DVD Authoring | Forums

[WytRaven]

I have posted various parts of this elsewhere and decided I should post it in a more visible part of the forum.

I bought LockOn for two reasons.

1. To be able to fly the A-10; my favorite aircraft of all time.

2. To be able to export movies of my flights to DVD.

So far I have been completely satisfied with wish number one. This flight sim is excellent.
Unfortunately I can't say the same for wish number two.

When it comes to exporting movies for DVD there are a couple of things you need. You need to be able to export with the correct frame size and aspext ratio. You also need to be able to export full quality footage as recompressing video data results in ugly movies.

I figured out fairly quickly how to get correct frame sizes and aspect ratios. You can achieve this by editing the graphics.cfg file in "..\LockOn\Config\". Under the Display section is a section labeled Simulation. You can edit this section to get the correct sizes. For PAL you need to set resolution to 720 x 576, fullscreen to 0, and aspect to 1.067. For NTSC you need 720 x 480 for resolution and 0.9 for aspect. Your output will appear slightly squashed vertically, don't stress your TV will stretch it. I have a special graphics.cfg expecially for AVI recording which I swap with the normal one whenever I am ready to record.

I have tried all sorts to get decent quality footage out of LockOn. Although theoretically you can get both Uncompressed frames and also HuffYUV encoded frames out of the AVI plugin there is a fatal flaw. The AVI plugin appears to use AVI1.0 which has a 2GB filesize limit. When exporting uncompressed frames or even HuffYUV compressed frames you hit 2GB very very quickly. Obviously my first thought was to simply make multiple recordings using different start and end times in the AVI plugin. So I tried exporting 1 minute 30 second segments. The track file I was attempting to work with is 17 minutes long. After many hours of screwing around I found to my dismay that each 1:30 clip is completely unique. Cloud formations are different destroyed objects are different. Not only that but I also found that the sound recordings (which appear to be recorded by running the simulation all over again) are not consistent with the video! Ok so recording mulitple segments won't work so what could I try now? So far I haven't come up with anything except a few ideas for the developers regarding how they could deal with this issue.

Developers, I know you aren't getting any more money for LockOn development but please consider my plea.
I would like you to consider the following fix ideas for AVI recording.

1. Use AVI2.0 (via DirectShow I believe) instead of AVI1.0; problem solved as far as video recording long files is concerned.
2. If AVI2.0 isnt doable then please have the AVI Recorder automatically divide its recordings into multiple 1GB avi files; again problem solved as far as recording long files is concerned. We can use VirtualDub or Premiere or some other video editing package to rejoin pieces.
3. Whilst rendering the video part of a recording please create a file that will be used by the WAV recorder. This file would be taking notes during the video render phase as to when particular samples are triggered etc. When the WAV recording phase begins instead of running a new simulation which could suffer from inconsistency problems instead it would use this 'cue' file to build the sound output instead.

With these ideas taken into account either in a patch or an addon product my dreams of exporting high quality footage for DVD authoring would be realised...and I would love you forever

I have also noticed a few other anomolies with video recording. Even with all graphics settings maxed out (using LOMAN) I still see tree's poping in and out close enough to the camera to be obvious. Frame reate is not important during video recording so can't everything just be 'on'? Also when switching views the first 3 frames or so after the change the 'scene' slowly builds for example no clouds after view switch. They don't show up until frame 3 after the change or so.

Anyway I have now said way to much on this for the moment I will only mention one more thing. I'm not quite sure how to go about 16:9 widescreen videos assuming that the above issues are addressed. I know that the actual framesize is still 720x576(for PAL) and that the player is simply instructed to stretch the image but I have yet to find out the aspect settings that would achieve this...anyway thanks for making a great flight sim and i sincerely hope that you will continue to support the awesome A-10 in future flight products.

[WytRaven]

I have posted various parts of this elsewhere and decided I should post it in a more visible part of the forum.

I bought LockOn for two reasons.

1. To be able to fly the A-10; my favorite aircraft of all time.

2. To be able to export movies of my flights to DVD.

So far I have been completely satisfied with wish number one. This flight sim is excellent.
Unfortunately I can't say the same for wish number two.

When it comes to exporting movies for DVD there are a couple of things you need. You need to be able to export with the correct frame size and aspext ratio. You also need to be able to export full quality footage as recompressing video data results in ugly movies.

I figured out fairly quickly how to get correct frame sizes and aspect ratios. You can achieve this by editing the graphics.cfg file in "..\LockOn\Config\". Under the Display section is a section labeled Simulation. You can edit this section to get the correct sizes. For PAL you need to set resolution to 720 x 576, fullscreen to 0, and aspect to 1.067. For NTSC you need 720 x 480 for resolution and 0.9 for aspect. Your output will appear slightly squashed vertically, don't stress your TV will stretch it. I have a special graphics.cfg expecially for AVI recording which I swap with the normal one whenever I am ready to record.

I have tried all sorts to get decent quality footage out of LockOn. Although theoretically you can get both Uncompressed frames and also HuffYUV encoded frames out of the AVI plugin there is a fatal flaw. The AVI plugin appears to use AVI1.0 which has a 2GB filesize limit. When exporting uncompressed frames or even HuffYUV compressed frames you hit 2GB very very quickly. Obviously my first thought was to simply make multiple recordings using different start and end times in the AVI plugin. So I tried exporting 1 minute 30 second segments. The track file I was attempting to work with is 17 minutes long. After many hours of screwing around I found to my dismay that each 1:30 clip is completely unique. Cloud formations are different destroyed objects are different. Not only that but I also found that the sound recordings (which appear to be recorded by running the simulation all over again) are not consistent with the video! Ok so recording mulitple segments won't work so what could I try now? So far I haven't come up with anything except a few ideas for the developers regarding how they could deal with this issue.

Developers, I know you aren't getting any more money for LockOn development but please consider my plea.
I would like you to consider the following fix ideas for AVI recording.

1. Use AVI2.0 (via DirectShow I believe) instead of AVI1.0; problem solved as far as video recording long files is concerned.
2. If AVI2.0 isnt doable then please have the AVI Recorder automatically divide its recordings into multiple 1GB avi files; again problem solved as far as recording long files is concerned. We can use VirtualDub or Premiere or some other video editing package to rejoin pieces.
3. Whilst rendering the video part of a recording please create a file that will be used by the WAV recorder. This file would be taking notes during the video render phase as to when particular samples are triggered etc. When the WAV recording phase begins instead of running a new simulation which could suffer from inconsistency problems instead it would use this 'cue' file to build the sound output instead.

With these ideas taken into account either in a patch or an addon product my dreams of exporting high quality footage for DVD authoring would be realised...and I would love you forever

I have also noticed a few other anomolies with video recording. Even with all graphics settings maxed out (using LOMAN) I still see tree's poping in and out close enough to the camera to be obvious. Frame reate is not important during video recording so can't everything just be 'on'? Also when switching views the first 3 frames or so after the change the 'scene' slowly builds for example no clouds after view switch. They don't show up until frame 3 after the change or so.

Anyway I have now said way to much on this for the moment I will only mention one more thing. I'm not quite sure how to go about 16:9 widescreen videos assuming that the above issues are addressed. I know that the actual framesize is still 720x576(for PAL) and that the player is simply instructed to stretch the image but I have yet to find out the aspect settings that would achieve this...anyway thanks for making a great flight sim and i sincerely hope that you will continue to support the awesome A-10 in future flight products.

[Little_Donkey]

Hi WytRaven

I already made a dvd of a lockon movie i made.
Check this post, there you can download my dvd
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums?a=t...06&m=703103213

I used fraps to capture my lockon
fraps
I captured my lockon at a resolution of 800x600.
Like you can see, its a bit bigger then a tv resolution. so its good, because when you will render it to tv resolution(720x576 pal) it will resize it=so it means it will be better quality when on tv.
I edited everything in Vegas and rendered everything as a quicktime animation movie at PAL resolution.
I recompressed everything as a dvd mpeg2
I authored with dvdmaestro and burned it on dvd.

If you need more info you can contact me on msn
axiadesign@hotmail.com
Or just post here.

greetz
Little_Donkey

[WytRaven]

I appreciate your reply, thanks, but from your post its obvious that you dont share the same desire for quality that I do. Not only are you resizing but you are also compressing data multiple times. You may be happy with that kind of quality but I'm afraid that I'm not.
I have made a DVD (forced to use Indeo 5.1 compression to get 17 minutes of footage in one file + MPEG2 compression as well) and was very unhappy with the results. I was able to get the sound very nice during post processing (I am an audio engineer afterall) but the video was ugly to say the least.

I want to compress the video once only. Only when it comes time to compress to MPEG2 for DVD.
The only thing thats preventing me from doing that is that the AVI export plugin uses an outdated AVI format restricted by 2GB (or 4GB if coded creatively) file sizes and doesnt automatically split to multiple files if needed to compensate for said limitiation.

There was someone else on these forums claiming to have produced 16:9 widescreen DVD's at HDTV quality by using multiple take rendering but I take it he doesn't share the same attention to detail that I do, for example each time a simulation is run (and therefore each 'take') cloud formations and the like are different which is unacceptable for anyone with even the slightest eye for detail.

I will cross my fingers and pray for mercy from the developers, pray that they take pity on me

[WytRaven]

I'm downloading your dvd just to see if my assumptions are correct...thank God for ADSL

[Little_Donkey]

I use fraps to capture from game. and the quality is high. If you want to keep the quality very high, capture your game at a resolution of 1024x768 and resize it then to tv resolution. You will have very good quality because you make it smaller.
If you do the opposite(make your small image or video bigger) it wont because you will make the pixels biggers so you lose quality.
And i use quicktime animation compression. try it and you will see
I make tv commercials, and thats the compression we use to put our commercials on betacams for broadcast.
Quicktime Animation compression is a very high quality compression. you wont lose anything at your video quality. It is standard in quicktime.
a 3 min video in quicktime animation compression is something like 4gb, so it is kinda big file.
Try fraps to capture at a high resolution, resize it to your video resolution with a quicktime ANIMATION compression(100%)
You wont lose quality, trust me. and then export to dvd mpeg2
And when you edit, i dont recommend to do it ingame because its limited and timeconsuming.
The best thing you can do, is edit with an external program like adobe premiere, vegas, avid or other editing programs.

greetz
little_donkey

[WytRaven]

Again thank you for your reply. I have now watched your DVD and can say only one thing. Are we playing the same game here?? I've never seen footage like that anywhere in this game. Mind you I havent even tried the mission editor yet or any plane other than A-10 (I assume thats how you got that footage, through building a custom mission or something).

I also have another problem. From what I have read (there website doesn't go into much detail) FRAPS works realtime right? Well I cannot run the game realtime anywhere near the graphics quality I want. I am trying to run using LOMAN with all graphic options maxed out and my Dual AthlonMP, 768MB RAM, and Radeon 9600 128MB (AA set at 6x and AF set at 16x). At these quality settings I get about 2FPS realtime. That's obviously not much good for FRAPS use.

I'm all ears if you have any suggestions that can actually work for me as you obviously put a lot of time and effort into that clip and appear to know what you are on about but FRAPS isn't one of them. I also noted that with the type of scenes your using there details aren't an issue. Practically everything is backlit and/or in heavy shadow which makes it difficult to judge quality.

There are some things about your footage that concern me however. With all graphic settings maxed out the smoke off my flares (A-10) doesn't look anything like as good as what you have in that clip in fact it looks really quite crap compared to what your A-10's are dropping. That has me somewhat confused. The smoke running off the A-10's cannon looks better too but I'm pretty sure that's just because of the post processing youve done (saturation tricks?).

Anyway I honestly don't think what I'm asking is all that big a deal. It can't be that hard to adjust the plugin to record to multiple AVI's and provide the option of recording audio to a seperate WAV surely. It would be nice to know what Stormin' has to say on the matter but he seems to be avoiding the issue which is understandable I suppose...

[Little_Donkey]

Thanks for the comment on my movie
I build the missions bymyself, I like the lockon mission editor, you can make almost every situation you want.
The most parts are AI, just maybe some shots with f15 and a10 where i was playing. i think in my movie 90% is AI
Fraps is realtime. But you dont need setting your settings that high(AA at 6x and AF at 16X) Its useless. Why?
Simple reason is, you record your movie at a higher resolution(1024x768 or 800x600) you have to resize it anyway to tv resolution(720x576 for PAL)You get the same effect as AA and AF
So dont use AA and AF when recording movie for tv. just record at a resolution higher then the tv resolution. When resizing, its perfect for tv.
Try making a screenshot at 1024x768 and resize it to 720x576 and you will see.
Your system is much better then the one i had when making my movie.
I made that movie with a athlon xp 1800+, 512 mb ram and a geforce 3 TI200
Settings were on medium high. On a resolution of 800x600 windowed.
In my movie I played with the colors, i used a glow and some film grain.
If i didnt used it, it would be to gamish
I didnt wanted to have the effect of looking to a game movie.
So i changed some things to make it more photo realistic.
next week i have to make an A-10 movie for someone. But this time it wont be too dark like in unleash hell.

[BSR_RuGGBuTT]

I've found that setting the view distance all the way to the lowest level makes for a more realistic look.