Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums as of the start of the FSM competition and had a few quick questions.
First off, I am just starting to use After Effects and was curious if anyone else has used it much for your IL2 movies. I have a lot of ideas but am not really sure how to integrate them into a movie without looking goofy. Explosions and gunfire are my biggest interests but anything you guys have made or seen that used IL2 and AF would be helpful.
Secondly, I have read that 24fps is the best speed for online movies, but up until now I have used 30fps while recording. What do the rest of you use?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: NateDawg80126,

I've used the Davinci method of capturing which means you record the game at half speed and use 15fps in Fraps and then double the fps in virtualdub to equal 30fps.

Now you can set Fraps to 12fps recording which then makes 24 fps when doubled.

You cannot record sound at the same time using this method but you can either add your own or re-record the track at normal speed just for the sound effects.

I use 24fps most of the time. Why try and capture at 30 if 24 does the job?

The motion sketcher in AE is great for adding simulated camera shake.

I record at 30 fps 99% of the time for a few reasons but mostly to add weight to the motion of the aircraft when I reconvert it back to 25 fps in the edit.I also seperate the sound in the edit so I can place it where I want it for effect , for example on a High speed flyby I will lag the peak sound slightly to give a more real world sense of the aircraft passin by at high speed and then the sound hits you , I try to do all these small alterations as subtle as I can so as not to distract the viewer from movie itself.

I frap at 24 fps; While frapping, check real time what the recorded fps is, it is displayed flickering in RED, if you see it goes lower than what is set then you know something is causing the skipping of frames.. maybe the IL2 settings too high or other software or activity on internet.... whatever. Very nice tool.

Joe; question; can you make use of AE with Vegas or does it only work with Adobe products?

quote:

Originally posted by Joe-90:
I use 24fps most of the time. Why try and capture at 30 if 24 does the job?

The motion sketcher in AE is great for adding simulated camera shake.

I'm sure there was a time when fraps lowest capture limit was 15fps. Recorded at half speed and then doubled to 30 to keep speed perspective and decided to leave it alone. Those were the days when asking a PC to render 24 fps in realtime whilst a mission was under way and capturing with FRAPS was just a gnat too much to ask and stutters were inevitable.

Now capturing realtime footage with Fraps whilst playing a track at normal speed at 1680 x 1050 is a walk in the park .

The reason I generally stayed away from 24fps was because in fast fly by shots, I noticed a slight ghosting effect. Am I crazy or do others notice this as well?

This may not be down to the FPS. If you use an LCD then the chances are there may be ghosting whilst viewing certain scenes within a movie. Nothing beats a CRT at the moment although they come very very close (in most regards).

quote:

Originally posted by jafa1967: I record at 30 fps 99% of the time for a few reasons but mostly to add weight to the motion of the aircraft when I reconvert it back to 25 fps in the edit.

That's a great idea Jafa! Some of the aircraft motion in game are just way to fast to be realistic.

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Originally posted by biltongbru: Joe; question; can you make use of AE with Vegas or does it only work with Adobe products?

I use AE stand alone, export any video clips in HuffyUV, then import to Vegas.

quote:

Originally posted by NateDawg80126:
The reason I generally stayed away from 24fps was because in fast fly by shots, I noticed a slight ghosting effect. Am I crazy or do others notice this as well?

You're not crazy, lol, I've seen lots of frame ghosting.

...but, the reason is nothing to do with 24fps. Most frame ghosting comes from rendering your final movie at a framerate that is different to the captured shots. Check your project and render setting in your editing programme.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe-90:

quote:

Originally posted by jafa1967: I record at 30 fps 99% of the time for a few reasons but mostly to add weight to the motion of the aircraft when I reconvert it back to 25 fps in the edit.

That's a great idea Jafa! Some of the aircraft motion in game are just way to fast to be realistic.

converting from 30fps to 25fps is not trivial though
'inverse telecine' for ntsc is already much trouble, but getting a progressive pattern down from 30 to 25 means either blending or dropping frames (every 6th in this case). both is visible.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe-90:

quote:

Originally posted by biltongbru: Joe; question; can you make use of AE with Vegas or does it only work with Adobe products?

I use AE stand alone, export any video clips in HuffyUV, then import to Vegas.

as joe said! 'after effects' in use together with 'premiere' gives an advantage of being able to directly import the 'ae'-composition into the 'premiere'-timeline - thus eliminating the huge 'huffyuv'-file, although it needs a mighty powerful computer to render then

quote:

Originally posted by Joe-90:

quote:

Originally posted by NateDawg80126:
The reason I generally stayed away from 24fps was because in fast fly by shots, I noticed a slight ghosting effect. Am I crazy or do others notice this as well?

You're not crazy, lol, I've seen lots of frame ghosting.

...but, the reason is nothing to do with 24fps. Most frame ghosting comes from rendering your final movie at a framerate that is different to the captured shots. Check your project and render setting in your editing programme.

a most exellent point by joe (see also above the first comment)
besides converting framerates (best example is '3:2 pull-down' for movies to convert for 'ntsc'), also (de-)interlacing happens to show ghosting. as joe also said, this has to be checked in project-settings: since the game-footage is progressive and the final export probably also, a project set to ntsc/pal will first interlace the footage for editing and then de-interlace it for export - means all kind of blurs and ghosts.
if you use a flatpanel-monitor, ghosting might appear as a hardware problem, caused by the lcds not switching fast enough (even if many modern panels claim to have delays below 10ms, this is mostly only related to black-white luminance - after all, the industry always knew, how to get better numbers to describe a problem)

Well this has certainly produced some valuable feedback, and I plan to fiddle with rendering settings a lot more on this next project. I do use an LG 22" LCD monitor with 2ms response time BTW, but the ghosting I was referring to was not due to that, when recording at higher FPS there was none to speak of. However I only tested 24 FPS briefly and the ghosting could have definitely been caused by poor rendering settings, I had no idea what I was doing with Vegas in that respect so it comes as no surprise. Is there any reading available as to the best rendering settings to use with Sony Vegas for online video playback? Thanks in advance.

Natedawg, see my tutorial that shows the exact project and rendr setting I use in Vegas:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/65710358/m/6011062176

Deepo, I think Jafa is using the framerate change to slow down his movie (Jafa, you'll correct me if I'm wrong) and make the aircraft manouvres smoother. Therefore, he simply changes the framerate in VirtualDub. Each clip is then 20% longer and 'smoother'. Of course, it only works pre-processing and with no audio.

It's a great and simple idea. My solution for keeping flight models more realistic for movies was to fly with very slow joystick movements, nothing like how I fly in an actual game where I yank the joystick all over the place! Jafa's idea is better, and it will also help deal with the daft looking shots of aircraft getting shot down and spinning at an absurd speed to the deck.

I'll be using this trick for sure on occasion - thanks Jafa

hi joe,

rgr that!
and sry, i somehow missed about the desired effect of slowing down movement.

indeed a nice idea, useful both ways and in various degrees!

Ah yes perfect, thanks Joe.

quote:

I'll be using this trick for sure on occasion - thanks Jafa

No problem.