The Nublock FAQ [under construction]

[BaronSoosdon]

Hello people!

I get some questions asked quite a lot, so I decided to put this little FAQ for you. Feel free to add more questions and ask more definite answers, I will update the post as much as I can :)

Technical stuff - programs, encoding, etc

What software do you use?

- Sony Vegas 6 / 7 - compositing, editing, rendering to raw files
- Beepa Fraps - capturing the footage
- WoW model viewer - recording WoW characters, items, spell effects etc against blue/greenscreen backgrounds
- WoW map viewer - recording backgrounds for WoW scenes (though I use a private server nowadays more instead of map viewer)
- Adobe Audition & Audacity - sound recording and editing
- Particle Illusion 3 - various particle effects (for example the fire and smoke in I'm So Sick)
- Adobe After Effects - compositing (currently I am very noob with this program, but learning..)
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 - additional image editing, I use PS to enhance my sets or add different looking borders to a scene
- VirtualDub - XViD or DivX encoding (and cropping)
- MeGui - h264 encoding
- TMPGENC - encoding to DVD compatible MPEG-2 format
- DVDLab Pro - DVD Authoring

What resolution do you capture using fraps? What frame rate?

- UPDATE [4th march '08]: 1280x1024 nowadays - Fraps 2.9.4 has added support for that resolution, but the resolutions above that require a dualcore processor. The frame rate setting in Fraps is 60 fps, it gives me the best speed when capturing

- [older answer]1152x864, which is the maximum resolution fraps can record at (I have a single core processor).

What resolution/framerate do you render your final version before converting to DivX, XViD or any other compressed format?

- Depends on the source footage. In most of cases I render the raw project as 1280x720, but then I crop out the black widescreen borders in VirtualDub or MeGui.

For framerate I use 25fps. This is just because I want my movies to be in the EU color system (PAL) for DVD burning purposes.

Editing and Compositing - colourization, "how did you do that" etc

How do you get that cool looking glow or colourization to your movies?

I use an addon package for Vegas called Magic Bullet Cinema HD. It sort of emulates all sort of camera and lighting settings. By using its presets quite nice end results can be achieved. Though the downside is that using Magic Bullet the render times go up a LOT. For example the rendering of Unlimited Escapism vol. 0: Shock Your Senses took about 28 hours.

How do you make your movies look so good, almost real film-like?

Part of this comes from the use of Magic Bullet, but there are other things too:

- I make most of my movies in Widescreen. You see it a lot in commercial DVD's and movies too. By widescreening, I can make the picture have exactly the things I want on the center of it all. It is also possible to do virtual pannings in Vegas by using a WS preset for your footage.

- On close-up shots I try to make the scene look like it's filmed with a real camera- The things look either blurred or sharp depending on how close to the "camera" they are.

- The widescreen cropping also can be used to simulate camera shaking via keyframes in the Vegas' cropping tool. To do it, you need to have either complete in-game footage or your footage pre-rendered

How are you getting such precise shadows such as on the beach at the end of UEv0?

- By using the 3d track motion function in Vegas.

How are the smooth rotations and long zoom-ins/outs done? (for example in Unlimited Escapism-series)

- I use the addon called ImprovedCamera2 for the long zoom-ins and -outs. For the rotations I use an addon called CameraPlus - I really recommend that one for every machinimaker.

There is a downside though - the zooming out with ImprovedCamera2 was very heavily nerfed in patch 2.3.0 so in order to use it at it's full extent, you need and older version of WoW.

Other Stuff - collaborations, explosions, gnomes,war on murlocs and emos, etc

How did you learn to edit? Did you go to any schools?

- Just by trying and experimenting. I have not taken any courses regarding video editing, I learned everything by smashing the buttons randomly and seeing what they do.

I am a murloc-loving hippie emo scum and I disapprove how you mutilate those poor things of nature.

- You just signed your own death warrant. Don't worry, I'll make sure that some murlocs go down on the way too.

How did you start your collaboration with other artists?

- I just asked :)

[under construction]

[BaronSoosdon]

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[BaronSoosdon]

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[BaronSoosdon]

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[BaronSoosdon]

BUMP!

I got some new questions via e-mail from Cranius. Some of them were unanswered here, so the topic is updated!

[inzo]

/bow

Love your work, really love your music choice in the Unlimited Escapisim series!!

My question is (and I ask it of you only as I have had a lack of luck finding a good web resource), how do you put them out in Xvid, keeping the quality high but the filesize low?

I like to record & Publish our bosskills (as seen in my signature), however Vegas only puts out to WMV, and a 10 minute video @ 1280*720 works out to be 500mb +... comparison:

uev0_sys_hd_xvid.avi - 13:37 (classy) - 561,621Kb
NEvsSupremus.wmv - 12:10 - 618,856Kb

Simply, when I did my Kael'Thas video (20 minutes) was 880Mb, and people cracked it :0

I've tried to run my WMV's through virtualdub, but it doesnt like wmv, I tried passing them though AviSynth, but it cracked it.... would love some advice if you have the time



Inzo

[Thraxx]

Soosi, now that was something I was looking for a long time. Many thanks! /bow

[BaronSoosdon]

My question is (and I ask it of you only as I have had a lack of luck finding a good web resource), how do you put them out in Xvid, keeping the quality high but the filesize low?

Well the thing is that I render my Vegas project as an uncompressed avi which takes LOTS of hd space (UEv0 took about 60 gigs). Then I compress that huge avi to whatever I want, whether it'll be Stage6 DivX or a downloadable h264 or xvid.

By rendering the projec to that uncompressed file may take lot of space, but it also gives you a lot more compressing options. For example you can use the LAME mp3 codec to compress the audio (you cant use that in Vegas since it always crashes).


I personally try to avoid using the WMV format as much as I can. I'm too anti-Micro$oft for that :P

[inzo]

Ahhh, i digg it ;)

I re-read your original post, and thought maybe you did something similar.

My raw captures from fraps are 1680*1050 (dual core ftw), so my initial footage to work from already runs approx 2gb per minute.... I guess encoding it out to raw wouldnt be too much trouble.

I may have to play around with that & see if it is faster / slower etc.

Thanks for the info. I look forward to UE4 once my rapidshare link becomes clickable.


Merry Xmas

[yume]

I have a question for the faq!

A lot of scenes in your movies have a 'flicker' in the top 20% (or so) of the screen and I've always assumed this was done for artistic value. I was wondering what your reasoning behind the flicker was.