fortress forever movie guidelines

[ryu^]

guide to making fortress forever movie

recording footage (things to note)
-shift+f2 gives you the demo gui
-you can goto any part of the demo by typing in the block in the goto box, so you can watch a demo, reference the block number where the footage you want is and goto that part at a later date. (using this can also allow the playback of some demos that dont appear to work.)
-it is best to have a fresh reboot of your pc, and not be running any other
programs when getting footage from ingame. sometimes whilst recording demos, frames are missed maybe due to hardware limitations or spam or something and choppyness at parts is unavoidable.

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converting footage

to achieve fluid footage, record at 60fps
for slow motion increment this value by multiples
i.e. 120 (half speed) 240(1/4 speed)

use a bind similar to the following

bind "pgup" "host_framerate 60; wait; startmovie mov"
bind "pgdn" "endmovie; host_framerate 0; demotimescale 1"

change the 60 to the framerate you want at that particular time

note - this will record the ingame sound to a seperate wav file.

the output of every frame as tga to your ff directory.

open virtual dub import the first tga and the whole footage will be
ready to covert

virtual dub settings
video>frame rate -> change framerate to 60
video>compression -> recommended lagarith codec
file>saveas "name"

these are the 2 main settings.
always change to 60fps (not convert), so for example if you have recorded
a section at 240fps, and you change it to 60fps, this will maintain all frames
but ultimately slow the footage down.

virtual dub also has alot of basic filters that you can use, but you can leave
all these to be done in an external compositing program. best to just get a
raw unedited file.

the final file size of these raw files can be large dependant on the length of
the footage and also the resolution (and the fps).

this procedure can be applied everytime you want to record a piece of footage
note - you may have to make sure all the tga files have been deleted from your ff directory if you are recording more than one piece of footage at a time, unless you are not using the bind above and change the name of the startmovie output each time

easiest technique is to run hl2 and watch the demos in windowed mode,
record the footage, convert into a raw file, then delete the tgas and
go onto your next recording.

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other considerations

resolution
it is recommended to capture at as high a resolution as you think you should
need, its always possible to downscale at the end with filesize considerations, but not advisable to upscale.

if you do everything in windowed mode, you can set to any resolution you want using the following launch parameters. also it is quick and easy for watching demos whilst alternating between desktop and ingame.

-windowed -w 1280 -h 720

obviously choose a generic format that is used or recommended for video footage.

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filesize (if you are making large movie compilations)
all dependant on your hard drive size (free space), what resolution you want the movie to be in. the higher the resolution the higher the raw file is going to be.

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sound considerations

by default all ingame sound will be recorded - game sfx, voice coms, announcer sounds etc.

you can turn the voice comms off in the fortress options if desired, and you can rename the vox directory in your ff sounds folder to get rid of any announcer sfx.

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hud
you may want to get rid of the hud. the following will just keep weapon models

bind [ "cl_drawhud 0"
bind ] "cl_drawhud 1"

i dont think there is a command to turn off everything apart from the kill display altho i think theres a method by changing your hud to transparent with a customisation. search the forums

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gfx quality
turn graphics quality up to higher levels when using startmovie or fraps.
this may be dependant on your computer specification and what it can handle, so if your computer struggles then you may get undesired results.

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compositing programs
after effects is an excellent program for final editing. basically its like the
photoshop for animation and offers alot of features for final control of colour
and effects. if you want to do extreme editing then it is ideal otherwise
premiere and vegas are fine.

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compression
i think that the new era of video compression is to use the h264 codec over xvid, just download ffdshow and it consists of just about every video codec you should need. export with h264 and then follow the MeGUI tutorial for final compression (link at bottom).

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demo smoother

if you take the time to learn about this feature in the demo player of hl2, you can achieve some cool angles and alternative camera paths from your demos (like i did with my railgun video for example). altho its not as great as it sounds. there are alot of limitations particularly with fortress forever.

for example you cant see the model of the player from the demo being watched, and the camera suffers all the effects of whats happened to that model at the time i.e. conced / muzzle flash etc, but it is great for spectator demos as these dont suffer from ingame physics.

things you can do for example is record a demo stationary as spectator. then using drive you can fly around the map, use controls to set key frames and path out a map fly through, you could also achieve closeups and multiple angles of an airshot.

note- its probably better to use a fov of like 90 in 3rd person captures so textures and models dont get stretched.

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useful links
http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html > lagarith codec
http://www.virtualdub.org/ > virtual dub

YouTube

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[Dr.Satan]

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