Discussion: Matrix Machinima Contest

by the way it's 11:59 AM. i know yer making a funny but... i originally assumed it was pm and just don't want anyone else to make that mistake.

11:59 am?... so its due at noon? on...the 10th i guess?

I too have uploaded my movie, I got that monor error and now it says that it is compressing.
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Dark Advice
Aug 9, 2008
Status: #102 Compressing
It takes a while, be patient.
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I guess I can check in the morning and try to send it again. (well before noon anyhow) I sure hope it goes through Ok. This is my first movie that I have attempted to make in CoH and I think, despite only using one person to do the voice (what a silly idea that was) it turned out pretty good. I do wish the time limit would have been longer. Something like 6 or even 8 mintes would have made for a much better story. That and the violence clause! I had this great Ritki invasion thing filmed where the wedding party gets wiped out! Oh well. And I had to cut three other scenes because of time too.

I found making a movie in CoH was fun, but often when I was filming, or trying to film, bad guys someone would just come by and kill them all!

I got a whole bunch of rather demonic looking wedding crashers hanging out on the corner 'stripping' while we were trying to film.

I discovered that while there are tons of emotes in CoH the amount that deal with looking like your avatar is saying something is a bit lacking. It sure would be great to have more conversation emotes. This makes the videos I have been looking at recently before setting off to make this video all the more impressive.

At some point I may learn about this demo file thingie and how to make it work. But for this film I just went in world and filmed it live (so to speak) like I have done all my other movies in other worlds before.

Well to check how long it took I also sent it to YouTube. So its finished compressing there...

I hope you like it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqF7OM2h7RQ

Hooray, Dark_Respite's video is DONE! Not uploaded to GameTrailers.com yet, because of how long that's going to take. It's already a quarter to two in the morning, so I'll upload it there tomorrow/today/whatever after I've gotten some sleep.

But the low-quality version (YouTube) and the high quality version (the Samuraiko Productions website) are available!

Who wants to start taking bets that I get disqualified?

God, I just hope people like how this came out...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Okay. Now that was awesome, DR. *bows*

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Okay. Now that was awesome, DR. *bows*

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Really? Thank you! *happy dances*

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Cheers to FBK and Mr_Mag, you were right. I got the same #109 error, waited a bit, clicked "My Movies" and now it's compressing. Will probably take a little under two hours (if it's 1 MB per minute).

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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Cheers to FBK and Mr_Mag, you were right. I got the same #109 error, waited a bit, clicked "My Movies" and now it's compressing. Will probably take a little under two hours (if it's 1 MB per minute).


[/ QUOTE ]Not sure but I think it stays saying Compressing till it is added to the list because mine has been compressing since about 4:30 pm pacific at the latest. Should have been done after 2 1/2 hours because I forgot about running it through Windows Media Encoder which in the end brought the file size down to a mere 25 mb.

Very nice.

Very cool, DR

WNxSoylentGreen, I really like your vid, but I'm afraid it is going to be disqualified. The problem is your mention of the car. I had the same idea but there is a rule against "commercial endorsement". I thought maybe they would make an exception for the sponsor's product, but when I asked the contest coordinator specifically about that, they said "No, that cannot be included." I posted that info back on page 20 of this topic.

Sorry. My heart just dropped when I heard that line in your vid.

Maybe its not too late to rework it?

D_R, why would your vid get disqualified? I didn't see anything in there that was against the rules.

Lubbed it, BTW!

Ya know, I think that those of y'all that bust your butts doing complex and spectacular demoediting are going to get shortchanged in this contest. We already know that this panel of "experts" isn't really familiar with the game and they're especially ignorant of how demorecordings work. I don't think they will properly appreciate the difficulty level of those things. They'll just assume that, for instance, toons can walk in the game. They won't know that it took a bit of work to accomplish that, so they won't give you guys the credit you deserve. I hate that.

Can anyone tell me what the final word on violence in the video was? been trying to read this thread to find it...but havent had much luck yet.

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Can anyone tell me what the final word on violence in the video was? been trying to read this thread to find it...but havent had much luck yet.

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Anything that you can do in the game is allowed.

Great job DR. Very nice! I admire the fact that you pay so much attention to the music and the video telling the story together.

I watched the high-quality version on your site. Please tell me you did leave your production logo off the entry version correct? That would be the only thing I saw that would even raise a legal eyebrow. Everything else looks perfectly safe.

Rosen - the word on violence, here's the legal line from the rules: "With the exception of those elements which are contained within the Selected Games ". So anything within the realm of the City of Heroes game.

Todd

Awesome work, DR! I see no reason why it would be DQ'ed.

Good luck!

Now I am all upset. I just spent a ton of time making this thing. You cant mention the product the contest is advertising? Oh... well the darn web site won't accept it anyhow. Like 15 hours later is still says compressing. I am still trying to re-send it. Unfortunately I don't have quite the options for exporting in Windows Movie Maker, but I tired to use the right settings. I read a lot of the discussion here but I must have missed that. I looked at the entered videos, but I thought most of them would be disqualified for violence. That seemd to be a key aspect of the rules as well. I must have missed that post somewhere in there about mentioning the contest sponsor. Hmm. Not sure if I could rework it or not. I may give it a try. Oh and I really loved your movie Star Dancer! It was a hoot!

Mine is still showing as "Compressing", but I'm going to leave it that way for a bit of the day, and write to them to find out what's going on (see if I get lucky and get another answer fairly fast).

To answer the earlier question, yes, my entry does not have the opening and closing titles on it - it starts with the NCSoft and Cryptic logos, and ends just as it fades to black and she's walking across the street.

Star_Dancer, yes, I know - those folks really do have no idea what hoops we jump through to make stuff look the way it looks (characters duck-and-firing, donuts raining, all that). But WE know.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

a lot of great vids here.

wnx, you still have time to fix!

dr, beautiful as always.

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To answer the earlier question, yes, my entry does not have the opening and closing titles on it - it starts with the NCSoft and Cryptic logos, and ends just as it fades to black and she's walking across the street.

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Good I thought I was gonna have to hurt you

Nice job.

Todd

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I don't think they will properly appreciate the difficulty level of those things.

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That's for the better, IMHO. Remember, they are thinking about showing the winner to a lot of people and practically all those people won't appreciate the difficulty, either. For instance, DR's new video has her assassin twisting behind a corner to put her back to the wall. That's a VERY impressive trick in this game! But most of the folks watching are just going to think that's part of the game. So, while my socks get knocked clear into the next room at such a thing, they probably won't even notice.

Gotta remember that the art is the goal, not showing off what fancy tricks you can do. Anyone who forgets that will be forced to read web pages from the mid 90's where people seemed to think "the more tags the better." (Eeesh... my eyes still sting! <h1><flash><b><u><i> OUCH!</i></u></b></h1&gt

Okay, NOW I can go watch everyone else's entries and comment and stuff.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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Who wants to start taking bets that I get disqualified?

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What for? And what was all that griping about the music? The music seemed perfect for the mood of this video!

Great video, it's got a real shot at winning. To use a pun. The only gripe I have is that it's too hard to see the assassin in the sniper shots in low rez, at least after YouTube has its way with the compression.

And, like I just said, I'm REALLY impressed with the roll-around-corner and peeking moves! I expect to see a few posts on the tech forum soon asking what the command is to hide against a corner.

Ok I revised my entry not to mention the Toyota Matrix. Thank you agian Star_Dancer for pointing that out to me. I switched down to a lesser form of compression in hopes that it would re-compress correctly. The original upload is still compressing. If anyone has any ideas about how to achieve the correct settings from windows movie maker (which would work with the gametrailers site) I would love to know about it.

So was the raining dounut thing done with a model substitution? Like donuts instead of ice particles raining down? I was curious how that was achieved. It looked wonderful on the screen! Very memorable moment!

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Who wants to start taking bets that I get disqualified?

[/ QUOTE ]
What for? And what was all that griping about the music? The music seemed perfect for the mood of this video!

Great video, it's got a real shot at winning. To use a pun. The only gripe I have is that it's too hard to see the assassin in the sniper shots in low rez, at least after YouTube has its way with the compression.

And, like I just said, I'm REALLY impressed with the roll-around-corner and peeking moves! I expect to see a few posts on the tech forum soon asking what the command is to hide against a corner.

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Re: the music - that's my remix of the Heroes1_Loop - all praise Sony Acid Pro! I gave it a much better and layered beat for more depth, took me about two hours to get it right, and the original 4 minute version sounds nifty, but I shortened it to 2:30 so it'd flow better with the video.

Re: the duck-and-fire? You see Hellions and Family doing that in Port Oakes, which is where I got it. There are a few MOV codes that work for that - I'll be happy to post them somewhere if I can figure out where "somewhere" should be.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite