mrimer
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TRAILER LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdRFu90hTs


Now that TCB is being "officially" released, I'd like to put together a video trailer we can use for showcasing the game (e.g. post on youtube, link to from our site, etc). I already have a story board written up with a timed script, choreographed background music, game pics and pre-recorded demo scenes to show.

There are two tasks left that I need help with.

1) We need someone to do some video capture. There are about 20 short game scenes I've marked that need to be captured spanning one minute and 15s or so. If you have software and experience with doing video capture, please let me know and we can get right to work! [Edit: Captures completed by slimm tom -- thanks! You may choose your prize at any time.]

2) Editing the captured video. This would involve splicing the scenes from part 1 together, adding some fades, panning, zoom-in, cropping portions the game display, superimposing text that fades in and out on top of the video, and dubbing the music track on top of all that. If you have the software and experience with video editing, you can help with this step.

Those who help on either task to produce material we end up including in the trailer receive a free DROD game on CD or a prize from the prize pile for their efforts (your choice). If someone is willing to do both of these tasks, the work would probably go more smoothly since you'd be in charge of it all and you get double prizes. Also, this would be a great way to help contribute to the future promotion of DROD and TCB.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 05-12-2008 08:15 PM]

slimm tom
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Sent you a PM.

calamarain
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Not sure if it helps, but do you want any of my artwork? It would all be done in the style of the pic I did for "Top Drawer"? Free of charge No CD required.

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My Holds

mrimer
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calamarain wrote:
Not sure if it helps, but do you want any of my artwork? It would all be done in the style of the pic I did for "Top Drawer"? Free of charge No CD required.

Thanks for the kind offer. No, I don't want to include any art not actually part of the game in a game trailer. Otherwise, I'm sure we'd have some new players who get confused about where those graphics exist in the game. I want Caravel to keep its "street cred" (not that you're suggesting otherwise, of course).

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

calamarain
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mrimer wrote:
Thanks for the kind offer. No, I don't want to include any art not actually part of the game in a game trailer.

No, I know precisely what you mean. Computer game adverts always used to irritate me with that kind of thing - implying that the cutscene/FMV graphics were what the whole thing consisted of. Can't help any further then, no skill with motion capture

EDIT ...actually, an idea just occurred. Could I get permission from Caravel to use the TCB graphics for the purposes of making 'linker' images? You know, the sort of ones where if people want to link to TCB from their site, they can use one of these graphics, about 80x20 pixel size or slightly bigger.

____________________________
My Holds

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[Last edited by calamarain at 05-09-2008 06:28 PM]

Pneh
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Well, I have a little experience of editing films. But my skills are pretty standard and I don't really know how to do more advanced editing. I have edited about 6-7 small films (about 3 min each) as schoolworks and simple playing around with the camera. But I'm not sure I fit for this position.

PS. I'm using Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11 for editing and yes I aquired it legally.

PSPS. Pinnacle Studio Plus is a editing program designed for editing homevideos and such. The program has several effects that can be applied to the film. I don't really know if it can make animations of any kind, but it handles greenscreen and chromakey.

____________________________

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[Last edited by Pneh at 05-09-2008 07:00 PM]

Tuttle
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I've got a copy of Camtasia Studio which does screen and audio recording. It's not exactly designed for games and it does drop video frames if I hold in movement keys, but paced more slowly it would cope.

As for experience with either recording or editing... nope. But if nobody else has stuff to do the recording with, I'm happy to give it a shot and see how it comes out.

mrimer
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Pneh wrote:
Well, I have a little experience of editing films. But my skills are pretty standard and I don't really know how to do more advanced editing. I have edited about 6-7 small films (about 3 min each) as schoolworks and simple playing around with the camera. But I'm not sure I fit for this position.

PS. I'm using Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11 for editing and yes I aquired it legally.

Thanks, Tuttle and Pneh, for your offers to help with video recording and editing. Pneh, do you know how to perform editing operations like what I mentioned above? I don't want people to have to spend a lot of time wrestling with software to get it to do what they want if they've never tried these things before. I'd rather this be a fun project for you when you already know what you're doing, rather than frustrating.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 05-09-2008 07:00 PM]

Pneh
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Well, I'm not sure if I'm able to do fades, panning, zoom-in, cropping portions the game display, superimposing text that fades in and out on top of the video. I'm not that familiar to Pinnacle yet.

But I'll read as much of the manual as possible tonight, and we'll see if I can find anything useful.


PS. I will be out of touch tomorrow. I will be riding rollercoasters in Gothenburg with my classmates.

____________________________

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[Last edited by Pneh at 05-09-2008 09:07 PM]

Pneh
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Ok, I've read the manual a little and I found how to do pan-and-zoom animations, superimposing, keyframing, chromakey and som other stuff. I havn't tested it yet but it seems like I perhaps fit in this project afterall. I'll read more of the manual on the bus to Gothenburg wich leaves in 1 hour.

____________________________

mrimer
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Pneh wrote:
Ok, I've read the manual a little and I found how to do pan-and-zoom animations, superimposing, keyframing, chromakey and som other stuff. I havn't tested it yet but it seems like I perhaps fit in this project afterall. I'll read more of the manual on the bus to Gothenburg wich leaves in 1 hour.

That's great! Slimm Tom has recorded video (and fast!) and I've PMed you to help with editing.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

slimm tom
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mrimer wrote:
1) We need someone to do some video capture. There are about 20 short game scenes I've marked that need to be captured spanning one minute and 15s or so. If you have software and experience with doing video capture, please let me know and we can get right to work! [Edit: Captures completed by slimm tom -- thanks! You may choose your prize at any time.]

I took the opportunity to get myself a JTRH CD. I'll play it right away after my broken download link is fixed. Thanks again, Mike!

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[Last edited by slimm tom at 05-11-2008 06:25 PM]

mrimer
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Woo! I've completed editing the trailer and have published my first video on YouTube. You may watch the TCB trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdRFu90hTs


If you want to embed a link to the video on your site, use this html:

<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3rdRFu90hTs"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3rdRFu90hTs" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>

We'll put one of these on the CaravelGames TCB page sometime soon. [edit: It's there now.]

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 05-12-2008 06:42 PM]

Rheb
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mrimer wrote:
Woo! I've completed editing the trailer and have published my first video on YouTube. You may watch the TCB trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdRFu90hTs


If you want to embed a link to the video on your site, use this html:

<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3rdRFu90hTs"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3rdRFu90hTs" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>

We'll put one of these on the CaravelGames TCB page sometime soon.

Let me be the first to say: Wooah, Great!!!

____________________________
Voligner is my very own DROD-like game. Please check it out!

NiroZ
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The voice clips were well used. Bravo

larrymurk
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Very nice

calamarain
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Very nice indeed.

*goes to promote it*

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Jatopian
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Beethro is definitely moribund in some of those clips. Also, it's kind of unfortunate how YouTube's compression makes it look like it uses about a quarter as many bits as it does.

But I think it's pretty good. And I totally just set someone up for the reply "Very well, very well indeed."

...wonder why Rheb's comment is marked as spam?

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

slimm tom
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I must say the finished trailer looks very nice! I didn't actually had an idea what it was going to look like, and I did the recording. Fortunately it looks great! Special thanks to Mike for his great editing!

Jatopian wrote:Beethro is definitely moribund in some of those clips. Also, it's kind of unfortunate how YouTube's compression makes it look like it uses about a quarter as many bits as it does.

Yeah, maybe it's a good idea to also upload the original high-quality file somewhere. (Could be on the Caravel site)

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[Last edited by slimm tom at 05-12-2008 05:06 PM]

mrimer
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slimm tom wrote:
I must say the finished trailer looks very nice! I didn't actually had an idea what it was going to look like, and I did the recording. Fortunately it looks great! Special thanks to Pneh for his great editing!

Thanks again for your help, Tom! (Unfortunately, Pneh didn't get to do the editing -- I beat him to it in my impatience. I'm going to give him the prize of his choice anyway, for stepping up and for his time involved in trying to learn and work with his editing utility.)

Yeah, maybe it's a good idea to also upload the original high-quality file somewhere. (Could be on the Caravel site)

I have a x2 size version of the posted video, but I edited all the video segments to be in 320x240 resolution in the first place so I myself could most closely control the look of the final YouTube video. That is, I don't have any final 1024x768 video lurking somewhere. I'll attach the larger video here when I get home tonight.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 05-12-2008 05:07 PM]

slimm tom
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mrimer wrote:

slimm tom wrote:
I must say the finished trailer looks very nice! I didn't actually had an idea what it was going to look like, and I did the recording. Fortunately it looks great! Special thanks to Pneh for his great editing!

Thanks again for your help, Tom! (Unfortunately, Pneh didn't get to do the editing -- I beat him to it in my impatience. I'm going to give him the prize of his choice anyway, for stepping up and for his time involved in trying to learn and work with his editing utility.)

Okay, thanks for clearing that up!

Briareos
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mrimer wrote:
I have a x2 size version of the posted video, but I edited all the video segments to be in 320x240 resolution in the first place so I myself could most closely control the look of the final YouTube video.

Ummm... so I guess you didn't want to give users with broadband a chance to get a 480x360 version?

np: The Notwist - Shrink (Shrink)

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

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[Last edited by Briareos at 05-12-2008 05:51 PM]

Pneh
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This was a fun project! I learned a lot and got paid for doing nothing!

____________________________

vittro
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Nice, nice... Reporting this video on some forums to get new players.

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http://vittorioromeo.info

mrimer
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Briareos wrote:

mrimer wrote:
I have a x2 size version of the posted video, but I edited all the video segments to be in 320x240 resolution in the first place so I myself could most closely control the look of the final YouTube video.

Ummm... so I guess you didn't want to give users with broadband a chance to get a 480x360 version?

Oh, I didn't know about that option. I'm new at this. Hmmm...now that I have the 320x240 video up there, do I need to upload a completely new video at 640x480 to make that option available?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

ErikH2000
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The trailer looks great! I've watched it 5 times now just for fun.

It's interesting that if you go to youtube, the videos it picks in the "Related Videos" are a reasonable selection of other games you might expect DROD players to like.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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calamarain
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Well, that was quick I just posted the TCB trailer in a few IRC channels I'm in... one former player of DROD just took it back up and four others downloaded the TCB demo. Hopefully there'll be some new players as a result.

____________________________
My Holds

noma
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I swear: it's like seeing a video of one of my dreams after too much DROD(d)ing.

My comment: the word "DROD" is seen twice, but there's no reference as to what it stands for, which, IMO, is missing out on some serious *drama* opportunity. Another floaty text screen maybe?

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[Last edited by noma at 05-13-2008 01:27 AM]

NiroZ
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noma wrote:
I swear: it's like seeing a video of one of my dreams after too much DROD(d)ing.

My comment: the word "DROD" is seen twice, but there's no reference as to what it stands for, which, IMO, is missing out on some serious *drama* opportunity. Another floaty text screen maybe?

Nar. Better to make people curious enough to find out for themselves.

calamarain
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mrimer,

There is one thing I would recommend go in there - a link to the game itself. Currently it's a nice trailer, but there's no link in the description to take you to the Caravel website. Something you could just click on to take you here would be good

____________________________
My Holds