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For Builders Creating a Starting Movie for a Module
Creating a Starting Movie for a Module
Intended Audience: 
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by Jeff "Dueeliz" Weaver, BioWare Community Member
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Movies are a great medium for drawing players into your module.
They are able to introduce the story with music, pictures, and
dialog. A movie tailored to your module can bring it to a
new level of involvement.
This tutorial
shows you how to easily create and add a custom movie to your own
module.
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Preparation
This tutorial utilizes
several different applications.
The first application
you will need is Microsoft PowerPoint. This tutorial will assume
you are using Microsoft PowerPoint 2000.
The second
application is a screen capture program that will allow you to create
avi files. The application detailed in this tutorial will be
Camtasia by Techsmith available at http://www.techsmith.com/.
The third
application is the RAD Video Tools which will allow you to convert your
avi file into a bik file. You can download these tools for free at http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm.
NOTE:
If you have different software that can easily create avi files, you can
skip directly to section 8.
Instructions
1.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint, create a New Blank Presentation.
Your movie in PowerPoint will be cut into different Slides. Think of
these Slides as different camera angles or different scenes that make up
the whole of your movie.
For example, watch the movies that Bioware created for Neverwinter
Nights. Their movies are simply text at the bottom, a voice over with
sound effects and music, and a single static picture with the
"camera" moving about it giving it the illusion of animation.
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2.
Next you need to create your first Slide. This is the first scene
in the movie. This can be just a simple black background
with some text that names your module.
3.
The next slide can be the first sentence detailing the
introduction of the module. Example: "A long time
ago..."
The following slides can be the next sentences in the
introduction.
And so on...
Each new slide tells the story of your movie. As you become
more experienced with PowerPoint, you can start adding animations,
images, and movement to your individual slides.
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4.
Once you have all your Slides in the order you want them to be
played, the next step is to make the PowerPoint Slide Show move
automatically.
In the menu of PowerPoint, go to Slide Show -> Slide Transition.
Here you will set the properties of the transitions between your
slides. You can use a custom effect, such as Fade From Black, or
that Lucas style swipe. The one area you want to focus on is the
Advance section near the bottom of the window.
Click in the box next to "Automatically after", and set
how many seconds you want PowerPoint to wait on each slide before
moving onto the next one.
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5. Once this is set, your ready to view your presentation.
Click on View and then Slide Show to view your movie/presentation.
This PowerPoint presentation is basically your negative for the
movie.
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6.
Now that the PowerPoint presentation is done, we need to convert it
to an avi file. The way we do this is by using a screen capture
application. One that will be able to create avi files. If you do a
Google search for "avi screen capture" you'll find a number
of applications that will do this. I'm personally using Camtasia by
Techsmith.
Basically, the way this will all work is you play your PowerPoint
presentation and while it plays you use the screen capture
application to record it into an avi file.
With Camtasia its pretty simple, all you do is hit F9 while the
presentation starts and then left click on the window that you want
to record which will be highlighted by a white box. At the end
of the presentation, hit F10 and then save the file as
an avi.
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There are few things we need to setup in Camtasia first:
- Start the Camtasia Recorder,
Select Capture -> Input and select Window. This will tell
Camtasia to record the window we specify when we press F9.
- Go to Effects -> Audio and select Record Audio. This
will allow Camtasia to record the audio from our PowerPoint
Presentation into our avi file.
- Go to Effects -> Cursor and select Hide Cursor. This
will hide the cursor when we do our screen capture so it will not
appear in the movie.
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7.
In order for the sound from your PowerPoint presentation to be
captured correctly, you need to set up how your system records sound
for it to work properly with Camtasia. Most Windows systems
will be setup to record from the microphone by default. To change
this to what you hear out of your speakers, go to Control Panel
-> Sounds and Multimedia - In the Sound Recording field click on
the Volume button. Then at the top, click on Options ->
Properties. In the Show the following controls box, make sure the
"What U Hear" box is checked. Click OK, and now in the
Recording Control window, you will see a volume slider titled What U
Hear. At the bottom is a box titled Select. Click in the box titled
Select under What U Hear to make it your default recording device.
(Note: In Windows 2000 it is called "Stereo Mix" instead
of "What U Hear").
Now, when you use Camtasia to screen capture, the sound it catches
will be whatever comes out of your system speakers.
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Another step regarding audio is to increase the rate at which it is
sampled which directly affects the avi file size. Go to Tools
-> Options and under the AVI tab select the Audio Setup
button. Here you can select the sample rate in which audio
will be recorded. The highest you can select is 48kHz 16-bit
Stereo; however, only use mono recording or the sound will not be
heard after you convert it to a bik file. Though selecting the highest values will give the best sound quality in your
avi, it will also make the movie file much larger.
If you wish to add additional
sounds, music, or narration over your movie, you can also use DubIt also
from Techsmith. Most sound work can be done in PowerPoint; however,
DubIt will give you that extra control on when precisely the sounds are
played.
TIPS: In order to increase the capture framerate, disable hardware
acceleration via your desktop by going to Properties -> Settings
-> Advanced -> Troubleshooting and sliding the bar to None.
Be sure to turn back on hardware acceleration once you are finished
using Camtasia. Also, reducing your desktop resolution to 800x600
will increase the capture framerate.
Another way to increase capture framerate is to Tools -> Options and
under the AVI tab in the Video Options field, uncheck the Auto Configure
box. This will allow you to manually enter how many frames per
second you want Camtasia to record. Between 10 and 15 frames per
second should work for most movies that have fast action. The more
frames per second you record at, the larger the avi file will be.
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8.
Once you have your avi file with sound all ready, we now have to
convert it to the BIK format so it will work with Neverwinter
Nights.
To do this, you need the RAD Video Tools (Bink and Smacker) which
are available to download for free at http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm.
Once you have installed the RAD Tools, you will be asked to select a file
type. Select the avi file you created and then hit the Bink It!
button.
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9.
This will open up the options for the Bink Video conversion.
Everything should be ok, but there are two key sections you want to
pay attention to.
The first is the Output file info name. Make sure its named what you
want the movie to be called.
The second is in the Input video settings. At the far right of the
Force to and Adjust to settings, make sure the Width is 800 and the
Height is 600 for all fields. This will make sure your movie
resolution is the correct size so it will work in Neverwinter
Nights.
10.
To insure the audio will be heard correctly when converted to a bik file, click the Compress Audio box. Then select either 8-bit/mono or 16-bit/mono. This will allow the RAD Tools to compress the audio in a format it understands as well as reducing the size of the movie. If you choose 16-bit/mono, the audio will sound much cleaner; however, the movie file size will be larger.
11.
Once everything is set, hit the Bink button on the right side. It will
take several minutes for it to convert the avi file into a bik.
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12. After that, place to *.bik movie file into your movies folder
of Neverwinter Nights.
13.
Open your module in the Neverwinter Toolset. Go to Edit -> Module Properties
-> Advanced tab and choose your movie in the Starting Movie
field. Save the module.
If everything was done right, the
next time you start your module you should see your movie play!
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