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STO Machinima Making Tutorial

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited January 2011 in Ten Forward
/Discalimer; this tutorial is not here to tell you how to use the demo playback tools to make shots, that thread is here;

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=134131

What this tutorial *does* cover;

1; Getting usable video out of the demo recorder
2; Importing and editing it in a free program
3; Converting the file format and cropping

And as a special bonus; How to convert it for use on your ipod/itouch/iphone etc.
A technique I self-taught myself last night with a little digging.

So more or less its 'how to produce STO machinima for free'
Thats right, all the programs here are free or have free versions that suit our purposes. :D

Programs you will need;

FRAPS, for filming;
http://www.fraps.com/

Pinnacle's Video Spin, for editing/initial export;
http://www.videospin.com/Redesign/

Any-video-Converter, for format converting, cropping, and converting for ipod;
http://download.cnet.com/Any-Video-Converter/3000-2194_4-10661456.html

Step One; Make a demo. This is kinda obvious right? Instructions are to be had in the aforementioned thread.

Step Two; Refer again to the previously mentioned thread to learn about demo playback, once you are ready to play-back your demo, start FRAPS then start the demo.
FRAPS lets you set a key to begin filming, I use f12 myself, you need to press this key, film your action, then press it again.
This creates a video file in the FRAPS program directory.

When you have all the shots you want from one or more demos;

Step 3; Edit it all together in Video Spin. This isn't a tutorial on vid editing, so Ill just cut to the hard part which is choosing an export format that doesn't take obscene amounts of time and space but retains quality.

I use;
Filetype; AVI.
Preset; Fullscreen DV


Which more or less autosets everything else.

Step 4; Cropping is a must if you FRAPS this because the taskbar uptop in the demo playback can not be made to disappear.
AVC does cropping, its the little wand icon under the video preview box.
For AVC Export settings there is no set one format to use. Pick whatever works best for your purposes unless....

Step 5; Exporting for Ipod.

This is done in AVC, so either crop and export your video, then re-import it for re-exporting, or just crop your footage once and export it with

these settings;
Profile; Customized MP4
Codec; x264


To Import to itunes, simply drag the new MP4 into the movies tab.
Viola.

Note that you may have to experiment with resolution choices before you get something to show up decently fullscreen.

The Ipod touch's native resolution is; 320x480 just as an FYI.
You can likely find the resolution of other ipods etc online.

/another disclaimer;
there is alot more to making a good quality video, such as sound preset choices in AVC, good editing in video Spin, good camera placement in the demo program etc etc.... but thats not what this is for.

this tutorial is to put the basic tools and pipeline into your hands to make STO machinima, the rest is up to you! :cool:
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    Excellent information. You get a gold star for the day.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    Why thank you! :)

    Let me add that if anyone has questions about any aspect of making machinima in STO, including using these programs or the demo playback system, don't hesitate to ask here I'll do my best to answer.

    Also, I have downloaded all these programs quite some time ago and they are virus free in-so-far as I know if you get them at the links I provided.

    Cheers!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    I do have a question. when you are doing a scene where you are on the bridge and you are being hailed by another ship, how do you put the footage of the hailing captain and or ship on the ships view screen?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited June 2010
    The only way I can think to do this would involve using tools that only come in expensive video editing programs.

    I've seen it done before and theres really two techniques;

    1; Chroma key which would require the screen to be a static bright color not seen elsewhere on camera.
    This is impossible At the moment with STO because that would require altering the bridge set

    2; There are, in some programs, ways to simply drop video on top of other video, as well as crop video into different shapes. The way to go here would be to keep the camera static (unmoving) whenever the viewscreen is on camera and in use, crop the hailing video to the shape of the screen, and drop it over the base video.

    A friend of mine has some sort of adobe program, premier elements I think, and I've seen him use both techniques in various videos (un-trek related but still, the concept is the key)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited August 2010
    Bump for a good posting w/ interesting info
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    I've been in the woodshed with the demo recorder and I've found something really strange about how it animates the models. I wanted to animate my ship pulling out of spacedock and when I play it in the game at a really slow speed, it's smooth, but when I play it in the demo recorder, the ship moves forward in jerky motions.

    Also, whatever customized rendering options I choose in the game don't carry over to the demo recorder. You only have a few options (low, med, high). This makes it hard to get it to be truly WYSIWYG.

    Also, I want to be able to take snapshots of the interiors for virtual sets. But when I hide skinned objects (which are the characters) I still see a soft blobby shadow underneath them that I can not get rid of.

    Any ideas for these issues?

    So far I've had to go back to using FRAPS and hide the UI for the space shots, which really limits the camera angles.

    I'd probably prefer to use Bridge Commander for this sort of work but I can't get it to run on Windows 7 with this ATI graphic card.

    This is a WIP of what I've been doing lately.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2011
    mos6507 wrote: »
    I've been in the woodshed with the demo recorder and I've found something really strange about how it animates the models. I wanted to animate my ship pulling out of spacedock and when I play it in the game at a really slow speed, it's smooth, but when I play it in the demo recorder, the ship moves forward in jerky motions.

    This could be any number of things but Id guess either:

    *Lag. its possible that when you are demorecording that the file is capturing different co-ordinate info than your screen is showing you, and that info is lagged.

    *Its possible its a rendering issue. STO's graphics engine is.... wonky. to put it lightly.

    Suggestions:

    *Try to optimize your connection when filming
    *Try filming it at normal speeds or speeds that guarantee a smooth movement, do so at high FPS, then slow it down in an editor
    *Play with the graphics settings in the demo recorder and see if that affects it. if not its probably a lag issue.

    mos6507 wrote: »
    Also, whatever customized rendering options I choose in the game don't carry over to the demo recorder. You only have a few options (low, med, high). This makes it hard to get it to be truly WYSIWYG.

    Also, I want to be able to take snapshots of the interiors for virtual sets. But when I hide skinned objects (which are the characters) I still see a soft blobby shadow underneath them that I can not get rid of.

    Any ideas for these issues?

    Those blobs are 'shadows'
    Games have several methods of shadow projection, that happens to be a byproduct of one of the more cut-corner methods commonly seen on medium graphics/shadow settings. (The computer just sticks a 'blob' under actors proportional to their size or height off a surface)
    It helps with freeing up graphics memory which is why its still in use.

    When you are hiding the bridge actors it is unfortunately not taking that into account when faking their shadows.

    I'm not 100% positive, but if you set the graphics settings higher or lower it may switch to a different shadow casting/faking/rendering method that eliminates the blobs.

    Of course Murphy's law also says those methods might continue to cast shadows so.... anyways...
    mos6507 wrote: »
    So far I've had to go back to using FRAPS and hide the UI for the space shots, which really limits the camera angles.

    I'd probably prefer to use Bridge Commander for this sort of work but I can't get it to run on Windows 7 with this ATI graphic card.

    Thats odd. Can you PM me a little more about your system and/or Bridge Commander problems?
    I've only done limited STO machinima work but I once did much more with BC, and I've also worked alot with getting old programs to run on new systems.
    I might be able to offer some assistance there, no promises though beyond that Ill do my best. :)
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