DAoC Movies...

[beck-uk]

Would like to hear what people think about the Quality vs Size issue with movies.

As in would you rather see a better picture quality movie and download a big file or sub-standard quality and smaller file?

I know personally, having broadband means Im not too fussed about downloading the occasional 80meg file or whatever if it means Im gunna actually be able to see whats going on in the movie!

This aint about content quality, obviously nobody wants to downlad a 80meg file just to see you walking round a zone for 20 minutes. :/

I am actually just getting into the whole movie making arena, finally got a decent rig that lets me run fraps2 without much impact on my gaming. I have a few questions for movie makers who use fraps2, heres what I have done so far, please let me know if I should do anything different...

I am currently setting the 'half size' and '30fps' options in fraps2.

I am running DAoC in 800x600 mode.

I am using Virtualdub to encode the file with the latest divx codex (5.1 i think), I leave the divx options at default. This is bringing a 500meg file down to about 6meg when I save it as avi.

I am using windows movie maker to put the clips together and music and then when I save I click on the best non-dvi option and that reduces the size even more.

The quality isnt brilliant but its on par with what I have seen other movies. Any tips or what not would be helpful thanks.

I intend to remake the 'beastmaster' movie! with me playing the Dolph Lundgren part (think he was in it).

 

[Jaem]

There ok watch, don't mind size really, as can play on the tv to make it look ok.

 

[Groborthir]

I definately treasure quality over filesize.

C'mon, we live in the days of broadband, and if the modem users are complaining, just tell them DAoC movies aren't intended for them anyway, and that they should save the money they spend on DAoC subscription to buy a new, and faster, ISP. Just face it: Movies just aren't small filesize downloads.

That aside, I like to be able to watch the details in DAoC movies. Nothing ticks me off more than terribly encoded movies in which you can't see whether the POV (point of view) character is a lurikeen or a troll. Surely, for the DAoC player it must be interesting to see everything that goes on? Besides, it just looks better when the movie isn't smeared and highly pixellated.

Now, as for my settings.

I record, with Fraps, at 1024x786, full size and 20 FPS.

20 FPS, you ask? Well, I tested around with it, and 20 FPS is more than enough and is a great compromise between filesize and movie quality.

I use Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0 to edit, cut and add effects/stills, and I make the soundtrack with Premiere aswell. Then I export the entire movie uncompressed (so you need quite some harddisk space for bigger movies).

After Premiere I use VirtualDub to add the soundtrack I made with Premiere and I encode/compress the movie.

The codec I use is XviD, running at ~1800 bit. XviD isn't global standard codec, but trust me, XviD owns DivX.
Visually, try encoding a movie with DivX and XviD and watch the two outputs. XviD is *at least* 40% better. You can watch someone's chatbox text at 1024*786 with the person using small chat fonts, that's how clear XviD is. Obviously the filesizes increase. It's not much, compared to the difference in quality measured against a DivX equivalent. And my opinion about filesize vs. quality can be read further up.

XviD4tehwin!

 

[skadad]

actually its Marc Singer.. Dude that played Donovan in the V series that plays in Beastmaster