What tools do people use to create Video content to advertise their games / apps

Hi all,

I'm getting closer to releasing my first game both on Android and iOS and I'm just starting to look into creating a decent app store listings.

I've looked into websites such as theapplaunchpad for screenshot editing, but I was wondering what tools people were using for creating in game Video content to place within your app store listings? Or indeed for Ad campaigns?

 

Premiere and AfterEffects

 

Avid if you have a dedicated nonlinear editing machine - otherwise adobe master collection, and either nvidia shadowplay, obs or other screen capture ability.
+1 for AE!

 

For those of us on a budget, Lightworks and VSDC are free.

 

OBS + After Effects.

You can figure out After Effects and make decent videos in about a week. There are a lot of templates that help, but they can be confusing.

 

I've been doing a lot of research on this lately. I believe lightworks is restricted to 720p output for the free version. I am currently using Davinci Resolve and Hitfilm Express based on recommendations on reddit videoediting. Both have free version. Davinci appears to be more powerful for video editing and colour grading but not as good with effects. Hitfilm has a lot more effects in the free version and you can purchase more for relatively cheap. Both are in the $300 range for the full versions (which gets you all the pro effects although DR is still more limited). After Effects is the Industry standard for motion effects and Premiere Pro is one of the standards for video editing but both are expensive. I bought PowerDirector which gets a lot of recommendations and is not bad but I feel that DR and Hitfilm are more powerful and free. The cheaper paid editors (like powerdirector and corel visualstudio) generally give you a little more capability for exporting video than the free versions (i.e. 4K and 360) and come with more (usually cheesy) effects.

So if you are doing only game video editing and want some effects for free, go with Hitfilm Express
If you are doing a lot of live video editing consider Davinci Resolve,
If you want to pay lots and go with the Industry Standard, go with Premiere Pro and After Effects.

 

After Effects is essentially photoshop with an animation timeline, so might be only a couple hours if you have solid grasp of photoshop. There are other things in AE to learn, but - it is just a great software package.

I also believe there is a light version of Avid "express" - but I've never heard any positive comments about it. I don't think it is even associated with Avid media composer which is the top quality nonlinear editing suite I use at day time job.

Regarding HitFilms - one of the guys associated with that package has some great tutorials using After Effects on youtube. Called Surfaced Studios.

 

Thanks all, I'll have to take a look at HitFilm Express and see how far it can get me.

For screen capture, I've only ever used nvidia Shadowplay on my desktop, but my game is designed for mobile and tablets only. Do people use apps to capture gameplay on HD devices, or do people use emulators / screen mirroring to do the screen capture on you macs/PC's?

I know you can do screen recordings through adb but I believe this comes with a 3 minute limitation and it doesn't capture sound. Although I'd imagine most screen capture apps would have to use the external mic anyway.

 

I also like to use OBS for recording and Premiere and AfterEffects for editing.

 

HitFilm Express 2017

 

I'm wondering how people are capturing their footage?
More specifically for mobile. Do people do it on mobile, in the editor or make a standalone build?? And what tool do people use to capture it?
Doing all the marketing stuff, I find to be the most annoying part of game dev lol

 

I did the latter. Keep in mind, though, that some things may look or behave differently on mobile GPUs compared to desktop GPUs - compressed textures being a major culprit., and framerate itself being another. So if you're capturing promo footage for mobile devices from your PC then make sure you're not misrepresenting your game.

Depending on what you're doing, 3 minutes is loads of time. Keep in mind that for most film stuff you're going to be cutting up your footage into shots, and they'll usually only be a few seconds each. I generally record playing around with various different bits of the game, then snip relevant shots which I then edit into whatever I want.

Also, you might want to do a manual sound mix for at least parts of your trailer or promo video. At the very least, I capture promo footage without music and re-add the music afterwards, otherwise shot cuts are just a mess as far as audio is concerned. Being able to capture the rest of the sound is definitely good, though.

 

OBS and Camtasia (much easier to use than after effects for general editing)

 

You can use Quicktime on a Mac to easily record footage from a iOS device that is attached

 

Well Winblows has the movie maker but yeah ...
OBS is free, the editors is where ya get gouged.

 

This is what I do to capture footage using an iPhone 6 Plus connected to my Mac. I then rotate the footage in Quicktime so it is landscape (my current app is portrait) then edit in iMovie and then rotate back.

You will have all that software for free if you have a Mac, which I assume you do for your iOS development.

 

Why would I develop for IOS. I don't wan't to kill my project with IOS or Android headaches

I have the nvidia stuff but have never tried because I have used OBS for years.

I know it is not intended, but I am smelling paranoia tin foil hat stuff around here. Microsoft partners with Unity about the Visual Studio stuff, Unity is about to start shipping Visual Studio with Unity instead of Monodevelop.

Now all of a sudden everyones android and IOS projects are having all the bugs.

 

Free : Vsdc or Hitfilm
Paid : Sony movie studio

 

I'd recommend DaVinci Resolve. It's a decent video editor that has real nice functionality with a minimal learning curve. I've used it several times for small stuff, including editing screen recordings. It has the added benefit of being free.

 

For iOS, check out:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207935

 

If any ones interested I thought I'd write a follow up..

In the end, after reading the many suggestions (Thankyou all) and being limited on budget, I decided to use HitFilm Express (Free) as my editor and I used AZ Recorder (Free) for screen recording on my tablet (not great quality but good enough for my limited needs). One issue I had with AZ Recorder was that it doesn't allow you to record internal audio, but instead uses the microphone, so you tend to pick up a lot of external noise. I got around this by plugging a pair of headphones in to my chosen tablet and gaffer taping one of the headphones to the external microphone. It worked a treat!

With HitFilm Express I was surprised how quickly (having never used video editing software, ever!) I was able to produce a semi professional looking promo video in a matter of hours. I found it very intuitive and it had all the functionality I required with regards to audio, transitions exporting to the various required formats for the different app stores.

Here's the finished article which is now live on the Google play store

An edited version is available on the Apple app store as their requirements with regards to length and format differ from Google.

and the video is also featured on my website fatcatstudios.org.uk

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions and feedback