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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Making movies with DBPro

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Corthew
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Location: Fort Pierce, Florida
Posted: 14th Aug 2013 13:15
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I know its doable, since there are videos of in-game action all around.
What I'm curious about is whether there are libraries of code for camera controls and for outputting whats on the screen to a file from within the program.

What I'd like to do is set up scenes with camera positions, pans, etc. and once I'm happy with a run through, run it to output to a file rather than to the screen, (to ensure faster render and better quality).

It just seems that, (for obvious reasons), game software is better at using resources optimally while movie-making software is always far behind the rest of the computer world.

I know this can be done since DBPro is just libraries and a compiler for C++.
I'm just wondering if this ground has already been broken by someone or if I need to look into creating the camera controls myself.

Life goes on without you, but isn't it nice to be part of the sacrifice.
Everything must end but if you worry that you never will begin.
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chafari
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Posted: 14th Aug 2013 13:36
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Theres a plug in somewhere in the forum, but you will have to manage the camera with your own function. If you want to get full screen, you can render one by one frame with your funtion and use the free virtualdub to make the final video. A video of half a minute 25*30 frames will need some tea and biscuits....depending on your PC

Cheers.

I'm not a grumpy grandpa
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MrValentine
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Playing: FFVII
Posted: 14th Aug 2013 13:55
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WLGfx Knows how to implement a screen recorder...

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WLGfx
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Posted: 14th Aug 2013 14:33
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The one I wrote is fine for some things but was not as good as the commercial ones, it would grab the contents of a window and save as an avi file but it would also slow down the running program.

I'd recommend for producing videos a mixture of a 3D modelling/animation package and a video editing software. 3DS Max and Adobe Premier is perfect, but for free you can use Blender and Windows Movie Maker.

Apart from that, I never finished off the plugin that would grab each rendered frame to an avi until the program ended.

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
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MrValentine
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Posted: 14th Aug 2013 15:10
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Anyone up for a Kickstarter to help WLGfx finish off that plugin?



To be honest I think DBPro really needs this! and if he can sell it for half the cost of FRAPS etc then I think it will sell good!

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Chris Tate
DBPro Master
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Location: London, England
Posted: 14th Aug 2013 17:26 Edited at: 14th Aug 2013 17:31
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I am building a Direct X based software tool for this purpose, in addition to being a HLSL shaded scene developer with cut-scene direction, physics manipulation, particle effects, vector art, speech management, actor controls, Blender integration, DBPRO project template generation and if possible, a FPSC segment exporter.

My editor, X-Producer, will not be released until next year; but will be progressively revealed in my video game WIP page since it is to also function as a significant part of the game's MOD development kit.

If your venture does not succeed and WLGfx's tool does not do the job, keep an eye on my profile to keep posted with the up and coming X-Producer family of products.

I am sure you will enjoy using it when it is released, a free version will be available with limited features.

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WLGfx
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Posted: 15th Aug 2013 00:41
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@Chris Tate - Sounds like something similar I'll be getting back onto very soon for the Irrlicht engine as it will now work for Android too. I know myself I will be keeping an eye out on your progress when you get started on it.

One of the tough things I'll be adding to it is full scene animation controls so I guess it could output an avi too. (got my brain cells ticking over again)

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
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Mage
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Posted: 15th Aug 2013 06:01
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Video is the easiest aspect of this problem. You can use a non-zero camera as your main action camera and set the output to an image to capture frames. You can record at any frame rate since the computer doesn't need to be fast enough to render at that frame rate live.

Encoding those frames into video is a difficult matter. Using an actual codec is unlikely without some sort of plugin to link your program with windows and the codec dll's. It's more realistic for someone soloing this to figure out how to save the video as an uncompressed avi, then using a software package to encode the video with a proper codec.

Audio is the big problem here. You have the least access to audio and you'll need a plugin capable of accessing raw audio output, not to mention some way to have the audio play at proper volume without the user being able to hear it.

Then you need to encode the audio. This could be tricky depending on how well suited the hypothetical audio plugin is to this task.

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Mage
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Posted: 15th Aug 2013 06:08
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Outside the box:

Instead of trying to invent a 3D Premiere Pro, don't record a video.
Build a Replay Mode instead.

Save yourself the enormous trouble and have the game record the events, positions, and objects in your render engine, and be able to simply play them back using the same render engine. Leave the video to Fraps.

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Corthew
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Posted: 16th Aug 2013 09:08
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I had not considered the problem of audio syncing.

That makes this a good deal trickier.

For more resource-greedy segments of a scene, video rendering would slow way down while audio would play along at normal speeds.
Of course background music and ambient noise could be added later anyway.

And I suppose a dialogue track could be recorded separately and synced in post render as well.

It just adds one more hassle.

Life goes on without you, but isn't it nice to be part of the sacrifice.
Everything must end but if you worry that you never will begin.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 17th Aug 2013 07:30 Edited at: 17th Aug 2013 07:35
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Right, so the Mage has recommended replay capture; with The Fraps tool he mentioned, audio capture should not cause any slowdowns; Fraps was designed to capture video game footage with sound.

Even if it did not work, there are audio capturing programs which interface with ASIO or simulate it with ASIO-for-all.

These recording applications will not slow down or skip while recording your audio, whilst you run the demo. I have done all of this time and time again with an 8 year old sound card, all whilst recording DBPRO footage with various DSP reverbs and compressors processing the recording audio channel all at the same time on a single core CPU machine.

In the worst case scenario, your program would have to be dreadfully un-optimized to affect the audio capture.

Quote: "@Chris Tate - Sounds like something similar I'll be getting back onto very soon for the Irrlicht engine as it will now work for Android too. I know myself I will be keeping an eye out on your progress when you get started on it."


I've not tried the Irrlicht engine; I am so heavily invested in TGC's products. Is it any good?

Keep us posted on your editor. I am planning to use your noise generator plugin in mine, if you do not mind... I've already started mine, but the work done is really low level and long winded; I've explained a bit of it on my WIP.

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WLGfx
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Posted: 17th Aug 2013 17:37
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@Chris Tate - It's pretty decent for what it does, cross-platform and now works for Android (probably with a lot of fiddling I guess). The idea behind it is to use it as an animated scene editor. No mesh editing, just loading models from disk, for now. The noise plugins are for anyone to use, that's no problems. I'm just popping over now to see the WIP on your editor.

If all scene animations are controlled using a timeline editor then audio syncing shouldn't be much of a problem.

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
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