What do you need for.. Fragvids

Originally posted by Fluffy Fluffington

   Now I'm no pr0 editor or anything, but I just figured it'd be nifty to have a single topic to redirect people with questions about fragvids to. So here's my 2 cents.

Recording Device
In order to record you'll have to get yourself an additional device. Here's some options.
One thing you could do is get a camera you still have at home, but in order to get decent quality it'll have to be a pretty good camera and the sound's probably not going to be that amazing. Usually camera recorded gameplay looks **** though, lol
A lot of people use a Dazzle(www.dazzle.com probably? lol). This is a capture card that'll do the trick, but it requires the person recording to play in SD, and it will record in SD. There are also other capture cards out there, that work pretty similar. I think you record to your PC though, so you'll have to have it fairly close to your Ps3 probably. I'm too lazy to really look into it. The quality's pretty good.
Personally I use a HAVA Platinum HD (www.myhava.com). It allows me to record in pretty good quality while playing in HD. Although at first it was a bit ch to setup, it works like a charm now :P You also need your PC close to your Ps3 for this one. Well, that's unless you get one of the more expensive models, that can record to an external hard drive.
There's loads of other options, some real expensive ones let you record real HD quality.
So at first, you'll have to get something to record footage with, make sure you read into the product before you get it, to make sure you can set it up etc.

Recording Footage
The way I do it, is that I just record every game played - then when I nail a nice shot, I kind of just stop playing midgame, stop the recording and restart it :P - this is so that I won't have to watch through hours and hours of footage again just for a that. 
Don't rush getting footage. Unless you just want to mess around, or if it's your first video you should take your time getting footage in. And I don't mean a few days, but I take months just recording footage. If I get loads of nice shots, I get to pick from the best, which should only add to my video right?
For every shot I get I make about a 15 second clip, all time of running up to the shot, the actual frag, and a few seconds afterwards. Give yourself enough seconds space, so taht during the editing of the actual vid you can still work with it however you like. It's handy if you edit out these frags periodically, instead of having to look through and edit out footage of months at once. It gets boring.

Here's a short example of what I mean by editing out clips

Only becuase I never really planned to use that frag for anything else I didn't put any time after the frag - I wouldn't be able to use a smooth fade out now for example.

Just save the footage in a handy, organised place on your pc. It'd be a pain in the ar se if the footage would be spread out all around your pc right? It's possible to name the frags something if it helps you, such as 'headshotsent.wmv'. I just name all my frags 'Frag1.wmv' etc though :P So I can see how many I have.

Editing Programs
In order to edit your work you need some programs (besides whatever program your recording device might need)
Unless you have Windows 7, your pc will have Windows Movie Maker included. This is a very simple, basic program to work with. It's not very accurate though, the effects aren't that spectacular either and it's quite generally pretty bad imo, lol. It's fine for learning and practicing though. It has basically everything you need though, just very basic.
Sony Vegas is a pretty popular program, it's similar to WMM (Windows Movie Maker), but more accurate. I don't really know what you can do with it because I never really bothered enough with it though.
Adobe Premiere (Elements) is the program I use - It is similar to the last 2 programs. It gives you a lot of effects and tools to work with. Just look at my last video to see some examples of what you can do with it. 
Adobe After Effects is another renowned program, it adds a whole new level of effects to your repetoire - it will definitely take time to master though. I haven't really practiced enough yet, but I did do the basic lessons on this website though: http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/ . Check out the video on the main page for an example of what after effects can do - wouldn't that be nice for a fragvid intro?
Music
You have to think of some music to go with your frags now. You can try to find something that fits the game (UT vids often have techno-ish soundtracks, by Infected Mushroom for example), but that can depend per person. I guess in the end, you will have to pick something you like though.
You should pick something you can snyc to (see later on). Also, you can try to express something with the music, or try to say something (for example: I'm one of a kind).
Myself I always try to find music that doesn't really have a lot of lyrics.

If there is interest I could upload some other voice files as well (headshot, monster kill! etc)

Syncing
For a fragvid, it's important to sync the clips to the music. If you watch this, maybe you'll see what I mean:

The editor (Morph) tried to make the clips fit the music.
Frags themselves happen at the same time as the beats, to try and amplify the impact of the shot I guess. A video can have awesome shots but still seem lame if you pick bad music and edit poorly.
I don't really know how to explain it, but you should let the shots happen at the beats. You can do this by editing the clip you're editing in, by for example cutting off the start off the clip until it fits, or let that bit overlap the last clip, and have it blend. You just have to mess around I guess until it fits. That's why I said earlier to pick a song you can feel you could properly edit to.

Well if I'm not clear, or for any hints in general you should just look at other fragvids to see what they did - and not just for UT, for any game; a fragvid is a fragvid.
Here's a 20 minute work that I for one really like, it's made for Quake 3:
http://pldx.com/movie/41/Get_Quaked_3/

There's loads of fragvideos on that site in HD quality. It's nice :P
There's plenty of games as well - as you look around you can find older UT installments or Quake games as well, and see what they did, as they're similar gamse you might enjoy watching those videos more :P

Well, for now I'm too lazy to add more to this. I hope it's helpfull to someone. That is, if anyone even bothers reading this all :P


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