own-age.com » Forum » Tutorials » orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

Last replied in this section

Video Tutorials
Editing MD3
Tutorial on Color Correction / Imag...
In Depth look at AE's basics - 45 m...
Tricking iT 2 nicknames
Ut2004 Dumpframes Full Tutorial
How to convert videos for the strea...
Kindred's In Depth After Effects Tu...
The new compression - x264
Tips for a better video

Unanswered threads

Video Tutorials
The Cure for Gravity QW video recam...
A few basic SoF2 tutorials
Adobe Premiere Pro Training DVD
Helpful Combustion Links
MOVIE EDITING in HALF-LIFE

Last commented in the forum

New Map - Own-age Promo :)
Spam Bot User Profiles
Own-age.com YouTube Channel
How do you get the movement and spe...
Quake 3 in Real Life
Own-age Promos
Overheating
Sickest demo ever
How to Tag Your Videos
1080p shaolin movies

[post reply]

Page 1 of 3

own-age

Site Developer

Join Date: 11/3/2002
Posts: 4151
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

Q3 Video Making tutorial V1.0

orxata 2003

Yet another video making tutorial?

I've personnaly started making videos about q3 world during summer 2K2. I was a complete beginner
in terms of video editing, video making, compression etc.. so i had to pass by multiples errors, that
make you waste your time. Hopefully i'm familliar with internet so i've been able to grab informations
here or there, on quake sites, video editing sites and other tutorial places. I've now achieved two movies,
people seems to like my last one and sometimes it makes them start video making. This tutorial is here to help
everyone that comes to this activity with no or few knowledge about it. I've tried to sum up as much as possible
and at the same time tried to put many practical details and key steps in the process of making a video out of
a FPS game. This tutorial is designed to describe quake3 video making but i guess it should work fine with other games.
I'll assume that you have a good general quake3 knowledge (console uses, external scripts etc...), i'm working in a
windows(c) :/ world so tutorial describes action to do within windows softwares, i let mac and linux users adapt it to
their OSs.

General process overview

General video aspects

Binds and scripts

Pictures to movie

Adding Sound

From rushes to scenes

Building up a longer video

Exporting

Publishing

General process overview

Before video editing you will of course have to make q3 demos!!! =) Depending to the q3 mod you are playing at,
depending if you are recording in your point of vision (POV) or in the POV of someone else or even if you are recording
in freelook it will influences the options you will have when replaying your demo. So i suggest you practice a bit before
making videos.

Mods like Defrag or CPMA bring you features when replaying demos. Baseq3 gives a bit less options but you can use Camping Gaz dll
to allow freelook even within a POV recorded demo. Mods like RA3 offers even less options, we'll have to find tips
to turn around those difficulties :/.

I'll suggest that you install a little soft to replay your demos. After testing i'm really happy with DSC because
it's really handy, you just have to double click to launch demos. You can access all options quickly to fit to the production process.

Once this is ok, everything is made possible because of the quake cl_avidemo. This command, when executed while playing a demo, exports
TGA pictures to your hard drive. you can then make a video with all those pictures. So if i could quickly resume the whole process here is
what it would look like:

Having demos!!!
Exporting sequencies to TGA when replaying a demo
Making a short video out of the TGAs
Recording sound (optionnal i guess, but i always put it). Followed by resynchronizing audio/video
Editing and putting all together your sequences
Exporting
Publishing

General video aspects

Before starting right up with the cl_avidemo step, i have to explain few important points about video standards.

First of all i am working in AVI. This is a windows filetype that allows many kind of compressions (including divx for video
and mp3 for audio) and that is very very common. It is then a good choice using it.

Television more or less works in 320x240 pixels at about 24 images per second (FPS), those values can change a bit depending to the country
you live in. Dvd is 768x576 pixels or something, meaning it is not even 800x600 pixels. When you play quake and with nowdays graphics cards
we can go in much higher resolutions and frequencies!!!! I'm saying this because many people at start try to have a great and incredible quality.
Fine but then chose to work with the following settings, they are far enough: 640x480 pixels at 24 or 30FPS. I'm personnaly working at 30FPS. I like
action and it seems a bit more fluid with 30FPS dropping. With those settings a TGA picture is 901Ko... with 30 pictures per second and uncompressed
sound it leads to about 1.55Go/min. So i advise you to prepare hard drive space or reduce capture settings, ie 320x240 and/or 24FPS.

Also an uncompressed AVI cannot play normally on most PCs, so do not be surprised to see your vid "lagging" when replay.

Binds and scripts

When people play q3 they often customize their game aspect so that it runs quickly and so that they can easily see people (ie /r_picmip 5 hein daniel?).
But for your video, the size will be the same if you have great graphics settings or low ones. So chose to boost your graphics settings so it looks good.
This means you should have a config (CFG) file specific for video making. In a bigger scale i personnaly have a specific quake3 folder for video editing
so that i don't get confused with all CFG file. I've also changed some details in the PK3 files to make q3 a bit nicer for video (for exemple, i've removed
this ugly yellow triangle above teammate's head)

More than graphics settings you will need BINDS to control your demo replay. i'll give you here the basic commands that works with baseq3. You can
have some specific commands available in some particular mods only, get infos about them.

Here are some extracts of my own CFG:


     "q3config.cfg"
    
          bind ESCAPE           "togglemenu"
          bind `                "toggleconsole"
          bind ~                "toggleconsole"   
          
          bind F1               "cl_avidemo 0"
          bind F2               "cl_avidemo 30"
          bind F3               "cl_avidemo 90"
          bind F4               "screenshot"
          
          bind F5               "exec scripts/cgdraw.cfg"
          bind F6               "exec scripts/zoom.cfg"
          bind F7               "exec scripts/fx.cfg"
          bind F8               "exec scripts/timeshifting.cfg"
          
          bind KP_LEFTARROW     "vstr left"
          bind KP_RIGHTARROW    "vstr right"
          
          bind KP_5             "toggle cg_thirdperson;vstr a0;vstr r40"
          
          bind KP_UPARROW       "vstr closer"
          bind KP_DOWNARROW     "vstr farther"
          
          bind KP_ENTER         "vstr normalspeed"
          bind KP_MINUS         "vstr slower"
          bind KP_PLUS          "vstr faster"
          
          exec scripts/range.cfg
          exec scripts/angle.cfg
          exec scripts/time.cfg
          
          
      "range.cfg"
      
          set r0 "cg_thirdpersonrange 0;set farther vstr r2;set closer vstr r358"
          set r2 "cg_thirdpersonrange 2;set farther vstr r4;set closer vstr r0"
          set r4 "cg_thirdpersonrange 4;set farther vstr r6;set closer vstr r2"
          ...

You can see in "range.cfg" the main technic to achieve more complex scripts in q3. You bind a var that will do something and rebind when it
is called. For exemple for me KP_MINUS slow down demo replay, when i press it it changes motion from current value to a lower one and at
the same time it rebind KP_MINUS so that when i repress it goes to an even lower value. I advice you to check some sites to learn more about
q3 scripting.

To sump up you can bind those:

cl_avidemo at different speeds (0 and 30 of course, maybe also 24 and also a higher one for slowmotion)

thirdperson controls (toggle 3rd person, range and angle changing)

motion controls (timescale from 0 to whatever you want)

zoomfov options

draw options (if u want 2D graphics or not)
All those are suggestions based n what i personnaly use. Also F5 to F8 rebinds keys F9 to F12 with specific external files for matrix effects,
strange zooms or non linear timescales. It is possible to achieve great effect with combinations of basic q3 commands.

For the lazy ones here is a zip file of my scripts and binds, i share them as is, meaning they are probably not the best, meaning i've used some
existant code and meaning that there are no comments to explain them.... ok? :p

Pictures to movie

As told before, it is the cl_avidemo which allows you to export a part of your demo into TGAs. When you replay a demo, use your bind to start exporting.
If you have cg_drawFPS 1 and it shows a value less than 30 (if you are exporting at 30FPS) don't worry it's due to the fact that the game writes
pictures continuously on your hard drive. All the pictures will be in the screenshot folder of the mod you were replaying the demo. They are numbered
shotxxxx.tga meaning that you can't export more than 10 000 pictures. Don't worry i've never personnaly been annoyed by this limitation

Then you must create an AVI with all the pictures you have. I know 2 ways of doing it. Through a video making software (like adobe premiere). You import
the folder with all your TGAs as a sequence with 1picture=1frame setting. Be sure that your project in the software match your TGAs exporting frame rate too
or you will have time distorsions. I am not using this technic, softwares like premiere are just great for video editing but they are far to heavy for
this step. Better prefer a little tool like pjBMP2AVI. This one is just designed to create an AVI with BMP or TGA.Here is a screenshot of it:

Directory, specify here where are your TGAs

I leave Input name blank

select TGA

in Avi File choose a name for your AVI

in Frame rate put the frame rate you used for exporting your pictures.

It will then ask you to select a compression codec within the ones you have installed on your machine. I have made the choice of
working with uncompressed AVIs all along the video editing phase. This way i have no quality loss and i only do one compression of the finished video.
I guess you can chose Divx at this step and then stitch the different parts after but some software doesn't edit divx video, this is why
i keep uncompressed pieces of vid.

Adding Sound

I've personnaly always added sound to videos... if you want to do so you will need a little soft to do that (windows recorder, soundforge, your soundcard associated soft..).
The idea is very simple: start recording the sound, replay the demo, save the file and then do a synchronization with the video.
Practicaly here is what could be said about this step:

You can change q3 settings to play in windowed mode when you replay the demo (change DSC launching options if you use it). This is handy because you can control
sound recording and demo replaying.

You should have quick forward binds in case you replay a 6Mo demo and that you just want the 30 last seconds....

Personnaly the volume level of what is recorded is too low, i have to make it louder after in the sound soft, take care not to add saturation
as i did on meetingRA3MAP11 :/

To synchronize audio to video you must have a soft that shows you pictures of the AVI file and signal of the sound file. The best is to locate a rail in the
sequence because the sound signal is very easy to see. You just have then to adjust this peak with the railing picture.
Rocket actions work too but with more possible errors. Take care that sometimes there is a time distorsion between video and audio (mainly for long sequences), you will have to introduce a gap
or repeat some blank sound.

If you have recorded the demo in the POV of someone else you may not have all the excellent, impressive, target bip sound. You may want to add all those too.

From rushes to scenes

Just repeat the 2 previous steps to record all the sequences you want. At that point of the video editing you will maybe need more advanced softwares.
You can stitch and manage a bit AVI sequences with virtualdub, or even with last versions of soundforge). I've heard about ulead video studio
that should do the work too. A must would be using adobe premiere because it offers all video editing tools.

When you have lots of little cuts you can imagine adding music over it too.

Building up a longer video

To build a longer video i would say that you'll need a subject, an idea that will help you go trought all the process. Otherwise it's quite easy
to get lost within all the possibilities. Prepare at first all your demos. I personnaly record a first time the sequences i like, with no sound
and in the POV with no special camera. I tried to arrange footage in different ways till it leads to something nice.

Exporting

When you are set and that you video is alll ready to be published you need to export it to a compressed version of it (if you have done it my way).
A very easy soft for this step is virtualdub.

Open your uncompressed AVi in it.

Choose "full processing" for audio and for video. For both of them chose a compression codec, ie chose mp3 (any level) and divx.

Divx works better in 2pass mode. To do so, chose "2pass, first pass" and other settings you might want. Save your file (F7) and chose "add operation to joblist".
Go back in video compression settings and this time chose "2pass, second pass", save your file and chose "add operation to joblist...". Then go to
the joblist (F4) and you can see your two compressions ready to be started. It is very handy.

Know that divx will do a compression ratio that will depend on what is in your movie, it'll have a good compression ratio if the movie is slow, a poor one if
it is full of action :/

Publishing

Very easy, just mail a member of the own-age admin team :)

IP: Logged
Modified by IP: Logged

Posted: 1.19.03 @ 5:54 PM
Last modified: 1.12.06 @ 4:52 AM

orxata

Regular User

Join Date: 11/9/2002
Posts: 87
Location: Paris, FRANCE

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

You can make this article a reference... add your comments and ideas here =)
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.20.03 @ 3:19 AM

own-age

Site Developer

Join Date: 11/3/2002
Posts: 4151
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

great read
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.20.03 @ 2:32 PM

Swift

New User

Join Date: 1/30/2003
Posts: 2
Location:

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

Not to mention QVM ;) http://www.swift-tools.com/Quake/QVM
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.30.03 @ 12:08 AM

orxata

Regular User

Join Date: 11/9/2002
Posts: 87
Location: Paris, FRANCE

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

yep swift... sry not to have mentionned ur soft. Here is my opinion: it is a great job u did, very handy to use and it already offers many options (reminder QVM). But on another hand and like other tools that do eveything in one u loose a bit of control and power, i got to say that i work with adobe soft 100% of time. So i really advice it for video beginners and for people who want to go quick... Anyway good development work. happy fraggin

IP: Logged

Posted: 2.3.03 @ 3:23 AM

orxata

Regular User

Join Date: 11/9/2002
Posts: 87
Location: Paris, FRANCE

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

I've forgotten somethin: For those using DSC and my binds, i suggest u remove any binds made by DSC in its options, my cfg rebind everything anyway.... Happy video making =)
IP: Logged	Posted: 2.18.03 @ 3:20 PM

dado

Regular User

Join Date: 11/5/2002
Posts: 35
Location: Sweden

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

why dont i have divx or xvid codec om pjbmp2avi program on every other i have exept that one
IP: Logged	Posted: 3.31.03 @ 6:37 AM

maxmorloks

Regular User

Join Date: 2/11/2003
Posts: 15
Location: france

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

ty for all that , but i m ungry , my english suck so much ...:*(
IP: Logged	Posted: 4.13.03 @ 11:45 AM

LanFeusT

New User

Join Date: 1/24/2003
Posts: 1
Location:

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

ub3r ub3r ub3r... gonna try to make a vidz if i manage to find the courage lol :) thx a lot orxata :)
IP: Logged	Posted: 4.15.03 @ 12:24 AM

rocketheat

Regular User

Join Date: 12/6/2002
Posts: 258
Location: Dallas, Texas

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

hmm great price for a not too crappy card
IP: Logged	Posted: 4.15.03 @ 9:29 PM

own-age

Site Developer

Join Date: 11/3/2002
Posts: 4151
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

btw, it has Svid out as well
IP: Logged	Posted: 4.16.03 @ 6:42 AM

sirprime

Regular User

Join Date: 5/6/2003
Posts: 7
Location: VR, just around the corner

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

thx U a lot!
IP: Logged	Posted: 5.6.03 @ 12:32 PM

zyreL

New User

Join Date: 5/31/2003
Posts: 6
Location: Kristiansand

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

thx m8 :>
IP: Logged	Posted: 6.3.03 @ 4:26 AM

d3mon_

Regular User

Join Date: 5/30/2003
Posts: 24
Location: Slovenia

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

Great tutorial! Good Job! orxata: I've also changed some details in the PK3 files to make q3 a bit nicer for video (for exemple, i've removed this ugly yellow triangle above teammate's head) Do you know you can hide those with cg_drawfriend 0?
IP: Logged	Posted: 6.4.03 @ 5:41 PM

orxata

Regular User

Join Date: 11/9/2002
Posts: 87
Location: Paris, FRANCE

RE: orxata's Q3 Video Making Tutorial V1.0

reply | view profile | pm | quote

yeah but cg_drawfriends doesn't seems to work within ra3 which is my main mod :/ For other mod must be easier it's sure =) HF ++
IP: Logged	Posted: 6.28.03 @ 3:05 AM

SnapShot

Regular User

Join Date: 11/25/2003
Posts: 190
Location: Brasil

TGA EXP.

reply | view profile | pm | quote

HELLO GUYS.

I WANT MAKE A MOVIE WITH DEMOS I HAVE... TO EXPORTING SEQUENCIES TO TGA WHEN REPLAYING A DEMO, I NEED TO DO THE CMD "cl_avidemo 30 (FOR 30 FPS)" ??? OR "cl_avidemo 1" AND FIX THE MAX FPS OF THE GAME IN 30 FPS???

I AM COMPLETE BEGINNER AND SO FAR I ONLY APPRECIATED THE VIDEOS, THE GREAT FRAGS AND ALL... I FEEL WILL TO SHOW THE GREAT PLAYS MADE FOR HERE, HAVE ANY TUTORIAL THAT I CAN FOLLOWING???

THANKS.

IP: Logged

Posted: 1.17.04 @ 7:46 AM

SnapShot

Regular User

Join Date: 11/25/2003
Posts: 190
Location: Brasil

SOUND

reply | view profile | pm | quote

ONE MORE THING OWN-AGE. HOW DID YOU MADE The PERFECT SYNCHRONISM Of the SOUND IN THE AnnihilatioN ??? SO FAR IS THE PERFECT ONE.
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.17.04 @ 7:52 AM

bacchus

Site Admin

Join Date: 11/12/2002
Posts: 4511
Location: France

reply | view profile | pm | quote

First you can write normally, no need to WRITE LIKE THAT. You have to type cl_avidemo 30 if you want a 30fps avi (with cl_avidemo 1 you will get 1 screenshot per second). You can do cl_avidemo 60 if you want a 30fps avi with slowmotion for example: there is no relation between the number of screenshot taken and the capacity of your computer, nore with the max fps. To sync the sound I think he just changed the timeline scale in his video editor so the sync can be more accurate. If you want tutorials I must tell you that this thread is supposed to be a tutorial. You can find other tuts in this section of the forum (whose name is... tutorials!).

IP: Logged

Posted: 1.17.04 @ 12:24 PM

SnapShot

Regular User

Join Date: 11/25/2003
Posts: 190
Location: Brasil

reply | view profile | pm | quote

OK... Is not so easy to make vids. I am try hard...
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.17.04 @ 3:46 PM

SnapShot

Regular User

Join Date: 11/25/2003
Posts: 190
Location: Brasil

reply | view profile | pm | quote

I dont get it... I am try all weekend but the limitation of 10000 TGA do not let me have a video without errors. Can I change this value??? Or I have to get the AVI by parts??? The tutorial above says: "shotxxxx.tga meaning that you can't export more than 10 000 pictures. Don't worry i've never personnaly been annoyed by this limitation" what this means.
IP: Logged	Posted: 1.18.04 @ 3:16 PM

[post reply]

Page 1 of 3