Ever made a trailer? My video-making journey to get to Steam

I'd been putting it off for months. Last summer, I started the process of porting my Marriage app from iOS/Android to Steam. I hired an artist to redo the art, I began work on code update, and began looking into what was required. That's how I learned that Steam requires a trailer video - something I was completely unprepared for. I spent a ton of time researching what was required. And that shut me down. For 4 months, I didn't do a darn thing, other than be agitated. Instead, I went on to other stuff, like podcasting!

And then, over the holidays, I was out for a bike ride with my wife. She challenged me to figure something out by Valentine's day. Oh, SNAP! No she didn't! Course, if you know me, you know I get fired up when my wife drops the gauntlet.

So, I got a web cam - not exactly the same as a video trailer. And yet, it seemed a safer way for me to test the waters. That led me to create a video podcast (shhhh... spoilers!), which led me to realize I needed an opening scene for it. That led me back to the research. See, for years, I'd been using a low-end tool called Sony Vegas Movie Studio. It's reasonably powerful, and around $80, not too expensive. The problem is that the tool is mostly designed for simple transitions between segments - like fading. It definitely couldn't handle typography - a fancy word I learned for flying text.

Vegas studio was okay for old-school machinima. It wasn't up to snuff for this project. Which sent me down a rabbit hole of tools, editors, and templates. The problem with searching on typography, video editing, or creating youtube videos is that if you aren't using a professional tool, you quickly end up in virus land!

And to avoid virus land, you have to stick with the professional products. And that means Adobe: After Effects and Premiere. And those are expensive - ~$50/month forever! So, I kept looking. Back to google, back to Sony Vegas, and back to virus land. I sat on it for days, before finally deciding to give the Adobe products a trial - 30 days was pretty flexible.

I downloaded Adobe Premiere, which led to Adobe After Effects, and Audition. And I was pleasantly surprised at how well integrated everything is. I learned about compositions, text, and integrating. And like Unity, I found 1000s of videos on Youtube. It's what rocks about using an industry standard - EVERY question I had could be answered in minutes with a safe search. Within just a few days, I was able to create the opening scene for my video podcast. And OMG - I was so excited! I literally jumped up and down, clapping my hands, like a little kid. My wife giggled.

Finally, this past weekend, I was ready to tackle Marriage. The fear was gone, replaced with a fire in my veins. And, just this morning, I posted the results. It's now on Steam Greenlight!

Here's the video on Youtube:

That's my story,
Gigi

 

Well, I can say, both you and I are masters of making average videos.

Most of your audio is clipping (or has been poorly recorded). The art looks like clip art (aka amateur).

Pretty sure you can do better... well... maybe after 10,000 hrs or something right?

 

Key takeaway here? @Gigiwoo should tell his wife about projects when he fist encounters them, rather then waiting for four months.

I should probably get back into making videos. Been a while. Most of the time I just use windows movie maker. Sure it's limited, but it's free, and does the job.

 

Making movies is not fun.
I believe that a used mac + garage band + imovie can be a reasonable first step too, in terms of ease of use and money spend.
But making movies is still no fun.

 

I looked around in the past for free alternatives to adobes products and found these (I have not used any except for a bit of gimp, which tbh I dont really like at the moment T.T)

Adobe premiere alternatives -
Lightworks - https://www.lwks.com
Blackmagic Davinci resolve - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Photoshop alternatives -
Gimp - https://www.gimp.org

After effects alternatives -
Blackmagic fusion - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion
Natron - http://natron.fr
Blender - https://www.blender.org

Fusion and Natron are node based editors I think, so its not the same workflow as after effects, but that doesnt have to be a bad thing. I think I read that Natron is very similar to a program called Nuke https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/
however nuke isnt free, while Natron is open source.

Again, I didnt try these programs out, but I plan to when the time comes.

I also plan to use LMMS for music creating https://lmms.io however, its current version on my windows computer (and others) seem to cause weird sound artifacts, but a lower version (like before 1.0 or something) seems to sound fine.

Just throwing all of this out there I guess =)

 

I've seen MUCH worse videos. I don't think that's too bad at all, especially given the nature of the "app" - it's not like you need a whole lot of special effects and "in-game footage".

 

I actually think the key takeaway is he should stop going on bike rides with her

 

I had a similar journey in making the trailer for my little match-3 game. I actually really enjoyed the process, aside from having to re-do stuff to fix some newbie errors I made early on. I should really stop being lazy and actually release that game...

I thought there was an option to just buy one month's worth? Considering that my trailer took me under a week, learning the tools as I went, I think you could get away with just "renting" the tools as you need them.

I got a hefty discount and use Photoshop semi-regularly, so I was happy to sign up for the sub, but if that wasn't the case I'd still happily just pay for access to the individual tools on an as-needed basis. Considering my usage pattern, as long as I budget for it that approach actually makes those professional tools super accessible.

 

That should be good news to your wife.

 

Don't they have a minimum subscription time like Unity's subscription model? I might be confusing whole suite vs single program though.

Good choices. There is still bad clipping in the audio though. Considering that you podcast regularly I think you should keep working on your recording setup, including some template in Audition that you can reuse. You should watch this video:

Imho he has one of the best voiceover setups on youtube.

If you manage to get a clipping free recording I'd be happy to try if I can come up with a setup in Audition that you can keep reusing for future projects. I have Audition CS6, as long as you have CS6 or CC I'd hope you can open those files. If you are interested PM me the link to a .wav of a podcast recording or a part of one, if the file gets too big otherwise.

I normally do all my audio stuff in Reaper, which I like to recommend to everyone whenever a chance presents itself ^^. The company was founded by the dev that made Winamp.
www.reaper.fm

 

"It's all about that base, bout that base" ... Wait, wrong song. She's really good at kicking me in the butt - When she supports a project, it inspires me to crank out the work.

Thanks for the support! My ego is more fragile than it used to be.

Gigi

 

@Martin_H - Do you have a good setup for Adobe Audition? I love my podcast recordings. It's simply close-up to the mic, Garage Band using 'Male Narrator', and then post-processed in Auphonic. I record with an ATR2100, which has a clean, deep capture, if I'm right up on the mic.

The problem occurs when I tried doing a video-podcast. Same mic, captured through the video software on a PC, vs a Mac. My mouth is now a few inches away. Then, I process it in Audition, and it never sounds as good. Plus, splitting, and post-production becomes a real pain in the butt - Definintely going to be a pain if I try to use Auphonic. I'm frustrated!

Gigi

 

In fact I never really used Audition ever, but it isn't that different from Cooledit which I used a lot many years ago. Afaik Adobe bought Cooledit and rebranded it. The basic principles behind audio editing are universal and not program specific. I'd have to trial and error myself through this, but I'll gladly give it a try if you let me. I just took another look at the Audio features of Premiere, I think that should have all the basic stuff too that is needed. So if you are more concerned with finding a solution for that, just send me a link to a video file that I can play around with, and I'll see what I can do.

What is Auphonic? I googled it, and it seems like one of those automated mastering services where you upload a file and they batch-process it for you. Do they offer anything that you really need?

 

I hope i make a decent amount of dough so i can hire someone to do the trailer and various cutscenes. There's so much that one man can learn without overloading.

 

That is exactly what it is. And, I needed it! Auphonic, plus garage band, plus a decent mic === amazingly shippable audio for my podcast. I loved the result sound - deep, rich, and balanced. Plus, it was a simple pipeline. Auphonic does voice leveling, noise removal, plus a few things which are less clear (only because the output is so darn good).

@Martin_H - I will send you a snippet link.
Gigi

 

I completely agree @JaanDoe. And unlike Unity, the toolsets for video production are not cheap. There are free ones, and again, unlike Unity, you generally get what you pay for.

Gigi

 

You said it brother

 

This could vary by region or other things, but when I go to the site they have three plans on offer for single applications - Annual (prepaid), Annual (monthly) and just Monthly. The one that's just monthly is about 30% more expensive, but on the whole that still works out pretty well if you only get it when you need it.

 

You should redo the audio because it sounds like it was recored with a potato which is surprising because your podcasts are usually good.

When I recorded my video I used soundflower to pipe the audio to audacity, recorded with quicktime player then edited with imovie. The first time I did it i recorded it with a mic and it sounded like crap.

 

I can say to everyone is be careful with the video capturing software which are "free". Alot of them contain viruses and malwale. In fact, Firefox blocks acess to some sites which offer free video capturing software.

 

If you're capable of using Linux, KDEnlive is a great video editor as well.

 

OBS is free and doesn't contain malware. Also I never download anything from suspicious looking sites and unless it is well-known program, I prefer downloading from safe sources such as Tucows or CNET, than software's site.

 

That's good to know, thanks!

A friend sent me this link today, seems slightly relevant:
http://www.geek.com/apps/adobe-will-try-anything-to-stop-a-creative-cloud-cancellation-1644869/

@Gigiwoo: If I were in your position I'd check ebay for an older (new and sealed) boxed adobe production suite or master suite. They used to have generous academic licenses that were allowed for commercial use and maybe you qualify for that?
EDIT: see post below for a potentially better alternative.

 

Good to know. Now I won't sub to Adobe. Phew, dodged one right there.

Anyway, @Gigiwoo, thanks for telling about DaVinci Resolve. Do you know if it is possible (legally) use it for commercial purpose, such as trailer or IGG/Kickstarter video? Already tweeted them about that, however I don't really expect response from them.

 

Is that safe these days? Work purchased a bunch of software from a reasonable enough looking dealer on ebay once... and we only did it once, because while it looked perfectly legitimate, it turned out later on that it wasn't.

 

I don't know, I haven't bought something like that on ebay in quite a while. I had a Photoshop 6.0 (not CS 6, the actual 6.0 from waaaaay back before they changed their naming convention) from ebay and the Adobe support told me the serial number is legit. I guess being extra careful on ebay won't hurt. But maybe there is also a factor that we have pretty good buyer protection laws in Germany and I don't think sellers could easily get away with fraud here. Other countries might run a higher risk of being scammed.

But after @darkhog mentioned DaVinci Resolve again I checked out their website and I feel like I might have to change my recommendation after looking at this:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/compare

If the free versions can be used commercially those might even be interesting for me. I've heard great things about DaVinci from a friend that works in the TV/movie industry. And when you see that they sell hardware controllers for 30K $ it almost makes sense that they give away the lite version of the software for free to grow their userbase.

Trying to find out about the license I so far only found this:
http://www.bmcuser.com/showthread.php?13731-DaVinci-Resolve-Lite-is-not-for-commercial-use

And this sounds pretty official:
http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33089
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=29379

 

That was @HiddenMonk. Credit where credit is due .
Gigi

 

Hi I'm also at the stage of making a trailer for steam. What resolution did you use for the video?

I might just use Windows Movie Maker as it has a lot of transitions and titles available. Although the sound syncing is not too good as it only has a couple of layers.

Another option would be to use Blender which is free and has some video editing capabilities.

On that note.. how long before it is possible to make trailer videos in Unity? I hear the new Director Timeline is about to come out. Then would we be able to create and edit videos in Unity directly???

 

Research turned up the two most common resolutions for youtube: 1280x720 and 1080x1920. Both are 16:9. I used 720.
Gigi

 

Correct, and as far as I know those are often referred to as 720p or 1080p. The "p" stands for "progressive" as opposed to "interlaced". As long as you work with ingame footage, screencaps, 3D renderings, after effects animations, youtube videos etc., you should never need to handle interlaced formats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video

 

What about hitfilm??

 

So yesterday I was installing it and actually read the license (say whaaaat?!). There's nothing forbidding yourself for using it commercially there and the agreement is quite short (mostly boiler-plate stuff like no decompiling clause). So if it doesn't forbid you from doing so, I guess it's allowed.

 

Dunno. Can you tell us more?

 

HitFilm is a professional quality video editing and visual effects software package designed by FXHome.
With this software one can do a good amount of video editing and visual effects, heck there's a nice free version available on the site right now if you want to try. This isn't my forte so more info can't be provided, but i honestly think it can be an invaluable tool for video trailers, cutscenes, vfx, and standard film

 

No advocating piracy.

--Eric

 

Yarr matey, pirating is bad, ya might get a virus ya plunderer lol