Movie Tutorial

By (SaM)

Going to make a movie? Here you can read how to do it.

Recording

• Start up Fraps. Set it to record at Full-size and at 30fps (or lower if the video is choppy.)
• Start up LFS. Go to Options > Misc and put on Limit framerate on 30fps.
• In-game, play the replay. (If you want to, press shift + U to set up a user camera. Press Follow car: (PLAYER) to let the camera follow the nearest car. Press SPACE to remove the usercam menu.)
• Press SHIFT + F to remove the on-screen displays. Press SHIFT + F for the second time and it will disable the chat and the replay timeline.
• Press F2 to slow down the replay at 0.5 speed.
• Press the record button you specified in Fraps. When finished, stop recording with the same button.
• Start up VirtualDub. Open the avi file you recorded. Go to Video > Frame rate. Click on Process every other frame and press OK, or click on 'Change to [ ] frames per second' and put down the double amount of fps you set Fraps to. The last option will give the video more fps but you will only notice the difference if you will use slowmotion on this clip in the movie. This is because movies generally dont have more than 30fps.
• To reclaim the distorted sound from the video, in VirtualDub, go to Audio > Full Processing Mode, Audio > Use Advanced Filters, Audio > Filters... . Click 'Add', and select the Filters: Input > New Rate > Resample > Output. Click on the 'New Rate' filter, and then press the configure button, and finally, double the existing Frequency value.
• If this is all the movie needs, 1 clip, go to Video > Compression and choose one of the codecs (XviD or DivX are recommended). Press F7 to save it and it's done.
• If you want to edit this clip together with some other clips into a movie, press F7 without compressing it and save it. Now it's time for editing.

Editing

If you have Adobe Premiere Pro and know at least some basics of movie editing, use that. If you're able to use Premiere, you dont need instructions from me, if you dont know how to use Premiere, start with Windows Movie Maker found in the start menu.

You can always get to use Premiere if you want to go more professional.

Import the clips you made and put them in order, make them longer or shorter and add some transitions if you want. Dont forget, the best transitions wich I'd recommend if you want to use a transitions, is the dissolve, or fade from/to black. The other ones looks pretty unprofessional. When you're done, add a title and credits if you want, then finish it and save it.

Editing (aviSynth)

Another great (and free) video editing program is aviSynth. AviSynth is not actually a program by itself. You basically install a frame server. This frame server reads a script that you write, and returns frames to a program, such as VirtualDub. There is also a IDE that you can download that allows you to see the different commands that you can use to modify your video.

1. Installation
   1. First, you need to download and install VirtualDub, as explained above.
   2. Second, go to The AviSynth Sourceforge page, and download the latest version of the program. You may also want to download AVSEdit, an IDE to edit AviSynth scripts
   3. Lastly, install both the programs onto your computer
2. Your First Movie
   1. Follow the instructions on Recording Video from LFS, and record three different "clips" of video.
   2. Create an AviSynth script, and preview it:
      • Open up AVSEdit, if you chose to download it. Otherwise, open up notepad.
      • Type clip1 = DirectShowSource("F:\fraps\clip1.avi"), entering your filename where mine is.
      • Do the same thing for the remaining clips of video, but instead of clip1 you must use a different variable such as clip2
      • When you are finished typing in all of the video clips, and assigning them to variables, the last thing to do for our simple movie is join all of our clips. When you do not assign the results of a function to a variable, then the data is "returned" to the frameserver, which generates your video. So, type in UnAlignedSplice(clip1, clip2, clip3) and, for any remaining clips just add them into the function, using a comma to separate them.
      • Now, we will render our script using VirtualDub. Go to File>Save, and save your script as anything ending in ".avs". Now, open up VirtualDub. All you have to do is drag the script from wherever you saved it onto the program. All you have to do once you want to save the video, is follow the directions for compression in the Recording section of this page.

Advice

My advice on making movies is keep it viewer friendly. Think what kind of movie it is, is it a cool movie with lots of cool action, edit the shots quickly and choose quick music, but dont make the movie messy, where lots of stuff happens and you dont know what's happening.

If the movie is more gentle, focus on recording the action clearly and in stylish camera positions+movements.

I know this sounds obvious, but it's often forgotten. A good movie should be a whole package where everything is working together.

Make the editing and effects the same as the kind of movie.

Watch the movie every now and then when you make progress and think what it would be like if you were a viewer. What would he expect and what would he like to see. To stop messages from being displayed in Multiplayer replays, open up cfg.txt wich is in the LFS folder. Search for 'MPR Message Block' and change it to 1, change it back to 0 afterwards if you want. Remeber to save it when LFS isnt running.

Tips on the SHIFT + U usercamera. Avoid big fields of view. More than 90 degrees is too much. On the other hand, a Field of view smaller than 90 degrees will look like zooming wich does look good.

Also, use at least some View smoothing to make the movement of the camera go more dynamic and not instant. A low movement speed is also recommended, I use something around 3 to 20m/s.

Another advice is keep the continuity. Never go back in time (only if you want to get a flashback effect.)

Good luck and have fun!