To resolution... I'm currently recording on 1650x1080, while final movies have 1280x720 (HD Ready)... Anyway, for now, my primary goal is to get some new stuff and try FULL HD resolution with as much quality as possible.

To compression -> I use uncompressed video from Vegas and then compress it through ProCoder3 to wmv with like 6000/kbps, result is I would say very good quality with around 60 MB/min. On the other side, imo there may be very good improvements to all aspect with using h264 codec, need to look at it too.

Ive shied away from the .mpg formats purely because i dont have anything with which to compress it down after encoding, but i guess theres plenty of settings in there to tweak the quality/filesize, its just that something like VirtDub can hammer down an avi in about 0.5x vid length whereas Adobe Media Encoder takes about 3x vid length. The fact that it plays on a PS3 & 360 too i guess, is nice
Running mine through atm see how it looks at 3Mbps/4Mbps max.
[update]
bu**er told it to re-do an old variation which is about 24hrs old.
106mb for 4:49 and i cant really nit-pick at the quality either.
[/update]

Are you planning to distribute the video, cos currently im struggling to keep within 10min (im about 1/3 in, and at 5:10 :razz and i know at this rate it'll be a 15min vid and yet larger than your average acquired film
What i dont really want to do is make the downloadable version too large, i have no problem making it available and coping with the bw demands for it, i just dont know if people would bother downloading a 200mb vid.
Maybe im being pessimistic, but i get the feeling im about the only person who'd be bothered about it to the extent that they'd want a near flawless version, if you know what i mean.


Also, having just viewed the vid, im now wondering whether the decision to record at 960x600, resize it by 80% to fit into 720x480 (gives full height, and about 60px excess width). Main reason being there seems to be jaggies everywhere, where recording at the resolution i plan to display it at, would retain its silky smooth AA/AF goodness, while Premiere seems to just remove pixel rows which i guess on reflection is bl**dy obvious it'd do that
:dunce:
Giving it a whirl using 'Antialias' effect, but when i've used it before, it appears to have been the '1-touch uglify' setting mis-labeled, but it might save me a couple of hours if it looks okay in video, rather than still frames.... nope, if thats antialias, then someone needs their eyes testing!

Guess im going back to recapture, cut, replace, re-faff with everything, oh yey :banghead:

See, this is why you make a decision not to touch video editing, and STICK to it.

Quote from PaulC2K :

Are you planning to distribute the video, cos currently im struggling to keep within 10min

Tell you what mate... I'm also usually struggling to get into the 10 minutes of video, but unfortunately long videos tend to tire out the viewer. I've solved that problem by planning out the movie... a simple list of all the scenes i need and special effects and editing ideas I got, with writing down how long the scene should be. If the plan exeeds the 10 minute mark I tend to cut the script down. Also, make sure that the content of the video is entertaining, since simple racing or drifting can rarely look not boring for over 4 minutes straight...

well, the vid is an early start on a season review of LFSPS, figured seeing as its all new to me i'd start playing before the first race began, get a feel for it etc.
Now i have 2 rounds of action to pick the meat off the bones, and its quite tricky finding a nice balance, but i do feel that what i have so far is a good account of 2hrs racing (in 4m20sec) without it having flat spots in there.
Im very happy with what I have, but im just concerned that after an intro, so far theres 4min of footage from 4 races (2 races per round, so roughly 1min per race) and theres 14 races to the season, so it suggests im going to be hitting 15min.

It leaves me 3 choices:
- leave it at 15min, ~1min per race.
- make each race shorter, 45sec per race is still 11min total, 30sec is 8min and your seeing nothing really.
- cut it into smaller chunks, either per round, or have a Rnd 1-4 & 5-7 in 2 vids.

The 3rd option seems to be the most likely though. My reservations on doing it round by round originally was that i feel obligated to give an actual account of the race. With a short (it was the plan!) video you can get away with half action, half arty-farty shots.
Its damn hard work trying to record racing without it being boring or really long, because so many of the best bits arent 5-10sec clips, they're side-by-side stuff lasting half a lap, and if you just show a fraction of it you feel like your short-changing the events, if you sit there and let it record you'd have a 10min video of each race and it be boring as hell.

At the moment, the only thing which i think is 'flat' in the video is the opening, which is obviously not ideal when you need to captivate the audience in 15sec else they're searching for happy-slapping vids or whatever the latest craze is. It feels more like the ending tbh, always has done, its too slow and lacking impact so maybe i'll swap that out and place it at the end.

oh, and dont get me started on how hard it'll be to find more music... never realised just how big a challenge that is

Quote from saumilsingh :

TIP: If you want a quick and user-friendly way to maintain the framerate when recording in-game footage, just switch to 16-bit colours. In 16-bit mode, your framerate won't nosedive even with all the graphics and anti-aliasing settings turned up.

Thanks for the hint! 1280x800 8xAA 16xAF - constant 30 FPS. (fraps set to 30) Colours are greenish though.

Quote from PaulC2K :

Also, having just viewed the vid, im now wondering whether the decision to record at 960x600, resize it by 80% to fit into 720x480 (gives full height, and about 60px excess width). Main reason being there seems to be jaggies everywhere, where recording at the resolution i plan to display it at, would retain its silky smooth AA/AF goodness, while Premiere seems to just remove pixel rows which i guess on reflection is bl**dy obvious it'd do that
:dunce:
Giving it a whirl using 'Antialias' effect, but when i've used it before, it appears to have been the '1-touch uglify' setting mis-labeled, but it might save me a couple of hours if it looks okay in video, rather than still frames.... nope, if thats antialias, then someone needs their eyes testing!

Guess im going back to recapture, cut, replace, re-faff with everything, oh yey :banghead:

After redoing all the footage for the first race, and then putting half of it into the scene and checking, its just as jaggy as before.
Even uncompressed AVI (at 1gb/min) it was the same.

Turns out, after all that faffing, theres an option hiding away in Premiere, each sequence/scene file has its own bunch of settings, including 'maximum render quality' and 'maximum bit depth'.

Max bit depth is an option that sometimes is available when going to the final encode area (not there for a few though, incl h264) but the option of doing a half-decent version, or a proper version isnt there. It makes no sense having it that way around, cos i can understand if you wanna quick look to size it up, rather than waiting a little longer for a perfect version, but its hardly in the ideal place to tinker with.
So theres a few more hours wasted
:banghead:
:banghead:

Also, appologies for turning this thread into a 'lets hear paul vent about video editing' thread

A season recap is an easy thing to stretch, and people usually watch the whole episode, no problem... You should be fine

How about when i wnat to record using slowmo so i can speed it up in vurtual dub how does this work since if i record at ful speed my pc doenst keep up.

So where excatly in vdub do i speed the dammed thing up to play at normal speed at 30 ish fps?

If you could clarify exactly what you want to achieve... a slowmo vid or a normal speed vid...?

Record in .250 speed, import the captured video to vdub
in Vdub press Video>frame rate and there, select “Change frame rate to (fps)”. You will be now able to input a new frame rate setting. The FPS youre looking for is FPS you were recording with x4

Quote from squidhead :

Record in .250 speed, import the captured video to vdub
in Vdub press Video>frame rate and there, select “Change frame rate to (fps)”. You will be now able to input a new frame rate setting. The FPS youre looking for is FPS you were recording with x4

.

if i record with 250 or 125 speed what should I do something with that?

As in at how much fps would it record so i can speed that up to look like normal speed instead of superslowmo

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

.

if i record with 250 or 125 speed what should I do something with that?

As in at how much fps would it record so i can speed that up to look like normal speed instead of superslowmo

if you record in .125, in vdub you put in

(FPS you recorded in)x8
and you don't get super slow motion if you're recording at half and then doubling the speed, and so on. Simple maths really

Quote from squidhead :

if you record in .125, in vdub you put in

(FPS you recorded in)x8
and you don't get super slow motion if you're recording at half and then doubling the speed, and so on. Simple maths really

Ah I get it now im going to try some stufs tomorrow

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

Ah I get it now im going to try some stufs tomorrow

Go for it... it's not that hard...
(BTW, care to share that scaw_editor for patch Z in your sig?)

surely the 'days left to next patch' wouldnt be a textbox, it'd be hard coded in as ∞³, right?
cos all those could be done tomorrow, but couldnt be released until ∞³ due to the laws of scavier, which state while something will be done for date x, you'll really only get it on date ∞³.
sounds like rubbish someones just made up to attempt to be funny, but tis true, and a Thursday iirc.


oh, and as not to look like its going OT...
Im hoping to post a couple of vids tomorrow, after being ill over Fri-Mon/Tues and not getting much done

Quote from squidhead :

Go for it... it's not that hard...
(BTW, care to share that scaw_editor for patch Z in your sig?)

You may want to ask Shadowww about it

Uploaded a couple of the videos yesterday, i've had some fairly serious health issues crop up which turned out to be misleading test results to my relief a few hours ago, so havent been on top of a few things as much as i'd hoped to.

http://www.lfsproseries.net/downloads/video.php

For the file formats, i went with...
Streamed media: FLV, 700k/s, 64k/s audio, 15fps (640x426, due to layout width limitations)
Downloadable media: H264/MP4, Target 1Mb, Max 2Mb, 96/32khz audio, 24fps at 740x480.

Hope that helps someone in the future.

I've seen VLC will play the mp4, and then oddly crash the app, not sure if thats my VLC playing up, my vid file, or what.
The FLV's im wondering if to go with lower resolution, purely because its 1/4 smaller than the download and doesnt come close to the quality, the web version is better though because i know people will at least hit play and give it a try, whether they'd download a 50mb vid without knowing what to expect... dunno.

Anyway, those are my 3 videos, my first steps into video editing since first giving it a whirl less than 2 months ago.

Quick thing that's been on my mind lately:

How to name your video:

Trailer: Your video is a trailer if it's showing highlights of a longer video that you plan to release later. Or it is a trailer for LFS itself.

Teaser: Your video is a teaser if it is short and only gives away a small amount about the subject matter and you probably intend on releasing a bigger video later.

Promo/Promotional Video: Your video is a promo if you're advertising an event and/or product related to LFS. It will probably be a little longer than a trailer and teaser and it will need to give some relevant information to the viewers.

Compilation: Your video is a compilation if it is just general racing from many different servers and leagues.

Highlights Reel/Season Review: Your video is a highlight reel if it's the best action from one particular race or league. It's similar to a compilation but more specific in its subject matter.

Broadcast: Your video is a broadcast if it contains elements of live commentary and TV camera style views.

Analysis: Your video is an analysis if it's focussing on one aspect of a race or league, and will probably contain text or speech.

Feature Film: Your video is a feature film if it contains a storyline. You may want to release trailers and teasers beforehand.

Frapsed Replay: Your video is a frapsed replay if it has had no editing done to it and it literally just a standard LFS cam watching something. This is ok, if you're just making videos for 'teh lulz'.

Correct me if I'm wrong or if any more categories should be added.

Quote from Mp3 Astra :

Quick thing that's been on my mind lately:

How to name your video:

Trailer: Your video is a trailer if it's showing highlights of a longer video that you plan to release later. Or it is a trailer for LFS itself.

Teaser: Your video is a teaser if it is short and only gives away a small amount about the subject matter and you probably intend on releasing a bigger video later.

Promo/Promotional Video: Your video is a promo if you're advertising an event and/or product related to LFS. It will probably be a little longer than a trailer and teaser and it will need to give some relevant information to the viewers.

Compilation: Your video is a compilation if it is just general racing from many different servers and leagues.

Highlights Reel/Season Review: Your video is a highlight reel if it's the best action from one particular race or league. It's similar to a compilation but more specific in its subject matter.

Broadcast: Your video is a broadcast if it contains elements of live commentary and TV camera style views.

Analysis: Your video is an analysis if it's focussing on one aspect of a race or league, and will probably contain text or speech.

Feature Film: Your video is a feature film if it contains a storyline. You may want to release trailers and teasers beforehand.

Frapsed Replay: Your video is a frapsed replay if it has had no editing done to it and it literally just a standard LFS cam watching something. This is ok, if you're just making videos for 'teh lulz'.

Correct me if I'm wrong or if any more categories should be added.

That sounds good for now, adding to the 1st post

I have a question about the black 'blocks' @ 16:10 recording.

I use a 24" 1920:1200 screen, so the video will be in 16:10 format. (recording with FRAPS)
After that I want to make it 16:9(HD) format with Sony Vegas Pro, but I can't find the right option to do that. (or it will stretch the screen...and that's not exactly what I want )

Anyone who can help?

Quote from LFSn00b :

What happened to the other topic? It had some nice overlays i couldve used

this one?

Quote from zeromussov :

I have a question about the black 'blocks' @ 16:10 recording.

I use a 24" 1920:1200 screen, so the video will be in 16:10 format. (recording with FRAPS)
After that I want to make it 16:9(HD) format with Sony Vegas Pro, but I can't find the right option to do that. (or it will stretch the screen...and that's not exactly what I want )

Anyone who can help?

You should record in the resolution you're going to use in video editing, not the other way around

So it's the best to record in 1280x720? (if you want to upload it on youtube HD)

Isn't that 'bad' quality to record... everything looks a bit croppy when I change my resolution to that in LFS..

Quote from zeromussov :

Isn't that 'bad' quality to record... everything looks a bit croppy when I change my resolution to that in LFS..

You should pay attention to the size of your monitor to seek the answer as to "why HD resolution looks worse".... Or in other words.... YES, record @ 1280x768

Quote from squidhead :

You should pay attention to the size of your monitor to seek the answer as to "why HD resolution looks worse".... Or in other words.... YES, record @ 1280x768

Ok, Thanks. It works pretty good.

The quality is the same(or maybe a little bit less...) then 1920x1200 recording, but it's just easier to use.

-edit:
First 'try' for a short clip. Ofcourse only to check the quality and some small effects. (YouTube removed the original movie on the clip -_- , so added a random song)
I'm not sure it's better to record in 1280x720 instead of 1920x1200 tbh... I have the idea it can be some better, but i don't know how
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ave1k5fI7HY&fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... e=channel_page&fmt=22