Tips? Anyone?

I'd love to do some Machinima videos here, and am fairly up on digital video, having done a few simple movies captured from analog tape, and edited with either the MS MovieMaker or more recently Magix MovieEditPro. My questions are more SL-specific, such as SL capture format (ie: which capture format is best to use), and camera movement workarounds.. ie: I've tried a few "mini-movies" using the standard camera motion tools, and to put it bluntly, these attempts look horrible.. I've seen some the movies listed here, and they look great!
Without giving out any secrets, how does one get the smooth camera movements I see in these vids??

Thanks in advance
Tas

One thing I'd like to mention, Tas, is the new FollowCam feature in 1.9 which will allow for way smoother camera controls. Comes out tomorrow! I'm sure there'll be lots of buzz in the SL Forums about it, and how it can be used.

Thanks, Torley!

I'm typing this during the down-time while the grid-monkeys do their 1.9 magic.. I can't wait to try this new tool out tonight!! Congrats on joining LL!

On a further note: Still looking for tips on best-practices on actual capturing from the SL client, ie: best codecs, etc.. My only attempts up to this point have been using raw capture from the client, which gives me an unbelievably massive file, which totally chokes MSMovieMaker and bluescreens Magix Movie EditPro.. The other codecs I have listed, don't error, but when I attempt to capture using them, the capture silently fails.. ie: no errors shown, but no captured video file is generated.. whats up with that??? I've done a fair amount of analog video capture and editing outside of SL, and have had no trouble with the editors above..

Ideas??

Tas



Tas

Tas - Get Fraps. It rawks

Hi Travis!

I tried Fraps a while back and never was able to get the demo to work. The program looks great, but at least in my case, it doesn't work according to the docs.. Admittedly, it was about 4-5 months ago, so I'll give it another try.

Tas

I have a problem with fraps only getting between 5-9 fps... tried various settings. I have a good machine with a lot of ram so I'm not certain what the problem is.

Any suggestions from the experts?

In the file section on top of the screen try setting your screen size to a window of 640 X 480,
film with fraps at full screen and try to film toward the void if possible the less stuff you have to render the faster it goes. For that smooth boom cam pan I use a neat little thing Lordjason made I call it the trackless coaster you just say set a lot as you move it and when your done it emails you the positions and rotations in 2 lists you paste those into note cards and drop them in the prim with the script. It's not totally smooth but if you get him to give you an open one or have him tune it for you it can be pretty smooth. While he's in there see if he can add the new camera controls. Oh and fraps when it's filming if you set it to 30 fps it tries to do that even if it only shows you getting 15 or 10 fps on screen that's just the speed you see live it actually films at a higher frame rate just sacra fices your frame rate.