Dean's Tutorial for Making Counter-Strike Movies
Step 1. Watch your demo with geek play in 640 x 480 resolution. This is a must resolution if you want the good quality that most movies have.
Step 2. When the shot is about to start ex. You rush catwalk and you kill 2 people around the corner. You might want to record before you get around the corner. The time you want to record the shot type Startmovie Moviename 30 (or fps but I always use 30) in console. Once you hit enter after typing this in hit the console button to hide the console and let it record. It should slow down or look like it's lagging but it's just because it is saving each frame. Once the shot is done, bring down the console and type endmovie. There you have a lot of bmp files in your Half Life folder.
Step 3. Now you are ready to convert your bmps into an avi file. To do this go to www.videomach.com and download the program videomach. This program is very simple and is what I used to make CS movies before I got into premiere. Note : When it ask for key, hit the evaluate button and it will open without a key. When the 30 days expires redownload it :O~.
Step 4. Install your videomach and open it. First thing is to open your bmps. There is many different ways to make a CS movie. If you are skilled with Adobe Premiere then I suggest you open all your bmps for one shot and turn each shot into avi, this way you can open all the avis you have of each shot and put transitions/effects into your movie. If you are a noobie :) then I suggest you just use videomach to make a movie rather than trying to download Premiere and trying to figure that out as well.
Step 5. Click the Open Files icon and select all your bmps that you want to convert into avi. Then hit open.
In your left column should be the bmps that you selected. If you want to speed your clip up or slow it down, select the bmps you want slowed, and then right click and choose frame rate. In the frame rate is where the fps goes. If you want fast I would recommend 75 and if you want slow i would recommend 10. This is a tool you will have to fool around with to find what you like.
Step 6. Adding music - To add music is real easy. Go to the middle column and right click and hit open. Then go to your folder with music and select and song and hit open. There you got music!
Step 7. Now onto naming your avi file and fixing up the codecs. Click the disk icon.
This will open a define output dialogue box. If you want the quality like mine, do the following steps, or if you want your own shit, then don't follow these steps. First, at the top where it says output mode choose video and audio (same file). This will put you music and video in one avi. What I did is added music with Adobe Premiere and didn't add music to the avi because it's just as easy and better with Premiere but this is also easy and works. Then name the file which you will have to do no matter what. In the "Write VIDEO and AUDIO to this file" box add a name after C:\SIERRA\Half-Life\ or you can browse to your desktop or somewhere else on your computer. For example I used deanmovie4. Then go to the box below it and choose avi from the list. Then I never put anything in the audio box because I chose Video and Audio (same file) at the top.
Step 8. Next tab - Video. Click the Video tab as circled below.
Now make sure Resize is on 640 x 480. Then frame rate (fps) is checked automatic and is 30. Next is click format options box.
Then a box appears with a list of codecs. I recommend you get Divx Pro 5.05 if you do not have it because it is the best quality codec I know of or as I think. www.divx.com to get that. Once divx is installed you may have to restart. If its on the list already or you restarted and it's on the list of codecs, select it and choose configure.
A divx dialogue box will open. This is one thing I learned after doing 3 movies and that's why my 4ths movie's quality is so much better than the other 3. By the words Encoding Bitrate is a bar. Drag the bar to the right making it 4000 kbps in the box at the right. This should make your avi file larger but much better quality. Note : Those steps are also used in Premiere to get good quality shown in the picture below.
After you configured your divx 5.05 in videomach, hit ok then ok then ok until you are back to the main screen.
Step 9. Now you are ready to make it into avi form. All you have to do is hit the blue arrow next to the disk as shown below. Then it will process and when it's done it should play.
There is your movie. If you want to take it one more step you will have to have adobe premiere.
Step 10. Open your premiere. If you did the steps above for each clip you should have many avis. Take these avis and import them. File->import->file. Then drag the files onto the timeline at the bottom
Add all your avis on the timeline after each other. You can add transitions but I never could figure it out. If you want to teach me back pm me on irc :). What I did for my 4th movie was I had felty make me an intro with flash mx and make that an avi. I opened all my bmps and formed all the shots into 1 avi file "deanhax4.avi". Then he sent me the intro and I put it before deanhax4.avi in the Premiere timeline.
Step 11. Music - It's the same as Dragging avis. Import music and drag it down on Audio 1. Simple as that. You can also cut your music short so that it fits your movie. That's why I like putting my music on my movie with Premiere.
Step 12. Finishing the movie. Once you have all the avis on the timeline and music and you are all set go to Project->Project Settings->Video. This will open a box where you choose you codec. Follow the same steps as before.
Then go to file->export timeline->movie. Then select a name for the avi and hit save and let it process.
Once it is done you have your Counter-Strike movie and you can go show all your friends and put it on websites. Don't ask me for hosting because I got it from my good buddy matt from dr2.net so go buy some hosting from him. If you have questions stop by #3i7 and pm dean for information. Stay tuned for more of my CS movies :O~ version 5 soon to come. If you are interested in getting me my own site for hosting my movies and this tutorial I would love it :) just pm me.
dean - #3i7 - #destructorproductions
