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Old 11-11-2007, 03:00 PM   #3
Vandalist
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Below is an example of something I'm doing in my upcoming video, it fits in with the music I'm using and it lets me add a note to the viewers. I lowered the speed of the clip to 0%. I can now add a quick text to show a Rogue I uncovered while PvPing a paladin. The text appears for a short 2 seconds "Rogue Here" under the rogue while the clip is stopped at 0% speed, the music is at a 'cut out' spot where the tempo has dropped to nearly nothing and a faint drum can be heard... (Although I might not use this song in the movie, i change my songs often as I'm building the video). Anyways, after the two seconds, the clip goes back to 100% speed, the song picks up again just as the rogue has come out, it fits perfectly with very little effort. Opportunity's like this will show up constantly while editing, just keep an eye out for them.





Some songs might not work, some will work better than others. Just remember one very key thing if your going for an entertaining video..... If you get bored watching your video, so will everyone else. Also, you could render up some previews to show some friends to get their opinions on it, or release a trailer to friends to see what they think, but never give them anything close to a finished product, or it will ruin the hype and surprise.






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Chapter 5: Rendering Your Masterpiece


If your on this step, you think your video is finished and the best it can be. Before we even start, take time and go watch it right now, in full. You might have to lower the quality temporarily to view it in Sony Vegas as Vegas will be compacting all the layers instantly as your watching it (you can have it high quality when rendered because your video will have already been compacted and just play it's final footage).

Anyways, go watch it, and if you are completely happy with it, proceed, if not, re-read Chapters 3/4 for more advice...

So, if your happy, check the time on the video. Most viewers have an attention span of about 15 to 25 minutes for pvp videos. If your movie exceeds 25 minutes, its either got to be one of the most spectacular things in the world, or your going to have to go back and shorten it. Take out some of your less great clips. Try to keep it above 12 minutes minimum, but do not, ever, go over that 25 minute limit unless you really think that you have got something so amazing nobody could get bored with it on any number of bad days.

If your time frame is good, and your all set. Set all the preview settings to Max and all of your rendering and sound settings to Max. Now, before you render, you better make sure your in for the long haul. If you've done this before, you know the best time to start the render is maybe right before you go to sleep, or before you go to work or something... Because the rendering process, on any program, takes a lot of resources.. Your computer's system will attempt to use as much resources as it's allowed to make the rendering process faster, however it will always let up on memory if your trying to do something. Browsing the web, reading e-mail, anything you try to do after the rendering starts is going to go Much Much slower, the worse your computer is, the slower you'll go. Although you can still do many things, it's recommended you leave your computer alone and let the program have as much resources as it can gather up to render your video quickly and efficiently. DO NOT play WoW, any program as powerful as WoW or any full screen game or program for that matter, could easily use too much resources and if your system doesn't crash, it could very easily become unstable and corrupt your rendering, leaving your finished product useless...

Let it render, go watch a movie... or two.. or ten....



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Chapter 6: The Secrets of Uploading & Submitting


Before you submit your movie for the world to see, you need to make sure a few things are in order, especially if your submitting it at warcraftmovies.com

1) Make sure your rendered movie was rendered correctly. Watch the finished product, if all looks in order, close it out, right click on the file and go to Properties. Look at it's file size. PvP Movies can go between 100 and 350 MB depending on your rendering settings and quality, and if your music was compressed properly. Anything over 400, you might want to get extra help to make sure your rendering right, because I know I sure wouldn't want to watch a movie that was that big unless it really cought my attention.

2) Make sure you have your movie image made. Photoshop is great for this, but you can use anything really. If you want to get a screenshot of a piece of footage from your movie, your going to have to capture it from your sony vegas, as it renders the video as an image on the preview box. You'll find it most difficult on some systems to screenshot movies from a realplayer or windows media player or such things like it.

3) Start uploading the video. You want a bare minimum of One Main-Stream Direct Download, and one Live-Stream Site. A Direct Download is a link to download the file itself. Filefront is good for this. A Live-Stream site could be like YouTube or GoogleVideo, where you can watch the video live on a page without having to download it. Filefront also has a live stream if you upload your movie as a "video" instead of a file. For a listing on sites that are recommended for movie uploading, go here: http://www.mmorpgforum.net/showthread.php?t=336

4) IMPORTANT TRICK: Okay, now you need to think of what day in the week it is. Yea I'm not kidding. A video's success can very well depend on the time it is released. You didn't see the last Saw 4 movie released in a Monday night at 3am did you? Not many people would have seen it then. You don't want to submit your movie on say a Wednesday afternoon, and have it coming out on a Thursday early morning.. Who would see it? Not many people. There is two good times to submit. Friday night (Saturday Morning if your a premium user, you'll get approved faster), so that it hits the page on the weekend. The weekend is when most people aren't working, or at school, and are not just on wow, but watching wow videos too. You'll get a great many more views during this time. The other best time is on Monday afternoon (Monday Night if your premium)... Tuesday is maintenance day for WoW. This means 10+ Million wow players have nothing to do until that afternoon. You can only imagine the amount of traffic that bombards the wow fan websites, forums, and movie sites during that time. Having your movie show up on the front page during the time WoW is down will guarantee it a lot of views.

5) Once you have two or more working links, and your timing is right... submit the video. Make sure your description is accurate, as well as the Time and File size of the video. Round the time of your video. If your video is 13 minutes 30 seconds, round it up to 14 Minutes. If it's 13 min 29 sec, round down to 13 min. Add your upload links to the page and make sure everything is in order, then press Submit.

6) You'll now be on a page to upload your image and your movie. Upload the image first, it takes only seconds. Then upload your movie asap. Make sure it gets uploaded, check it frequently to make sure you didn't accidently get "Timed Out" (Meaning your upload connection was cut for many number of reasons, if it happens, re-upload it right away.)

7) Once uploaded, your done.. PHEW! Take a break my friend, and great job.

In a little while the full staff of Blizzard will see it, see how amazing you are, and award you a 600% speed flying epic Onyxia mount for your incredible efforts!

Okay so I lied obviously... but hey.... at least your video is up.




I'll leave you with something I've recently learned myself. There will always be two types of people out there who will rate your video low. No matter how great your video is, no matter how much work you put into it, some people just won't like it. You can't impress everyone. The other type of people are the real critics, who think if your not taking on 8 enemies with no gear on and no talents spent, then your not good. Ignore them, those are the people who suck so badly at PvP, they are left only with mocking the abilities of others to make themselves feel better about what they can't do.
But no matter what you get rated, read the comments, read every single one. Ignore the people I described above, and learn from the rest. Some people will give you advice, some will QQ, others will go on and on to start an argument. When you see those high ratings where people say "Great job I loved it" and things like that, those are what you need to appreciate. If you can make one person happy from your video, just one, you did your job.



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This guide was written to help others who are going through the experiences I've recently had to go through. I almost quit making movies because of some pretty nasty critics out there... But then again, do you think directors in Hollywood quit directing movies when some crazy people say their movies suck? Its the people who enjoy your movie, that make the movie worth it.

Enjoy!

Last edited by Vandalist : 11-13-2007 at 08:04 PM.
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