Queries About Ns Movie-making

Bumster · February 2005

<div class="IPBDescription">A little more subtle than usual</div> Hi everyone,

I've got the whole record/stop, viewdemo, startmovie/stopmovie sorted out, I can make movies without sound. The next step I'm working for is a movie with properly synched sound.

My current method is to record with TotalRecorder after the movie screenshots have been taken (i.e. replay the demo and record its audio), but if you mess with the frames in the movie at all, this piece of audio rapidly becomes desynched.

So does anyone know a method to ensure synch between video and audio?

Also:
Does anyone know how to get free flying observer? Whenever I try it, I'm stuck in either first person or locked third person - even in an empty server I can't mouselook.

Further:
How do you get rid of the game HUD and the crap that demos make appear? (eg "This
server does not support scripting", the commander drop icons that pile
up on the lefthand side of the screen, and the combat menu that
persists after it should have closed) when replaying demoes?

Oh and finally: Is there a list of all the cvars and cmds NS adds somewhere?

Thanks for any assistance,

- Bumster
Cogito Ergo Bum

intensityrising · February 2005

I'm sorry I can't be any use to you but just wait for the more skilled experts to reply to this.

Diablo_fx · February 2005

For audio, use Fraps.

Hud_draw 0 i think.

Can't remember the rest <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' />

Clashen · February 2005

Search for "Photographers Toolkit" on these forums, It removes pretty much all hud stuff.

wey · February 2005

For sound, your method should work fine. It's usually easiest to replay the demo and record the sound with a recording tool. That can be total recorder, fraps, or windows recorder - that doesn't matter. When you become unsynched, you have very propably done something wrong in your video capturing. It's very important that you make the startmovie stuff with exactly the same fps as you have set in your video cutting programm (25fps is standard). If you don't, the movie runs slower or faster, and the sound desynchs over the time. So you propably have done something wrong during video capturing (which cutting program du you use? which fps for startmovie? do you use virtualdub, bmp2avi, or videomach?).
A more difficult method would be to synch manually. That means add every sound manually on the timeline. I have done that for the ns 3.0 trailer due technical reasons .. but I can't recommend it because it's very much work.

For observing, there is the magic command called "spec_mode 3". That enables a very basci observer mode. The problem is: There is no mouse control, just keyboard. So you have to bind all the important view/movement cmds on your keyboard. Here the most important:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>movement:
+-forward
+-back
+-moveleft
+-moveright
+-moveup
+-movedown

view:
+-left
+-right
+-lookup
+-lookdown
</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

The problem with the spec mode are a bunch of smaller Bugs. If you are on a server with more than just you for example, everytime you press one of the moveleft/moveright keys it will switch to the observing of another player. That's very annoying of you want to make camera movements in freelook. Another one are model/sprite errors, random error messages on screen ("can't delete entity 123"...) and some more. You'll have to life with them <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /> .

For removing of the hud, you have to delete the sprites. You can do that manually or use the combat kit which is somewhere here in the forums (artwork propably). There are some more which could be helpful:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'>crosshair 1/0 //enables/disbales the crosshair
hud_deathnoticetime 0 //disables the death messages in the upper right corner
hud_drawtext 0 //disables the chat messages</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I hope that cleared some of your questions

Bumster · February 2005

Thanks heaps everyone, this has helped stacks. Very much appreciated.

Information like this should get compiled somewhere so more people can make beautiful movies like the NS 3.0 trailer (awesome job Wey!) and promote NS!

Queries About Ns Movie-making

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