ChrisReid

Kilrah Moreira created today's music video. It's a tribute to the destructive side of Wing Commander 4. Rammstein provides the explosive soundtrack. You can grab the 40 meg clip here. The music videos we've reported on lately have been neat, but now I'm looking forward to more people creating original animations with some of the great 3d modeling tools which have come out recently. There are quite a few different creative outlets that I think Wing Commander fans will be exploring in the near future.

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Original update published on May 15, 2005

AD

It's nice to see so many different fans taking an active interest in WC this way. You've put together an interesting piece here.

One question I have is if you used The DVD version or extracted the movies from the CD version? I think you used the DVD version, But if that's the case, 40 MB is an awfully huge file size for the amount of compression that is visible in your video. Honestly a 40mb wmv should have very little quality loss.

Bob McDob

Seconded. I myself am currently at work on a Privateer music video with original animation. though progress on it is going slowly, with a number of computer problems and finding my way around max. That, along with the requisite finals, is why I haven't done much work on Reckoning as of late.

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Aboard one destroyer, [Admiral Jacky Fisher] saw the sign "UT VENIANT OMNES" in gold letters mounted on the bridge. "What does that mean?" he asked. "Let 'em all come", replied the youthful lieutenant in command.
Robert Massie

If it's stupid but it works, then it isn't stupid.

HammerHead

I am also using max, though I'd love to hear on an easier, less (much less) complex software (though I probably woun't use it, as it took me over a year and a half fiddling my way around max...)

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"We're in the middle of 'deep space', just on the corner of 'No' and 'Where'..."
Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, Firefly class.

Kilrah

First of all, thanks.

Second. I extracted the movies from the CD version with HCl’s program, as for the file size/quality relation I can’t say much. I’m not an expert at this kind of stuff, in fact my first contact with video editing was with the WC3 Tribute (about a month ago) and this WC4 video is my second work. I have used Windows Movie Maker and honestly was really disappointed with its capabilities, there aren’t many options in terms of effects (I could be wrong, but I think there are none) and the final output file (image quality and resolution versus file size).
The file size had to be 40MB because otherwise the resolution would be too small.

Third. I am currently trying to learn MAX, hopefully in the future I may be able to share with you some models and animations, but that should still take some time as I don’t have much spare time to dedicate to such a demanding software (but wonderfully powerful).

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"He never said it would be easy. What He said was that it would be worthy."

TomGaines

I think the resolution of the CD Version is lower than in your video. Therefore a higher resolution won't make the video look better but makes the compression artifacts more visible.
Other than that, your video looks good, especially if you hadn't had the possibilities of inserting effects.

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tom-gaines.de Wing Commander Resource

AD

Windows movie make does have some effects but it takes some playing with the program to figure out where everything is and what everything does. Personally I prefer to make movies using other more complex editing software.

If I want to make WMV version for whatever reason, I use Windows Media Converter (which I think is available free from MS). Anyway Windows Media Converter gives you loads of options for compression and filesize, video resize, audio option, etc. Its a great tool to convert completed projects into WMV format (you can even make WMVHD files if you want, but there is no advantage to do that with WC videos for the same reason Tom said). There is really no reason to make your video anything more than 320x160 though (although with some smoothing options you can artificially make a "better" looking video. The artifacts wont be as noticable but the end result will be slightly blurry)

I don't think the CD version compresses the Black bars to make it wide screen does it? You can get a quality boost without increasing file size or picture size by not encoding black bars into the movie. Just make sure you set the resolution apropriately for your files (wc4cd is probably a 2:1 ratio). Windows movie maker may not have quite the right ratio available (although I'm pretty sure you can encode in 16x6 (which the wc4 files aren't) and would mean making your file (which would look streched) and then resizing it apropriately using something like Windows media converter.

Kilrah

Thanks for the tips AD and Tom, you’re most kind. I’ll try to remind that next time.

AD, if it’s possible could you suggest a better video editing software? Preferably a free one?
I have tried to find the Windows Media Converter you mentioned but after using google and searching the Microsoft site I couldn’t find a program with that name (it was a fast search, I’m at my job and obviously I can’t spend too much time with this). If you know a direct link to it I would appreciate it.
Again, thanks.

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"He never said it would be easy. What He said was that it would be worthy."

AD

Sorry. It's actually called Windows Media Encoder 9 series... not converter. My fault. You should be able to get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

As far as Free editing software goes, I'm not sure what's available. Quite often you will get "free" versions of some editing software with cd and dvd writers and sometimes mobo's too, but these tend to be glitchy and neutered. There may be some open source stuff availably but Tom or BrynS or someone else might know more about that. As far as consumer level programs that are relatively inexpensive and have a lot of usefull tools and functions you could go with something like the newest version of Cyberlinks Power Director, or Adobe Premiere Elements (a more intuitive home user friendly version of the pro software). They shouldnt cost more than 70 -100 dollars US.