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| If you want to watch directly the video PRESS HERE.
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| If you want to download directly to your hd PRESS HERE.
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| A simple comment on video's webpage will be enough to motivate me :).
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| Thank you.
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Ladies and gents!

I've finally finished my project, after 1,5 month of hard work!

THE IDEA

The Amiga, represents a golden era of computer games. From time to time efforts have been made to visualize the impact it had on gamers. Various videos on YT (such as 100 Amiga games in 10 minutes) and video collections (Amiga Longplays) , include gaming footage or are consisted from fan made companies' tributes.
However, most of them suffer from:
1) Low res syndrome, that, that gets worse on =>19inch monitors' playback.
2) Excessive frame skipping.
3) Bad quality or no soundtrack at all.
4) Bad or no composition at all (footage thrown without consistency).
The above combination, literally destroys the image of the games presented. Especially us, Amiga dedicated gamers, who have passed countless hours in front of these games, can easily spot the difference!

THE COMPLETION

Having spent years behind joysticks plugged into our beloved computers, I've come to know most of the games by heart (like many of us). A lot of games had captured my imagination and I was always thinking about making a series of video footage to (re)present them, with the following in mind:
1) Cinematic feeling.
2) Video resampling to be compatible with HD resolutions.
3) Vivid presentation of the each game, meaning that the video would be designed by a gamer for gamers..

THE RESULT

The result can be found HERE (remember to louden the volume and activate HD playback).

You can also download the offline HD version HERE.

Video specs: MPEG-4 24bits/1920x1080@30FPS, H.264, BitRate~15000, AAC@256kbs/Stereo/48kHz/16Bit.

This episode was designed like a premiere of series, titled "Legends do not die", where as in the first episode we have a mixture from "All Star" moments along an introductory text.

NOTES

Please bear in mind that when it comes to video manipulation I am a complete noob, therefore do not expect a Steven Spielberg production! Frankly speaking, it was the first time that I 've worked with a compositor (Video Studio Pro X4), Video Effects (Adobe After Effects) and 3D (Cinema 4D) along with more software used. However, in the process I 've learned countless details around codec incompatibilities, software and hardware limitations. Nevertheless, this was a very creative process and I was getting the same feeling when I was opening, almost two decades ago, text editor in wb1.3 and let my imagtion take over!

CONTINUING

Although, as I've stated up above this is intended to become a series of videos (with an All Star 2 - coming next since I've deliberately left out a great portion of genres, games and companies, I am finding it very hard to continue, especially within this year:
1) It's very difficult for just one man to handle the whole project and create 4 minutes' long or more, of good quality gaming videos. Personally, it took me almost 1.5 month to complete it and it drained 100% of my free time.
2) The hardware I own (Core2Duo@2.4Ghz/3GB Ram), doesn't make up to my imagination and expectations! Countless time I've reach limitations since it was almost impossible to make a simple preview of my work or render, e.g. for 30 fps (1 sec), I needed 5 minutes of caching in After Effects, for raytracing in Cinema 4D, more complex enviroments/objects I would be needing around a week(!).
3) Countless software crashes (in conjunction with hardware limits), were forcing me over and over again to render a scene, which had already took me 5-6 hours, because e.g I was out of ram. These, repeated events caused my patience to reach zero.
4) My knowledge isn't sufficient to speed up the completion of the project. I was forced to read several tutorials, thus losing even more time, though I have to state that this was one (and the biggest) of the benefits.

FINAL WORDS

If you enjoyed the video, a simple comment on YT would be sufficient for a thank you :)


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* Btw, my respects go to the people behind CGI/3D etc, working in professional level. If one hasn't tried, can't understand the level of difficulty, in order to reach a certain degree of quality result. It consumes a lot of time and needs knowledge and talent (meaning everything that I lack of, LOL)

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 01-Oct-2011 at 11:59 PM.

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@Cool_amigaN

I'll simply say here what I posted on YouTube...

Brilliant... probably the best and most professional looking video I've seen showcasing the Amiga and it's important part in the history of home computing games...

Love the attention to detail in matching characters and scenes when crossfading not to mention matching the scenes to the music...

Think if Zach Weddington sees this he should put it on the Viva Amiga dvd...

Excellent work... well done...

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@Cool_amigaN

excellent design work.
If you do not care what we publish in our blog.

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Looks great nice work!

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@Cool_amigaN

What a load of rubbish..... those other YouTube videos you mentioned are compared to this

Great video, the effort you put in really paid off, you can tell this is no 10 minute video mash up.

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Glass coffins, a success?
Remains to be seen.

@natamix

Sure, no problem :)

One thing, because of your nickname, are you in any way affiliated with Natami project? Because, while doing the project, I was thinking again and again about the new (hopefully cool) saga and the game(s) developed for it. I think that a cinematic trailer would be great for it, prior to its release.

@Franko

Although that would be a miracle come true, I am afraid that copyrights of the original theme (already on air at "Real Steel" trailer/upcoming Hollywood movie), may prohibit using it under a commercial documentary or any other commercial product :(

@All

You can't image how much I appreciate your comments. The effort put was humongous (due to my limited knowledge about video editing etc).

Again, I would like to thank you from my heart :)

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Your video is just pure awesomeness!

Thank you for bringing so many memories to life!

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God created Paula so that Allister Brimble and Dave Whittaker could do music

Check my Amiga gameplays (ITA)!

Thanks...thanks...thanks....its all I can say....thanks!

@Cool_amigaN

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!

Did bring a sight tear to my eye watching it and remebering the good old days.

I cant wait for the Viva Amiga documentary, is their an update yet for release? (sorry to go off topic).

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Live Long and keep Amigaing!

A1200, Power Tower, TF1260 128MB RAM, 68060 Rev 6, OS3.9 BB2, HD-Floppy, Mediator TX+ PCI, Voodoo 3 3000, Soundblaster 4.1, TV Card, Spider USB, 100MBit Ethernet, 16GB CF HD, 52xCDRom.

@Cool'n Amiga

Awesome. Shared via FaceBook !

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PowerMac G5 2,7Ghz - 2GB - Radeon 9650 - MorphOS 3.14
AmigaONE X1000, 2GB, Sapphire Radeon HD 7700
FPGA Replay + DB 68060 at 85Mhz

@Cool_amigaN

Really nice effort. Thanks for the memories!

@Cool_amigaN

Hey don't be so modest - that was a truly great video. I look forward to your next. :)

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Excellent vid! Great work, How do you capture Game footage, I have had issue with WinUAE and Xvid Mpeg 4 decoder sometimes its perfect and other times the footage is cut off or scaled wrong, I sometime also record off my real Amiga via TV tuner but that not brill quality either.

Any way, just point out I have a few vids on my dedicated Amiga You Tube channel, my most recent one,

Amiga the Pinball Wizard!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniZXbeBKI8

Good luck with you next vid!

Last edited by amigang on 02-Oct-2011 at 05:50 PM.

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AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@Cool_amigaN

It's a nice start. As I owned a Video Compositing/Sepcial Effects company in the past I can give you some tips.

- Try to avoid rotating of logo's (it looks a little bit hobby, the effect is too simple)
- When you make cut scenes of the games don't use the same type of games in a sequence, but try to flip to something completely different and then back again (now I saw like 10 shooters in a row which was a boring).
- The intro with the text is a bit too long, you are waiting and reading all the time. Short it just a little bit so that it has a better timing.

Nice work though...

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AmigaScene.nl

@amigang

The best way to capture Amiga video is of course from a real Amiga via the 23 pin video connector in RGB and using a household DVD recorder (no scaling or cut footage problems this way), never use the RF or composite as you have already lost the picture quality via these signals...

Here's an example using a Panasonic DVD recorder....

A1200 Gloom Deluxe Demo...


@ sananaman

Gotta disagree with you on your "cut scenes" comment. The way Cool-amigaN did this was very well done and obviously took a lot of time and planning. Watch carefully and see how he matched up the position of the ships in the shoot em up scenes so that the crossfades almost had a morphing effect of one ship into another.

He cleverly did the same in the graphic adventure style games matching up character positions as best he could creating this morphing style fade between scenes...

Plus keep the genres grouped together like this allows the viewer to compare each game between those of the same genre...

Still say it's probably the best and most "professional" looking video of this type I've seen on YouTube and is one of the very few that certainly was anything but boring...

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@Cool_amigaN

No, sorry. I have nothing to do with the team Natami, is just my nick.
You can contact them on your website.

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@Cool_amigaN

Very nice and professional looking video you have there.

Definetily better looking than those 100 games in 10 minutes videos.

However, two things from critical point of view.

1. I would have preferred something more Classic Amiga era sounding music for the video.

2. Although this was much more professional and better looking than those 100 games in 10 minutes videos, there is however one thing those videos did got better. For when you were showing those games in this video, I didnt really feel much anything. They seemed more like they were marketing Amiga Games in general than for nostalgic feeling. in 100 games in 10 Minutes, although they are done much simpler and not as good looking as your video, I did have feelings when those games were shown.


But despite the critic which i solely gave for purpose of being able to make next one even better, this was real professionally looking done video. Very good job indeed!

@Cool_amigaN

That is one cool stroll down memory lane. After reading your post I thought it was yet another half-baked video, but I was so wrong - this one is cool!

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Regards
Thomas Graff Thøger

@sananaman

Yeap, I agree with you about the rotating effect (Cinemaware logo). But in teh end, I was really tired to try to amend it :P
Regarding gaming sequence, I had two options: 1) Mix the genres and 2) Group them under genre type. If would opt for option 1, I would have to edit the camera viewpoint via After Efefcts in transitions. Nothing else looked good (all looked truly amateurish). And I mean nothing, because I edited the sequences in Sony Vegas, Premiere, VideoStudio and Magix but only AE provided the results I wanted. But the problem was that AE was too heavy for my laptop and it would doubled the time for completion. So I went for option 2, choose "Flashback" transition (the morphing effect that Franko is talking about), placed the main characters into same location and choose 3-4 explosion effects when changing genre. However, it is my will in the upcoming continuation to use only AE for the transitions and keyframe different camera viewpoints.

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