Whether it's to impress your friends, expand your production credits or just win a film contest, this page is designed to help you make your own movies. With your avatar as the star, the three steps detailed here can help you make a great short film.
Each step covers the basics from the screen-capture of the action, the editing of your shots together and then how to output them for upload to our servers. The different software packages used for these tutorials are suggested, not required, but are all either shipped with Windows XP and Vista or are available for download as freeware.
Utherverse® does not officially endorse any of the software used in these tutorials and encourages you to use whatever software you possess or feel most familiar with.
Before You Start Capturing Video You have your story planned out, your avatar and friends have their outfits on and all the props are in the right places... Now what's left? Before you call 'Action' read the steps below so that you can capture your video as it happens. This tutorial is based on the freeware AviScreen available at http://www.bobyte.com/AviScreen/DownloadC.asp.
Two things to keep in mind, use whatever software you feel most comfortable with, and unless you want everyone's name floating in your scenes, press 'f9' to clear up in-world screen clutter.
Step 1 Open your screen capture software.
Step 2 Set your screen capture area. Under the 'Capture Area' tab you will find the capture area settings. Click the down arrow on the drop-down menu and select 640x480 (you can go larger or custom, but select this as a minimum) . Press 'Set' and you will be presented with a red dotted rectangle that you will position on your desktop, place it so as to be over the area you want to capture. In the case of a custom resolution capture, you can also scale this box. Once you have 'Set' the position, deselect 'Show the cursor' so you do not record the mouse pointer. You may also wish to deselect 'Follow the cursor mode' otherwise your capture area will lock itself to your mouse pointer and move around as you move your mouse.
Step 3 Set your video options. Under the 'Video' tab you will find video options. First, press the drop down menu arrow for compression* and select 'ffdshow Video Codec' and then 'Set' the options as follows:
Apply your setting and then adjust your 'frames per second' to 30fps.
* if you do not use compression when recording, you will generate very large file sizes quickly. 30 seconds of uncompressed video can easily take up 500Mb or more of hard drive space and can be very unforgiving when it comes to editing (depending on your computers set-up) your final movie. The hard drive space required for the uncompressed footage of a 20 min video would be in the tens of Gb's at a minimum.
Step 4 Set your Output Folder options. Under the 'Folder' tab you can select your destination folder. 'Set' your base output folder to a folder of your choosing.
Step 5 Press 'Capture Video' and you are ready to go. By default there is a 3 second delay before recording begins. You will know that recording has begun when you see the yellow and red spinning reel icon in the bottom right corner of your task bar. When you have captured your scene, 'right-click' the icon and 'left-click' stop. You can then review your scene shot and decide whether or not to proceed to the next cut or do another take..
Edit Video Clips
Step 1 Open your Video Editing Software (this tutorial uses Windows Movie Maker Vista Edition which ships as part of Windows, the XP Edition of the software has some minor interface differences which will be highlighted).
Step 2 Import your video clip(s). You can do this by either clicking the 'Import Media' button on the top left and navigating for your video clip or by using the 'drag and drop' method from windows explorer.
Step 3 Time and Cut your clip(s). Select your video clip and drag it into the preview window on the right. Using the time slider below, select your start point for your clip (if needed). Once your slider is in the right position, click 'Split'. This way you can trim off unwanted footage from the start. This will create a new clip. Drag that clip into the preview window and repeat the sequence to trim any unwanted video off the end of your clip. Drag your trimmed clip onto the first open square in the Storyboard timeline. Repeat this step for any other clips, placing them in the timeline in the order you want them to appear.
Step 4 Apply transitions to your clips. Unless you want to have clips transition with a 'hard' or 'jump' cut, you will want to apply a transition. By default the transitions are approx 1.25 seconds in duration and will divide that time between the two affected clips, keep that in mind when editing the source clips. You can adjust this default time, but it applies to all transitions. Select your transitions tab and scroll through the available transitions until you find the style you wish to use. To apply it, drag and drop it onto the timeline between the two clips you wish it to apply to. You will be able to preview the transition in the preview window.
Step 5 Place Visual Effects. In your Effects tab you will find many different video effects that range from color correction to warping. These effects are drag and drop, can be applied over each other and are able to be previewed in the preview window. be aware, any effect applied applies to the entire length of a clip.
Step 6 Publish your movie. When you are ready to publish, after saving your project*, click on the 'Publish to' (XP - go to File>Save Movie) tab titled 'This Computer' (XP - select 'My Computer'). You will then be prompted to name your movie and to select a location for it to be rendered to. After you have chosen the location, you will need to declare settings for your movie. Click on the 'More Settings' box (XP - click on 'other settings') and choose 'DV-AVI (NTSC) '(XP - under 'other settings' select 'show more choices' and apply the codec labelled as 'DV-AVI (NTSC)') you can now click 'Publish' (XP - click 'Next'). Your computer may require some time to render this movie and times increase depending on duration of footage, number of effects and transition etc that you have applied to the video clips. It is advisable to not perform any other processor intensive tasks while your computer renders your final movie, so it is best to close all other programs. Go stretch your legs, you've earned it.
*it is a very good practice to save your work as you go, possibly as often as after each major step is completed or every 5 minutes... trust me. Also, the final .AVI can be quite large in size, due to the nature of the codec, make sure you have ample empty space on your destination hard drive.
Encoding & Compression
Before you Compress and Encode your Video This tutorial uses the Freeware called Handbrake. Utherverse suggests that you use this software, not only due to it being free-of-charge, but we have added an encoding preset called "Film Festival". This preset will compress and encode your video so as to ensure its compliance with our in world requirements. This preset sets the resolution, bitrate and codec. Please do not edit the settings once the preset has been selected as this could disallow your video from entry into any contests or in-world viewings (espically due to upload size restrictions or bandwidth consumption in-world). If you must use a different software client for output, please match the settings to the ones we have in our custom preset.
For our users we have two options; option one is a self-extracting .ZIP file which launches HandBrake with the preset already installed (Windows only). For our users who already have HandBrake, or want to output with HandBrake from a Mac or Linux based system, we have a .ZIP file which has the .XML preset for encoding with our requirements (you will need to copy that .XML into the HandBrake program folder).
Step 1 Download HandBrake (above) complete with the Utherverse Compression Settings, or apply the XML Presets (above) to a copy of HandBrake already installed on your machine (for Mac and Linux users). Open HandBrake.
Step 2 In the right hand Presets dialogue window, you will see a Preset group named Utherverse Digital Inc. Inside that preset group you will find a Preset named 'Film Festival'. Click on that Preset to apply it. This will apply the required Output Settings to your project. For any videos intended for upload to our servers, do not change these settings, as they have been optimised for display in-world.
Step 3 Select a source video to encode. Click on the 'Source' button on the top left and go to 'Video File'. You will then need to navigate to the file you wish to encode for upload. Once you have selected your file, click 'Open' to load your selection. HandBrake will take a moment to read the file.
Step 4 Set a destination for your new video. Click on 'Browse' in the destination field. navigate for a location on your computer for the new video to be output to. Make sure to name your video.
Step 5 At this point it never hurts to double check your settings to ensure you are encoding the right video.
Step 6 Add the Video to your 'Queue' to begin the encoding process. The 'Encode Queue' window will open. Click 'Encode'. The command line progress window will open and you can enjoy a moment or two as you watch the percentage complete numbers change as your video encodes. This process can take just a few moments up to a few hours depending on the length of your video, initial resolution and PC hardware configuration.
