How do you make trainz vids?

[bassist118]

Just wanted to know what software (freeware if possile) is best to use when making trainz videos with music (I have some peices of music I wrote and think my trainz routes put to music would be a good way to show them off). If anyone could tell me how you go about making a vid as basicly I havn't a clue.

Cheers all



Andy

 

[barn700]

Go get a copy of FRAPS (www.fraps.com) its free, and it captures fullscreen images (press F9 to start and stop). Then edit the clip with Windows Movie Maker, publish and hey presto, a vid for YouTube et al.

In Movie Maker you can add transitions, effects, soundtrack etc

Try to limit the vid size to 10Mb or so (about 30 seconds) as a lot of people have dialup still, and it will take 30 minutes to view such a vid.

Have a look here at some short clips http://www.youtube.com/paulztrainz

 

[bassist118]

Cheers Paul, going to download fraps asap.



Andy

 

[Tiger313]

Try to limit the vid size to 10Mb or so (about 30 seconds) as a lot of people have dialup still, and it will take 30 minutes to view such a vid.

Wow... are you serious? Most basic dial-up connections here (in the Netherlands) are ADSL nowadays, with minimum speeds of at least 3 or 4 mbps. My cable connection is gonna get upgraded from 10mbps to 30mbps, and it's not even top of the line: just one up from the basic plan...

 

[barn700]

PA, USA=12 Million in 44000 sq miles 274 people per sq mile
Holland=6 Million in 2000 sq miles people 3000 per sq mile

Its often uneconomical to run high speed links in the country. For example to get high speed here would cost $33,000 to run cables !!!

 

[Tanvaras]

Dial up is still quite common in Australia too, it amazed me. I run an IT business and I am amazed how many people still come in asking for technical help with their dial up connection and with Dial up I mean 56K.

I myself could not even come to use dial up anymore, with the amount of net traffic I use for my business it could not survive on 56k anymore. But it is still common and the way telco's work in Australia it going to be here for some time.

Cheers

Trent

 

[Johnk]

Wow... are you serious? Most basic dial-up connections here (in the Netherlands) are ADSL nowadays, with minimum speeds of at least 3 or 4 mbps. My cable connection is gonna get upgraded from 10mbps to 30mbps, and it's not even top of the line: just one up from the basic plan...

Yes he is serious and you should also consider yourself lucky - very lucky! In many countries including the USA, Australia, New Zealand and probably even Holland, people are forced to use dialup because no other option exists. Others are forced to by cost. Our local Telco for example charges AU$30 for 300 megabytes of ADSL2 bandwidth per month. That's about half an hour on YouTube for thirty dollars! I have a 3G Mobile connection which drops back to speeds much slower than dialup almost weekly. My limit is 5 gig for up and down, so just looking at the screenshots on this forum can eat up my monthly allowance in hours.

Although it's hard to gain statistics from our Telco, between 20 and 25% of all Australians are on dial-up. Of the remainder, 70% will be on ADSL speeds of 512kbs or less. The balance are paying through the nose for services that vary greatly. I see a lot of computers in a month and the fastest downloads I've ever seen was on a friend's cable connection in Melbourne. It got to 180kbs but quicly dropped down to 150.

Our main problem other that a slack telco is population and distance. Barn700 made that clear in his post, but take a look at Australia. You wonder why people from Holland would want to migrate here:

Holland
Population: 16,491,852
Area: 41,526 km
Density: 397 people per square kilometre

With thanks to Google:

Australia
Population: 21,007,310
Area: 7,617,930 sq km
Density: 2.75 (yes 2 and three quarters) people per square kilometre.

My home town Cairns to nearest capital city Brisbane by Train: 1,700 km
Amsterdam to Moscow is only 1,300 km

Perth to Cairns by Train via Melbourne and Sydney: 6,100 km
Direct route: 5,800 km
Amsterdam to Delhi in India is only 5,737 km

BTW, Australia is also the most arid continent on earth.

 

[barn700]

Well being on dialup has some advantates (sort of)

Living in the sticks (as we call it) allowed me to buy a 2 bedroom house on 1 acre of land for $25,000 with some beautiful views !!!

 

[bendorsey]

Pauls right - living in the sticks (boonies to me) has its advantages but what about the moose that knocked over the telephone poles and knocked you off the air for 4 or 5 days? (Paul does live in a beautifil location). Locally we have a 200 pound brown bear wandering around a very exclusive gated community. Rich folks ain't to happy about it (welcome to the real world), lol.

Ben

P.S. I wonder what the density statistics are for Antartica?

 

[barn700]

Ben you misunderstood ...

The moose was a Scots moose (a mouse) that had chewed through my tel lines !!!

We do have about 12 deer though, and a family of bears that run through my veggie patch and munch on some of my corn ...

Anyway, back on topic, you can always upload 2 versions of any vid, a 30second teaser, and a full size one

My vids http://www.youtube.com/paulztrainz are teasers to show my locos in Trainz, rather than boring old stills on my website.

 

[Johnk]

[quote I wonder what the density statistics are for Antartica?[/quote]

If you take the floating population into account, probably a couple of billion!

 

[thallium1000]

Go get a copy of FRAPS (www.fraps.com) its free, and it captures fullscreen images (press F9 to start and stop). Then edit the clip with Windows Movie Maker, publish and hey presto, a vid for YouTube et al.

In Movie Maker you can add transitions, effects, soundtrack etc

Try to limit the vid size to 10Mb or so (about 30 seconds) as a lot of people have dialup still, and it will take 30 minutes to view such a vid.

Have a look here at some short clips http://www.youtube.com/paulztrainz

I use FRAPS too. It is free but one drawback is the free version limits the filming time I beleive to 30 seconds (I may be wrong on the time). Also many sites will not host videos of a larger size like Fileden and other free file hosts. I agree FRAPS is the best for free since Im not willing to pay for the whole version.

 

[Tiger313]

Man... the things you take for granted, hey?

I seriously had no idea that 56k was still being used. I'm feeling quite stupid now actually. :hehe:

 

[barn700]

FRAPS for free is limited to 30 secs, but if you repeatedly hit the F9 key, you can get as many clips as you need to make the movie.

Its OK Tiger, we in most of the world are not so lucky as you, not so densly populated and slow in a lot of respects LOL

 

[Johnk]

Like most good things in life you have to learn how to use Fraps, especially if you want to create videos for the web. it is very easy to get a YouTube quality video down to around megabyte per minute, but no one single product will do it alone. A few months ago I offered to take time out and right a tutorial on the subject, but as is often the case with this forum I didn't get a single show of interest. And who may I ask, is going to spend a week making a tutorial that no one wants to read?

 

[Tiger313]

@barn700: Whew!

But hey, living in a densely populated area can have it's disadvantages too, you know? Ok so there's lots of railroads in the area so life is good, but many people = lot of rubbish for instance. But we haul that out by train too! :hehe:

@JohnK: I know it's good to have some encouragement for your projects from these here forums, but I've noticed that unless you make something big that catches people's imagination, like say a steam locomotive or a 2394856 km long prototypical toute, it's not gonna happen. :hehe:

Now I was being overly negative there of course, but with a reason. All I'm trying to say is: make your stuff for yourself. If it makes YOU feel good then that's all the encouragement you need really. And if someone else comes along and likes it, they''ll pick it up and maybe even toss you a compliment sometime.

I myself know how FRAPS works, done some vids in the past (that were sadly destroyed in a computer crash). But I am pretty sure that at some point, people will be happy with a FRAPS tutorial. Like when people post forum posts like the original post in this thread. Then you can plug your tutorial, and they'll be happy. :wave:

 

[Johnk]

Tiger313, I finally got your point when I read the last line! I was about to write back to say that I've never made a single thing for Trainz, which is almost true. I did to a tutorial when Trainz first came out showing everyone to make a double slip switch. Even the folks at Auran were surprised. Tranzluvr still hosts the tutorial, but a copy will end up on my site as soon as I can locate it on my computer.

Getting small video sizes with Fraps involves all the things people here generally hate. In real movies, scenes are seldom panoramic. Yet that's whatTrainz users love most. I got my movies down to size by reducing the visual aspect to the things that mattered. That means very little sky and sourroundings. By being artistic you can still capture everything but not in every frame. Anyway, viewers get tired of a train chuffing along a track. Take a look at the Screenshot of the month section of this forum. There are some great ideas there.

Finally, if I can find the time I'll do it because I also use screen capture videos for other things.

 

[Tiger313]

Very cool! I'll be having a peek by the time you're done, for sure. I might just learn something new too, hey?

 

[bassist118]

Well being on dialup has some advantates (sort of)

Living in the sticks (as we call it) allowed me to buy a 2 bedroom house on 1 acre of land for $25,000 with some beautiful views !!!

What, I'm moving, that's about 18 - 19 thousand quid, you can't get a shoebox even in the country over here for that. Cheers for the heads up on fraps, good programme and slowly (very slowly) getting my head around it.



Andy