Video Editing

[volcy]

Hey all - I was curious how Vodka edits their videos. How do they record multiple people?

[protput]

Each raider records his own footage, they combine it and render it into 1 video ofcourse

[volcy]

So the program Fraps records Hi-def and the files are HUGE...gigs worth for one boss fight. How would each raider upload their footage to the editor?

[protput]

Render it and put it in their public dropbox folder/torrent I assume.

[vesseblah]

So the program Fraps records Hi-def and the files are HUGE...gigs worth for one boss fight. How would each raider upload their footage to the editor?

Use high quality compression for manageable temporary files and upload.

I've done few videos with multiple povs from boss kills, and the process went something like:

1) All record with fraps at home

2) People who need to upload footage to me load the raw fraps file into virtualdub and compress it using x264vfw codec using ratefactor of about 18 which means roughly 10mbps quality. For comparison youtube uses 4.5mbps, commercial BluRay movies 25mbps and HD TV broadcasts 10-20mbps so the quality is way above youtube and not that far from commercial TV broadcasts even. Compressed video will take anything from 500 megs to 1.5 gigs depending on length and how much dark there is on the screen.

3) People upload the compressed file either to dropbox and email me the link, or using skype file transfer feature. Uploading gigabyte will take a long time, and it's best to leave it running overnight

4) When I have the h264 compressed videos downloaded, I re-compress those in virtualdub (and also resize the original 1280x1024 / 1680x1050 / 1920x1200 material to 1920x1080 @ 30fps) using lossless codec (lagarith or huffyuv) into huge avi again (approximately same size as the raw fraps video is) for faster editing. h264 video takes shitload of computing power, and my i5-2500K can't run realtime preview of three or four video streams. Doing preview out of the lossless compressed videos out of multiple HDDs and SSDs will take very little cpu time and works practically in realtime.

Working on a 10 minute bosskill with 3 povs can end up using 200-300 gigs of HDD space spread over 2-3 discs for temporary files using the method described above.

[volcy]

Wow what a great explanation! I really appreciate the rundown! This will be a great start for me to learn how to do this! Although I only have an AMD Phenom II X4 965 processor (which was one the best buys a few years ago) - I don't think it's powerful enough sometimes. I try to stream live and my processor is always maxed out using FME vs. an i7. I have an i7 2600k processor just sitting on my desk but with no mobo to use it with. I also have just a single SSD (samsung 830 256gb) and x2 1terabyte drives for storage / 16gb ram. So would it be recommended I upgrade my motherboard and install my i7 before attempting this? Are there any other tips or software you use for the actual editing process?

Also - once the file is uploaded to dropbox - how big are the files usually? Do you buy additional storage for dropbox? Won't it take a long time to download the uploaded file to the editors pc?