How To make your WoW movies in Superior HD quality

[soto]

Hi everyone, I found this on the arenajunkies forums and it is quite a cool guide for those who are interested in making a world of warcraft movie.

720P high quality guide




note that this guide only focusses on the encoding part, i will not cover any editing, after effects ,typesetting or filtering as i am a noob in those myself.



if you follow everything in this guide, you will be able to make a video that is almost a 100% copy of real gameplay in video quality.


1. Required software
virtualdubmod
MEGUI
avisynth
fraps



2. installing and updating the software

1) install all 4 of the above.
2)update MEGUI.
3)go to wherever you extracted virtualdubmod, click auxsetup.Exe
and install the handlers.



3. recording

1) go to your fraps movie settings.
if possible save your video on a different hard drive to avoid lag while
recording, it makes a TON of difference !
2) always record FULL-SIZE
3) do not record sound, fraps sound recorder sounds like shit and you
don't want those annoying games sounds interupt your awesome movie
right?
4) always record at 29.97 fps to avoid interlacing or any other ****ups
while encoding





4. preparing your encode

cool, you have come this far. if you are here you should already have a HUGE uncompressed fraps file of a few gigabytes big or even several huge files. to make it easy for ourselves rename em all in the right order to : 1.avi , 2.avi 3.avi etc etc etc till you renamed them all. after that move them to a simple to find location like c:/ or e:/ or whatever, the shorter the path the better.




5. making an AVS script

create a new .txt file in notepad

movie1 = Avisource ("E:\fraps\1.avi")
movie2 = Avisource ("E:\fraps\2.avi") *
movie3 = Avisource ("E:\fraps\3.avi")
movie1+movie2+movie3
bilinearresize(1280,720) **
ConvertToYV12()

* do this till you have every seperate file you have recorded.


**
set this to the resolution you want your movie to be.it's best to keep it the
same as the resolution you recorded at, but if you record at a huge resolution like i do(1920x1080) you can resize it whatever you want as long as the aspect ratio stays the same.

file -> save as -> myvideo.avs. at type you choose all fiiles, NOT .TXT

this is an example of my 720p script:
(right click and "view image" or "view source" or "view image location" depending on your browser to see it if its to small to see)





6. loading the script into MEGUI

open your megui:
at the avisynth textbox you press "..." and go to your myvideo.avs file
if you have done everything right till now, a window with your video should pop up and all your clips should be in the order you have put them in the script. if not you get an error and that means you did something wrong somewhere (or i missed something in this guide).

close the window and go back to your main menu.

1)set your file format to MP4
2)encoder settings :x264 dxva -HD HQ or some other HQ x264 profile
3)press the config button and drag the preset button to slower and change the bitrate to 3750-4000(+-30mb/min), press ok and it will ask you to save; choose no and your profile should change to scratchpad.
4)press the enque button in the video tab, when you go to the quene page you should now have a job ready.

example:



click the start button, sit back for a few hours watching the progress bar fill slowly.

gratz, you have just completed the video part of this guide, now on to the audio



7. creating an audio file

this is the hardest part to explain, you need some kind of software to cut off a song(or collection of songs) to the exact same length of your video or you will end up with a black screen till your video ends.

tldr; you need a single audio file that has the same length as your video.

i used sony vegas for this but there are probably enough freeware programs to split and merge .mp3 files

in sony vegas you just drag and drop all your videos nicely after each other on the first timeline,after that you drag and drop all your music files on the second timeline.for the last mp3 you have shorten the end till it matches your video timeline. after you done that, you hover over right top corner at the end of your second timeline and a fade offset should appear, you hold your left mousebutton and drag it back anywhere between 8-15 seconds so your music fades out at the end.

note: you can also add a 3th timeline with ventrilo audio etc.





after you done that : file -> render as -> mp3 audio, template you pick default, click custom: bitrate to 192kbit and 48000khz set it to highest quality. after that you click ok and then save.

after +-1 minute you should now have an mp3 file with all your audio for your video.



8. muxing your video and audio in 1 file.

this is the last and easyest part.
open megui again and go to tools -> muxer -> mp4 muxer
your input file should be your rendered video, make sure the fps is still set to 29,97.
after that add your audio and press quene.

now go to your quene page, start your jobs and you are done !
wait another minute or 2 and your final video is ready

[teufel123]

nice guide thx

[Haith]

Thanks for posting this! I've always had trouble making my movies turn out well, this should help

[abhorsenjay]

+Rep from I, looks like you put a decent amount of work into this

[Alyfast]

Thank you very much for this Guide!

But I have one question: I followed every point in your guide up to the MEGUI configuration.
When I click on "Enqeue" it says "Audio Input, audio output and audiosettings must all be configurated"
What did I made wrong?

[decker]

Or; Get a Mac =)

haha really good guide for windows users.

- decker

[valithria]

That looks a bit complicated. Why not just put your fraps footage into sony vegas and render as 720p or even 1080p?

[chrissybaby]

Great guide! looks like you put alot of effort into this, thx.

[k4ligul4]

For Nvidia users, check out Nvidia Online Store - Badaboom

Its easy to use and it has all your standards...