Official Fulqrum Publishing forum - Cliffs of Dover Video Thread V1.0 [Closed]

What's the best way you've found to capture footage? Make a FMB mission and lay out tons of static cameras and then just roll tape with the in game recorder, then go back and continuously replay the recording while using FRAPS at key moments?

Speaking only for myself, of the 25 video's I've made so far only two have been made using track replays, with one of them being a video that just used a recording of a track replay in a split-screen effect to show two simultaneous points of view of the same action.

I've avoided using tracks mainly, but not entirely, because the whole replay system is bugged, often to the point of being unuseable for movie-making. With effects like flak and debris falling from damaged planes disappearing from your recordings. And with your engine repeatedly revving up and dying down every few seconds if you had complex engine managment on during the recording of the track. Even trying to record the tracks in the first place can cause your game to crash.

I'd like to use recorded tracks more, and probably will, as it gives more editing options, and I'm not saying it can't be done at all, but I usually just record stuff 'live' as it's actually playing and see what I can then make of it in editing later.

The fact that most of my stuff's been recorded 'live' with FRAPS like that, and that it's basically all plane-chasing stuff, has made using static camera's a bit impractical too. I haven't looked that far into it, but I don't know how to switch straight to them without visually cycling through all the other objects to get to them, or trying to pick them out of that in-game object list you can bring up.

You'll have to try it yourself and see how it works out for you and for the particular video you want to make.

In regards to making a mission for your video, don't just limit yourself to making one version of it. If you have to, or if it just saves time or makes things easier during the recording, you can save various versions of it in the FMB, even if just to keep certain parts of the mission or video recording uncluttered of unecessary objects at certain points.

Do you use multiplayer to get the pilots to fly 'properly' for the cameras?

Never have, but it would be essential for some kinds of shots. Even getting the AI to do the most basic flying can have them making little movements here and there that give them away as being non-human.

Regarding the time acceleration thing to smooth out the game for recordings. Do you play the mission at slow speed, play the in game recording back at higher speed and FRAPS that? Or do you play at normal speed, play the recording back at slower speed, FRAPS that, and then speed it up back to normal in the video edit process?

On play-back using the game's replay system, the track recordings are subject to practically the same frame-rate/image-rendering performance limits as when playing 'live', so there's no advantage to recording a track while playing at a slower speed then replaying the track and speeding it back up to normal speed and making a FRAPS recording of that.

The game, or track, is slowed down, recorded with FRAPS at that slower than normal speed, then sped up in editing.

Something to note is that, as you say, the aim of the technique is to smooth out the game. What this means is that even though you do get higher frame-rates when slowing the game down, it's not just about getting higher frame-rates, as you can record at literally 1fps and still get useable footage when you speed the recording up again, as long as that one-frame-per-second is crawling along at a smooth, more constant rate than it would have been otherwise.

Something else you might have to consider is that recording at that slower speed, up to 16 times slower than normal, means you can get huge FRAPS avi files building up very quickly. To reduce the size of those video files you can lower, in FRAPS' own frame-rate settings, the frame-rate at which FRAPS records. If you've slowed the game down far enough, you can drop the FRAPS frame-rate setting down to 10fps or less, though taking it down too far can re-introduce stuttering when you speed those FRAPS recordings up again in editing.

Another advantage to lowering the frame-rate FRAPS itself records at, and therefore the resultant file-sizes, is that FRAPS records in consecutive 2-3GB sized avi video file chunks, and introduces a slight, unfixable pause/delay into the recording when it ends one file and begins another. The frequency of these pauses can be lessened or even avoided altogether if each of your FRAPS shots takes up less than 2-3GB of data. Stopping and starting FRAPS at the beginning of each crucial bit of action, even if it means doing it between pausing and unpausing the game itself, is a good idea, especially if you're recording 'live' and can't replay the action if FRAPS happens to end one chunk and start another at the wrong moment.

When you are flying the mission to be recorded, do you reduce realism settings to help get the shots you want? What realism settings seem to work best for recording tracks?

As mentioned before, if you're using in-game tracks, you must turn CEM off before recording those tracks in order to avoid the engine-revving bug. The revving is audible, and visible in the cockpit instruments and propellor disk. And speaking of the propellor disk, here's another killer for you. If you use the speed-variation technique described above, you have to turn the Anti-Epilepsy filter on and use the 'old' propeller effects (and whatever else comes with using the A-E filter). When the A-E filter is off and you slow the game down to record it, the individual blades of the propellor become visible instead of blurred and start to slowly rotate. Then when you speed that recording up again in editing, the blades don't blur again like they should, maintaining instead their individual definiton, which just looks strange and not at all realisitic.

Can't think of any other changes to realism settings, beyond turning CEM off just to make it easier to fly while recording. If you turn Idestructibility on, or no damage or whatever you call it, to help you get some shots, watch out for the ridiculous bouncy behaviour you can get when coming into the slightest contact with ground objects. Saw a frustrating amount of that myself in testing recently.

My video is pretty simple...

"MMUUUUAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAHHHHAAAHAAAA..." Tries to control maniacal laughter, but can't. "Muuuahahahaa!!! 'Simple.' 'Simple' he said." Manages to gather some composure. "You think so now, but just you wait! Just you wait!" Gets to his feet, takes on a pontificating tone and looks off into the distance. "For it's the simplest of ideas that have led the greatest of men to the deepest depths of despair..." Stops suddenly to stare intently at his hapless victim, lowering his voice, "And worse yet, if you should succeed...and be tempted to continue on even further down that slippery slope to sure and inevitable ruin...No!! Go now!! Go while you still can!!" But the subject of his exhortations remains unmoved, except perhaps for the slight raising of an eye-brow. And with that, the speaker gives up. "Okay, whatever..." Walks back towards his desk. "Better have lots of explosions in it then." Sits down and lights a cigarette, thinking about it, "And see if you can do something about those bloody trees. Or better yet, set the whole thing at 30,000 feet, that'll fix'em. Oh, wait...doh..."