commentaries

[Invader Bugs]

hey, i make my own movies, and on my next moive coming out, i plan to make a dvd of it, and i want to make a commentary on it. how would i go about doing this? is there any specific programs good for this? or should i just watch the movie on my computer, plug in a microphone, open up sound recorder, play the movie, turn it up loud so it can be heard, then just record? or are their any other good methods?

[Supreme2k]

just watch the movie on my computer, plug in a microphone, open up sound recorder, play the movie, turn it up loud so it can (barely) be heard, then just record

That's what the pros do.

[thecoalman]

Using Ulead Media Studio Pro (i find myself saying this a lot, I should be getting a commision) you can record a commentary track as the video is playing in the preview window right within the editor. Nice feature if your going to do a lot of different tracks since you can start the recording anywhere in the timeline and can can view the timeline as it's recording but if your doing a single track for one part of your movie your method should work fine.

[guns1inger]

Get a set of headphones so you can hear the movie properly, especially if dialogue or sound is something you will be talking about

[thecoalman]

Better yet get a headset with a mic.

[Invader Bugs]

well, first of all, this movie is being made by me and a friend, so i dont know if only one would work, also, ive noticed in commentaries, you can hear the original sound a little bit. and for the movie, there will be the regular english audio, and one commentary track (that lasts the whole movie).

also, in Ulead Media Studio Pro, does it add in the sound from the movie quitely, or do i just have to turn up the volume on my speakers?

edit: another question, when im done with the commentary, does it just give me another audio file? if not, how do i author the dvd?

[lordsmurf]

The way it's done:

Headsets with hearing ability outside. Your know, you can hear the headphones, but it doesn't block out the hearing others around you.

The headsets have recording mics (like the ones they use for anime dubbing).

The people watch a muted tv, and then they hear the sound in the headsets. You record them talking through the headset mics.

When all is done, you use an A/B track NLE, and then add in all the audio. Put the master movie audio in a track with reduced volume. Put the commentary on top of it with normal audio.

If you just record an open mic with people talking with a tv going, you'll have variances in the volume of the tv, as the mic will pick up voice over movie audio, and then you'll also have background noise.

This is not hard, but it's not easy either, not if you want to do a really high quality job.

You'll add in this audio into a separate track in your authoring software. You'll need good authoring software that allows for this.

[thecoalman]

Well obviously if the mic can pic the sound up it's goin to record it. The headset can alleviate that.

I think your misunderstanding the concept and the cabailities of MSP. You wouldn't have to mess around with speaker settings trying to record the other track, you adjust it and everthing else within the editor. If you plan on making a lot of movies and you want to save your self a whole bunch of grief get MSP or something similar like Adobe Premier.

Let me run you through how it would work, Insert the clip onto the timeline, you'll now have the audio track from the video in on track A. Click the timeline where you want to start you voice file. Click insert voice and select track B (i forget but I thiunk you have 6), record your dialog (while your recording you can follow where your at in the preview and along the timeline to keep track of your place), Let's say the voice clip is a coulple of seconds too long, you can adjust it to any length you want providing you don't start sounding like the chimpmunks. The original Audio track can be adjusted to any volume anywhere along the timeline. Up, down whatever, you can even split it and delete the unwanted portion if you wish.

For making movies it's almost a neccesity to have an app like MSP. The possibilities are endless, you can create things with it. It not simply a tool for cutting and trimming.

I suggest you look into to it. It's on sale now, I think they must be clearing them out for a new release. They have package Called Quartet tha comes with MSP(6 components The Editor, Capture program, CG Infinity for manipulating text and objects, Video Paint which is a like a image editor for video, Audio Editor and a Disc image burner which I have never used) all theese apps integrate as one, DVD Workshop for authoring, Cool 3-D for creating 3-D animations and Photoimpact for still image editing.

There all top notch apps and integrate quite nicely. Here's a 3-d sample which can be animated.

[thecoalman]

edit: another question, when im done with the commentary, does it just give me another audio file? if not, how do i author the dvd?

With MSP it would just encode the parts of the audio that you changed. If the video settings are the same it it won't do anything to the video. You can use the resulting file for authoring. Which by the way MSP doesn't do, it's for editing only.

[Invader Bugs]

alright, thanks, also, while this threads up and im talking about a movie im making, i want to ask another question, the movie is not actually completed yet, i just want to know about the commentary thing ahead of time, and my movie is going to be fully animated, but for some of the scenes i want the camera to be spinning around and moving a lot, and i really would prefer not having to animate all of that, so, i was wondering, is there a program where i can create 3D backgrounds (the things i can think of now will be things like a snowy mountain with some trees, inside of a sewer, and others), and in the program id like to be able to just move the background, as it would be seen on the screen, then, well, make a new frame, and move it how i would like for the next frame, and so on, so kind of like macromedia flash with the frames thing, but with 3D, and then export to avi, flash, or some other video file, also, something that would be nice is being able to have cel shading. if anyone knows of a program that can do this, that would be great, or coalman, can Cool 3-D do this?

[thecoalman]

If I understand you correctly that's exactly what Cool 3-D does except you can make it move across many frames. Let's asay you have frame 1 and the orientation is set too 0. Frame 15 is 180 and frame 30 is 360. It will spin the object 360 degrees.

You can create a mountain model with trees, plants etc. and group all the models together and spin it around or manipulate it any way you want. The only trouble I would forsee is getting the correct textures and shapes. You would have to create many models and group them together to shape a mountain. Cool 3-d does very well for basic shapes but understand that making something like that would require some time. It exports to AVI, MOV, RM video, SWF and GIF animation, or as a video overlay. You can also export any single frame as an image in BMP or JPG. You can also import Cool 3-d project files directly into MSP.

Best thing to do is go download the trial version and give it a try. All of the apps I have mentioned have a unresticted 30 day trial. Anything you make in that 30 days is usable (e.g. no logo on the output). I think some of the more advanced features and effects might be unavailable.

What are you using to animate now?

[Invader Bugs]

well, for the 2D animation, i use Macromedia Flash MX 2004, probably not the best, but i like it. and for 3D, nothing as of now because i could never find the thing i was looking for. but ill give Cool 3-D a try tonight.

with cool 3-D, for one scene on a mountain, something id like to do for that is in the program create one half of the mountain, with trees and everything, but, for the animation, i want to be zoomed in on the mountain the whole time, so the trees are close up, can i do this in cool 3-D?

[thecoalman]

In, out whatever, it's a 3-d enviroment, you can go on the other side of the mountain if you wish. That's going to require a lot of objects which in turn is going to require some horsepower. Hope you have a decent cpu and graphics card. Like I said before, building something like that will take some time.

Tip 1:Make sure you leave the display quality settings and the curve quality settings in cool 3-D at it's lowest, this will tremendously increase performance. You can adjust the curve quality for final output and there's a button on the top to view a single frame at output quality if you want to see what the final ouput is going to look like. You can also increase performance by setting your graphics card for high performance as opposed to quality, turn them back up for the final output. You have to do this before opening or after closing cool 3-d, I'm pretty sure it crashes if you don't. If the Ulead is still using the original trial version that hasn't been patched the rendering times can be very slow.

Tip2: Your going to want to group objects. By grouping them together you can apply the same change to whatever is in the group. For example if you group the mountain, trees, bushes together you can resize, zoom, change the orientation etc. all at once. It's like making them one giant object.

Tip3: There's some example project files, at least in the full version, open them up and see how they made them. Easy Pallette>Composition>movies

Good Luck!!!!

Edit: Another idea occurred to me. If you find Cool 3-D too hard to do what you want you could draw up a huge still image in Photoimpact using paths which can create a 3-D affect but on a 2-D still image. You can use MSP to pan and scan around the image which will give you the zoom affect. Even their cheaper app Video Studio will do that.

BTW I don't work for Ulead I just happen to use their products almost exclusivley when working with any kind of digital media.