Sosa's Sad Story Makes A Stellar Video (March 19, 2006)

[ChrisReid]

It's been a while since AD's last music video, but this one was worth the wait.
The story begins with Catscratch's funeral in Wing Commander 4. Subsequent scenes flash back to his relationship with Sosa and then the ensuing sorrow after his death. Voices and sound effects from the original movies are balanced well "In the Round" by the Cardigans. New Divx 6.1 features were used to encode everything and the quality is top notch. As an extra special feature, two audio tracks are included! Track 1 carries the regular music, and Track 2 adds a full length commentary by AD. If you don't have the necessary software, you'll hear both tracks mixed together, which will probably be too distracting. One solution is to download and install Divx 6.1. A little icon will appear in your system tray that allows you to switch between audio channels. If you already have an older Divx version and a specialty movie viewer such as VLC Player, you should already be all set. This is my favorite music video yet, and hopefully some of you like it too. You can grab the 37 meg avi here.

--
Original update published on March 19, 2006

[cyberkitten01]

Catscratch was a great character, and the relationship with Sosa added a nice dynamic to the continuing plot, especially up against as much as they were. I love Marc Decascos too, so this was great to see him. Shame about Vagabond though, he was my other favourite The scene with his death was so well done, especially the camera work and how long it took for him to drop. *sobs* So much emotion in the WC series

[TomGaines]

Nice work, AD!!
And after listening to your commentary I got really curious what choices you made for your movie project. Can't wait for the final result of that project.

[AD]

Originally Posted by TomGaines

Nice work, AD!!
And after listening to your commentary I got really curious what choices you made for your movie project. Can't wait for the final result of that project.

Thanks Tom. And seeing how most of you have seen the indiviual scenes before, I hope that there's a few surprises in store...

[BrynS]

Originally Posted by TomGaines

Nice work, AD!!
And after listening to your commentary I got really curious what choices you made for your movie project. Can't wait for the final result of that project.

Agreed. Good work, AD!

The commentary was an unexpected bonus -- it's always interesting to ascertain the creator's rationale behind the various creative choices as presented in the final product -- much appreciated!

I think I may have asked you this question before AD , but with my recall on hiatus how are you dealing with the combination of the 4:3 aspect ratio gameplay sequences and the 16:9 FMV? Judging by this video, it would appear as though you have chosen a final 4:3 (in this case 640x480) output frame, with the FMV appearing as letterboxed (~640x360 downsampled from the native ~704x480) widescreen?

Other options would be to use a 16:9 output framesize and reduce the 4:3 gameplay (while maintaining correct proportion) to fit within the vertical resolution of the 16:9 frame, resulting in large black bars to the right and left of the gameplay sequences.
Or
Resize and stretch the 4:3 content to a 16:9 AR (watchable, but the gameplay will be out of proportion).
Or cut the 4:3 content to a 16:9 framesize (undesirable due to the loss of significant sections of the original 4:3 frame/viewing area).

Various TV's, DVD's and DVD software players have more complex 4:3 stretching algorithms that attempt to imperceptibly stretch only the outer portions (to the left and right of center) of 4:3 content, while maintaining the correct AR in the large central portion, so as to allow a more seamless viewing experience of 4:3 content on a 16:9 display.

Although I haven't tested the other methods, the one you appear to have chosen with this music video would seem most preferable.

Cheers,


BrynS

[AD]

Originally Posted by BrynS

I think I may have asked you this question before AD , but with my recall on hiatus how are you dealing with the combination of the 4:3 aspect ratio gameplay sequences and the 16:9 FMV? Judging by this video, it would appear as though you have chosen a final 4:3 (in this case 640x480) output frame, with the FMV appearing as letterboxed (~640x360 downsampled from the native ~704x480) widescreen?

Other options would be to use a 16:9 output framesize and reduce the 4:3 gameplay (while maintaining correct proportion) to fit within the vertical resolution of the 16:9 frame, resulting in large black bars to the right and left of the gameplay sequences.
Or
Resize and stretch the 4:3 content to a 16:9 AR (watchable, but the gameplay will be out of proportion).
Or cut the 4:3 content to a 16:9 framesize (undesirable due to the loss of significant sections of the original 4:3 frame/viewing area).

Various TV's, DVD's and DVD software players have more complex 4:3 stretching algorithms that attempt to imperceptibly stretch only the outer portions (to the left and right of center) of 4:3 content, while maintaining the correct AR in the large central portion, so as to allow a more seamless viewing experience of 4:3 content on a 16:9 display.

Thanks BrynS


The WC4 movies are encoded with the black bars. So a widesreen video crops the top and bottom. WC4's gameplay is 640x480 however so croping the entire video means cutting off parts of those videos. That woulnt be too bad if it didnt mean cutting off the VDU videos.

One option would have been to crop all the source videos first and leave the captured video alone. then I could encode in the movie aspect ratio or 16:9(with slight black bars) and have the gameplay stuff stretched horizontally. Or use same process but crop gameplay stuff to bottom so that only the top is cut off. YOu see most of the important stuff, and its not stretched.

So I just opted to keep the 4:3 ratio of all the original sources and save myself some work! Most peoples PC monitors are 4:3 still anyway, although there are some inroads being made with widescreen LCDs. You do sacrifice a bit of your bitrate encoding the black bars but with divx 6.1 I think the difference is negligible. (I'm using the pro codec).