I've been thinking about doing a qw movie for as long as I have been playing it, just haven't gotten around to it yet. Now as I've aquired a new (larger) hdd I can finally start my project without having to worry about things like running out hdd space

Enough with the chit-chat, here are some questions to You as movie watchers:

1. What kind of models / textures would You like to see in a movie? I've gathered a faithfull and a non-faithfull (both high-quality) texture pack and I will post screenshots later in this thread from both sets. For weapon and player models I'll most likely use PrimeviL's (did I get that nick right? ) work, altough suggestions are welcome for these too.

2. What kind of balance between duels and teamgames would You like to see? 50 - 50 or something else? I've noticed that good teamplay demos or quadruns are harder to find than good frags in duels.

3. Encoding and resolution: What kind of resolution should I be using for a high-quality movie? The resolution that pezz used in his movie (dde3) was pretty good in my oppinion. xvid or x264 OR both? I've been thinking about this one and I'm pretty sure I will be using xvid but all suggestions about this are welcome since my knowledge about encoding and proper resolutions is anything but great.

4. Players: Does it matter for You if you don't know the people who are fragging / getting fragged in the movie (so-called nonames or whatever)?. I've always thought that a frag is a frag, no matter who's doing the fragging / getting fragged. Share your oppinions on this if you have any.

5. Length: I've been thinking something around 10 minutes or so.

Suggestions and ideas about everything are welcome, not just about the above mentioned things!

1. Not important unless(!) they are ugly. It's the content that makes a good QW movie. Make it look like QW, not some plastic paintballed refrigerator. Try to keep visual noise low, focus on the action not the looks. I don't know how it is for others but I cannot remember much from Pez' movies or alike "eye-candy wanksessions", instead I remember scenes like the midair flag catch in TFDE2.

2. Totally depends on your idea of what you want to do. I would like a "themed" movie (like only 2on2 or 4on4) much more than a mixture of different stuff. Quadruns are rather boring in my opinion, some good teamplay would be great.

3. Pez' settings were overkill. x264 is nice! Try to keep it reasonable. Maybe 6xx x something. Keep it (way) below 400MB.

4. Couldn't care less. Name-dropping in a corner of the screen is more annoying than useful.

5. ~5 minutes, short intro and short outro if any. You would need to have outstanding footage and a flawless "curve" of tension to fill more without boredom on the viewer's side (mine ).

6. Do NOT put it into a zip or rar archive. Compression is already maxed out by the video encoding. If using a good encoder and bitrate you can always put all text/links inside some frames at the end of the video if that's important to you.

7. Do not use generic mainstream music, use something you can nicely sync the video to. Avoid lyrics.

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. There's only one part where I'd have to disagree with you:


I don't know about you but I watch A LOT of fragmovies from all kinds of games. There aren't too many movies out there that are under 8 minutes and there are even less movies that are only 5 minutes long. (If you've only watched qw fragmovies I suggest you check out own-age.com where you can find all kinds of gaming movies)

Also one thing came to my mind after writing the initial post: Lately (after watching literally 100's of fragmovies) I've noticed that frags NEED good editing to be intresting. I don't like movies that have absolutely no editing whatsoever. What's Your take on this, do frags need editing to be intresting?

Well, I rather watch 3 minutes of adrenalin pumping first-class footage than 7 minutes of filler material. Many of the movies I watched fill much time with boredom, flashy text effects, super slowmotion and atmospheric music. I find that boring.

Editing as in camera work? Hell yes! Not in the rotate-rotate-zoomin-rotate-zoomout-matrixslowmo-rotate way though. Just simple but well chosen third person views. First-person pov is the wrong choice most of the time. Also don't be shy to show the same scene multiple times from different view if it is worth it.

1. I'm all for faithful, too many games go in some "neutral modern pseudo-techno-futusistic" style, QW doesn't need this
2. I think you need good skills and lots of efforts to explain good teamplay in a video. I think it's possible to do it right and it'd be nice to finally see tp action in movies.
4. I'd either go for /show ownfrags or no text output at all, those small 4px notify lines in most movies are just disturbing
Length / editing: I guess good combination of slowmotion and full-speed frags (alternating) is the way how to make long movie and not lose the attention of the viewer.

Yeah, I think there should be some common sense in this. For example if you are going to watch 25 minutes long movie, it makes sense if it contains long intro and long outro, but if it's going to be just 5 minutes of frags, wasting 2 minutes on "fill" is way too much.

graphics are irrelevant if talking about prettiness, it's all about being clear and no silly details to draw the attention to.

i dont think you should be stressing about balancing since i believe that a nice frag or a scene is nice regardless of the game mode. and quad runs are boring if they only consist of typical slaughter of enemy sg's

are you talking about "nonames" as in some kind of command or people who play in div7 or are faking? if the latter then yes, i do want to see who frags / gets fragged / does a silly move even if i dont know the player.

and i dont think the lenght is an issue to be thought about beforehand, unless you get too much good footage. don't make it boring with shitty scenes only because you're targeting some universal timelimit

I ment that would you be intrested in watching great frags by players that arent too well known in the quakeworld scene. I thought that not knowing the people in the movie might put some people off, this is what I needed input on.


I've been thinking about a cool looking after-edit for the "you fragged xxx" text, since I can't make the in-game one look cool. It won't be too time consuming and will look better.

If you want eyecandy for a movie, I'd suggest taking a look at this.

My eyecandy config is ready already, thanks anyways

np

1. As long as it looks like qw it doesn't really matter. HQ textures is a must though.

2. I would love to see more teamgames. Even if you don't put the emphasis on good teamplay, quadruns are always nice to see.

3. I would personally prefer a fairly high resolution like 1366×768 @ 25fps. But it would probably be a good idea to make at least
two versions, highres and medium, so people who just want to see the movie don't have to download 1gb or so
Preferably xvid.

4. More relatively unknown players please. The action is the most important part in any case.

5. 5-10 minutes would be nice, but less is also ok if you can't get enough appropriate footage. Don't extend the movie with boring
parts just to reach a certain lenght.

I think one of the most important things a qw movie can feature is some kind of theme that follows through the movie. Instead of having frag after frag shown together with a random soundtrack, make some nice transition between the action (ex. Pez did for that dm2 Locktar vs Griffin qw.nu movie competition where he used cartoon like transition). It is also important that the soundtrack is partially synced in some places and that the action builds up, this makes the viewer remember what he is watching, especially dramatic parts. Start off with some nice dual action, and make it build up. The action curve should be something like this: /\/
And some times it is nice to somewhat group spesific frags so that it's not all random.
Don't overdo the gfx effects, make the action visable. Instead of showing the same frag several times from different views, find the perfect spot that doesn't make the viewer tired. This way he'll most likely watch the whole movie over again at a later point.
I think it all comes down to what kind of movie you want to make, if you're really good at video editing and effects (which you're most likely not, since this is your first movie), make something visually appealing. If not, focus on the action, make use of stuff that already is avaliable to you, there are probably shitloads of material from FOTW (frag of the week) that people haven't seen (especially people outside the qw community).

Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with stuff you already know. But good luck on the movie, and if you need any material don't hesitate to ask

Well, I actually HAVE made gaming movies before and have some knowledge about editing, just that I haven't released any of them

The parts where I need the input most atm are resolution and encoding settings. If there's some x264 wizard here, please let me know

720xYourChoice seems to be a standard for HQ x264 encodes. A bitrate somewhere a bit above 1000kbit/s (some use 1300kbit/s). 2-pass of course. There are some profiles (maybe only in MeGUI which is a great tool for this) like hq-slowest, the name should say all.

Don't forget to encode the sound, 192kbit/s VBR mp3 or ~q5 Ogg Vorbis should be sufficient. AC3 or something like that would be overkill (unless for a super-HQ-bigscreen-festival-edition maybe ).

Why 2-pass instead of 3pass?

Oops.
Well, what I meant was "no single-pass of course".

Well, not much to say

1. That's your decision, i don't want to argue.

2. Same as above.

3. I prefer xvid, and resolution of 720xsomething would fit.

4. Absolutely no, it only distracts.

5. It depends on the theme of your movie, and can u make it so that the viewer will watch it from start till the end without getting too bored?

I really suggest contacting people who have done lots of encoding/compressing (ex. pez) and i wish you good luck on your movie project(s)

Thanks mech!

After having thought about this for a while I think I'll be showing the finished movie to a small test audience, then apply the changes they suggest me (if I find them good also ofcourse ). I'll also PROBABLY be going for a release with 2 different quality renders. High-quality x264 render and medium quality xvid render.

Very good idea, do it!

The project is on hold for now. I don't have time to do any editing thanks to a shitload of schoolwork I need to get done. I'll try to release it asap but i cant give out any dates or anything. I think early summer would be a pretty good guess.. Thanks for all the answers, I'll be posting updates about the movie in this thread!

I've been toying around with some other projects for a while now and thought I'd return to this one now. After a quick inspection of my /moviedemos/ folder I noticed that i had somehow managed to delete most of the demos and the html file i used to store the demo_jump times for the frags. It will be a lot of work to start the project again but I'll try! I'll post any updates in this thread (if there are any

a suggestio falzzi is to rename the demos so you know it from the demofile when the demo_jump is to be set
that's how I've done it