So throughout the semester it has been a roller coaster of things to do, things done, and things that did not end up being done. An example of things not being done. I am aware that I would need to add audio, but I was constructing a montage, and I was attempting to make it so my computer wouldn’t be hampered or slowed due to to many cuts or what have you, which I was trying to change it over to a single video, giving me this error.

I had attempted a handful of workarounds, to no avail. That being said, I was going to use this as my final project. I figured a ~20 minute video taken out of over 20 hours of other video would have been a great way to present myself with, especially since after thinking about it, I have been working on it in my spare time throughout the semester, it would tell somewhat of a story. Nothing as definitive of a story as my proposed final, which was essentially was a .gif project that would have taken about 10 hours or so, I went with something that was a little more grand, and required a smaller diversification of skills, that I already know how to do, as indicated by several of the videos that I either have just uploaded or will do so shortly.

In addition to all these things that it appears I have brought together at the end, presenting as 1 large submission rather than the staggered planned events for the class.

To combine and set as 1 massive post.
Final Project Post:
As you saw and read a short bit above has come to a place where after working on fixing just the current problem for several hours. The idea that I originally came up with was one of a .gif that I would create from scratch using my scanner and gimp to generate the material, something that I blocked out time was to take about 3-4 hours, possibly more. If that didn’t work out the way I had planned, I could just go the other direction and save all of the images separately and drop them into Windows Movie Maker(WMM) with it being much chopper from my plan, but still generating something. Post putting together the video/image, I would then find free sourced sounds/music and place it in WMM and republish it. After I did all of the ground work planning and thinking about it, I decided to drop it. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to even push myself to complete it, even if it was over 50% done. In place I brought an OLD! project, that I have been working on and off on for several years. I figured, it would be good to go through and finish what I had started so long ago. It was about 1/2 raw footage, and about 1/2 cut clips. I am/was generating a montage from Halo 2. To get the raw footage, I hooked up my xbox to my computer via a capture card, using a program to capture the film and sound and save it as raw footage. This comes to something of the size of several hundred gigs of data. To cut clips it has to be done in chunks, because everything losses syncing, so I would go through 1 game at a time, cutting out everything that either was not impressive, interesting, or down right amused me, and deleting the rest of the video (temporarily) Using the split tool, to isolate the clips from that game, saving the file using a sorting system, for example: Game 1 Clips and Game 2 Clips for the 2nd game. After I had completed this, I would undo the deletion of the overall video, and delete the entire section that I had just saved into a different video file, rinse and repeat doing so in 2-3 hour junks of film taking about two times as much time as the length of the film.
What I picked up with, with the state that the project was at the beginning of the semester was over 15 hours of raw footage, which I have been cutting down and previously cut content (something like 15-30 hours already gone through). Its current state is complete sorted and cut through, so much so that I have a labeling system and the such for all of the clips, I had sorted most of them into the order which I was going to in the final video, and I attempted to get all of the clips into a single video file, so that I would be able to simply drag and drop several different pieces of sound that I had chosen and didn’t deliberately sync up to the film, because I like the raw feel, and the occasional feel where it either natural syncs up, much as this video I produced:

The way that I synced the music, outside of picking a sound track that I knew fit the them, I choose 1-2 points that I wanted the music to sync to, once I had done this, I ended up getting lucky. If I had wished to modify or allow for the music to sync better, I could either open Audacity, a sound editing program, or I could choose a different series of music that fit better. With a montage, which was the eventual goal of the final project, it is more about lining up the clips as you wish for them to sync perfectly. There are many examples of this, literally search your favorite game title with a sub-tag of montage. Here is an excellent example:

They even went so far as to do scripted intros remixing of the audio, color coordination, adjusting of clip speed, sub effects such as the light buff, camera chasing, and masking. The this montage is from an era later then what I was doing, which I wouldn’t have been able to do camera chases or anything of that nature, so for example, the *BEST* in my opinion that I could be near or like is:

Which they went the extra mile and built a model multiple models and was able to do a camera fly by allowing for the 3D film at the beginning.
The idea behind the project, and how it was to pan out, was essentially to tell part of the story of my semi-pro gaming part of my life. It was a large part of my life, and has helped me become who I am today. It is a first person perspective, or at damn near close to it, of my snidbits of high points in my gaming career, and several low (if I can get it to work) I am bested by my training buddy/best friend.

Final Reflection Post:
Before I get to this, I need to generate the 2 remixes that come up for me, AND I need to post a handful of things that are finished on my desktop currently. So, I shall be back to edit this/expand upon this within the next 45 minutes.