things you can do to text can only be found in the best programs, here we are going to use photoshop. Open Photoshop, on left window, set your background to pure green (R:0, G:255, B:0), this will allow us to select the green in premiere and remove it so only the text is seen. Now go File>New and change the resolution to the size of your avi with contents as background color, click ok. Now change the foreground to anything but pure green, click “type tool” on the toolbox and click on the image. Type your desired text with settings you want (font, style, size) and make sure to leave at least ½ inch around the edges of the image for safe title area. Now click the arrow on the toolbox, right click on the new text layer in the layer window, then select “blending options”, you can change the text’s appearance and add effects. Save the picture as a .jpg with high quality.
Import this .jpg into premiere and drag it into the video2 timeline as Video 1A and 1B don’t perform transparency effects. Right click on the clip and select “video options” and then “transparency”. Select “green screen” for key type and in sample window you’ll see a preview of the key in action, you might need to zoom in and adjust the threshold and cutoff so there is no more visible green (sometimes changing the smoothing to high, takes the green out), click ok. You won’t be able to see the text until u either preview or render the timeline.

Rolling Titles (credits)
This method requires you to have *licensed* the program, if it isn’t then it will add a big red X on your avi. First you will need to download msp65trial_en_r.EXE and the other 4 .rar’s, once installed open “video editor 7.0” up. Now click on “insert title clip”, in the new window you can specify text font, size and style.
-Type your desired text, then specify your text color and background color (use true green and use above tutorial if u want it invisible). Check “Opague Background” and select true green as background.
-Click on the “rolling” tab and in there you can specify your desired rolling style, it’s fairly user friendly. Click ok and then put your pointer on the “Va” timeline and click, it will place your rolling credits there.
-Now go File>Create>Video File and then name your file and then click options and open the general tab, here you can specify your size, use the same size as your final movie. Now go to the compression tab and select your compressor (I suggest DivX) then click configure to make sure the bitrate is what you’re going to use. You can also go to cropping to make your credits fit perfectly, after that click ok and then click save. You now have an avi that scrolls down the credits. If you want to make the background invisible follow the title tutorial as your background is green and will work the same.

[Pablo999]

link is back up