[Updated] Video trailer to showcase BfW artwork

[Dragon Master]

After watching the trailer a few times, some things have come up:
1)when your showing the portraits, it goes Orcish Assassin-Orc Warlord-Merman Fighter-Bandit (those might not be the exact names, but close enough) Try mixing it up a bit more. Use something like Orcish Assassin-Drake Fighter-Merman Fighter-Delfador/Elder Mage. Something that can show the diversity of Wesnoth
2) When I was watching the large cutaway at the end displaying all the units, it was annoying hearing all the little "Oomphs" and "Ows" while reading. Try eliminating the sound of the backround battle as it distracts you when your reading in the end


voice actor....

[torangan]

Removing the sounds would be too much but you could fade their loudness a little along with zooming out. Giving the expression that the sounds dim as you get further away from the scene of battle. The only thing missing is a .srt for subtitles to be translated into as much languages as possible. Those wouldn't push the size much but make it more usefull for some.
Otherwise I'd say that this trailer is about ready to be converted into Free formats and advertised on the homepage. If need be, publish a very high quality H.264 version (to reduce the impact of lossy conversion) and I'll transcode it myself.

[lu_zero]

could you provide it as mpeg2+flac for transcoding?

[radoz]

After watching the trailer a few times, some things have come up:
1)when your showing the portraits, it goes Orcish Assassin-Orc Warlord-Merman Fighter-Bandit (those might not be the exact names, but close enough) Try mixing it up a bit more. Use something like Orcish Assassin-Drake Fighter-Merman Fighter-Delfador/Elder Mage. Something that can show the diversity of Wesnoth

Done.

2) When I was watching the large cutaway at the end displaying all the units, it was annoying hearing all the little "Oomphs" and "Ows" while reading. Try eliminating the sound of the backround battle as it distracts you when your reading in the end

Well observed. The other ingame sounds were all -7 db, I simply forgot to do the same with the last added scene. Now it slowly fades out, too.

voice actor....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whGVaLoIvkw

[Dragon Master]

Haha, I've actually seen that guy before. IMHO I seriously think a voice actor would make this intro, but it's your work so do what you want with it. I'm gonna stop whining about a voice actor from now on. Cheers!

[radoz]

could you provide it as mpeg2+flac for transcoding?

I miserably failed at that, see below...

Removing the sounds would be too much but you could fade their loudness a little along with zooming out. Giving the expression that the sounds dim as you get further away from the scene of battle.

Done.

The only thing missing is a .srt for subtitles to be translated into as much languages as possible. Those wouldn't push the size much but make it more usefull for some.

Frankly, I know absolutely nothing about .srt and adding subtitles. Shame on me

Otherwise I'd say that this trailer is about ready to be converted into Free formats and advertised on the homepage. If need be, publish a very high quality H.264 version (to reduce the impact of lossy conversion) and I'll transcode it myself.

I shall be forever in your debt if you could do the transcoding into a free format. I've been going through countless web pages the past weeks, installed all the ffmpeg, mpeg2enc, theora, ogg and whatever software. The only thing that worked was creating ogg audio. I assume I became somewhat of a drag-and-drop dork after switching to Mac OS many years ago

Here's the current version of the trailer:

EDIT: Removed outdated links.

torangan, if there are no further objections from the BfW veterans in this thread, is it okay if I PM you a link to a virtually lossless H264 version?

Actually, I was planning to add all the names of the people who contributed to BfW at the end of the video like the rolling credits of a movie. However, after I started doing this, I figured the credits would roll for about half an hour (almost), too long for a short teaser trailer, anyway. While I haven't added anything to the game itself with my work of the past weeks, I would feel quite proud if I helped honour all the people who spent many hours on creating the game.

[Dragon Master]

Idea! somehow get an animation of a unit bowing, show that at the end with the words "Thank you all who have contributed" or something better, i can't think of a sentence that appropriatly sums up "thanks for Wesnoth developers!"

[Disto]

We can actually do that in game now...

[torangan]

Frankly, I know absolutely nothing about .srt and adding subtitles. Shame on me

It's simply a format for subtitles. The format shouldn't matter much since those may be converted into each other easily. In essence they contain only the start and end time or frame for each subtitle string.

torangan, if there are no further objections from the BfW veterans in this thread, is it okay if I PM you a link to a virtually lossless H264 version?

Sure, I can do this. If you managed the conversion of audio into Vorbis you may send me a link to a finished .ogg as well. That step should be very easy anyway. Compressing into theora itself is easy as well, just finding the right compromise between size and quality could get hairy. But maybe you should use an MPEG4 codec like XviD or DivX or whatever of that familiy you like. H.264 support isn't that widespread so it might cause trouble. I've got artefacts in the very beginning with MPlayer and don't have another player installed which can decode the audio part...

Watching it a few times right now I got another suggestion. At least one battle scene should be out of Under the Burning Suns to show the desert terrain and perhaps one in a cave. Just to show more different types of terrain (and units).

[radoz]

*snip* But maybe you should use an MPEG4 codec like XviD or DivX or whatever of that familiy you like. H.264 support isn't that widespread so it might cause trouble. I've got artefacts in the very beginning with MPlayer and don't have another player installed which can decode the audio part...

Okay, I'll upload two or more versions/codecs then, should you get any artefacts just let me know. Also, I'll upload the audio in a separate file, in ogg and mp3 format, so you should have anything readable on your system.

Watching it a few times right now I got another suggestion. At least one battle scene should be out of Under the Burning Suns to show the desert terrain and perhaps one in a cave. Just to show more different types of terrain (and units).

I hate you I hadn't read that part of your message yesterday, and already uploaded 60 MB to my server. But probably you're right. However, there's only one current battle scene we should sacrifice for a new one, it's from 0:50 to 0:55, the final one before the end screen with the zoom.

Good, I'll edit that part right away, fix another audio glitch I just found and start rendering the new version. Editing will take some hours, so hereby I'm officially calling last orders before all data goes to torangan ; )

[Fynmiir]

*Bows in respect*

Well, this is really amazing. Good work. I can't think of anything to make it better. Congrats!

[torangan]

I hate you I hadn't read that part of your message yesterday, and already uploaded 60 MB to my server. But probably you're right. However, there's only one current battle scene we should sacrifice for a new one, it's from 0:50 to 0:55, the final one before the end screen with the zoom.

Then replace it with a desert scene. Additionally I admit, I was cheating. I edited my message more then once adding additional content as I got more ideas by watching it again and again.

[radoz]

Then replace it with a desert scene. Additionally I admit, I was cheating. I edited my message more then once adding additional content as I got more ideas by watching it again and again.

Haha, thanks for letting me know, at least I don't have to question my eyes and memory anymore

Fynmiir, thanks - I appreciate that a lot.

Guys, don't forget: Big kudos to the music composers! Without the fantastic music there would have never been a trailer.

Here's the (hopefully) final version of the clip:

640 x 480 QuickTime H.264 codec .mp4 10 MB (okay quality)
320 x 240 QuickTime H.264 codec .mp4 5 MB (good quality)
640 x 480 MPEG4 codec .mp4 10 MB (lower quality)
320 x 240 MPEG4 codec .mp4 5 MB (lower quality)
480 x 360 Macromedia Flash 8 5 MB (browser plug-in, okay quality)

Now I'll start encoding the show-off monster filesize version for torangan ...

[Sapient]

Nice!

Thanks, radoz. I agree with your statement on the music.

[torangan]

Thinking about encoding the trailer to theora - what filesize do you guys think I should aim for? Quality aside, I'm interested in what people think would be the limit. What I really can achieve remains to be seen independently.