YouTube Tut Using POV-Ray, Audacity and FFmpeg for 2.125

[thyme]

Hi Movie Makers Take 2

Open Source Seamless3d 2.125 (including French and English versions) is available for download from:

http://www.seamless3d.com/download


To see my updated tutorial please go to:

http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/movie

This step by step tutorial shows how anyone today can make high quality 3d animated movies using free software and be able to reach a very wide audience.


This tutorial replaces my previous movie making tutorial and is much simpler than before now that we use ffmpeg instead of blink.
Part of this reason is because I have made Seamless3d create a batch file to control ffmpeg when the povray files are created.
Instead of having to do 3 separate operations: Join the frames, mix in the sound and then convert to an AVI file we now only have to double click on the bat file and ffmpeg will merge the audio and frames into a flv file we can upload to youtube.
We have more options available too because ffmpeg can do all sorts of other formats including mpg which opens fine in windows media player and mp4 which opens fine in quick time (does anyone know if windows media player can be made to play mp4 too ?) .
I experimented with uploading mpg and mp4 which were a little more compact than the flv generated by default but in the end it seemed to me the youtube movies were noticeably higher quality when I uploaded a flv .

a bug crept into 2.123 that prevented the BoxBuild node from being colored. Thanks to Lilly discovering this but it has been fixed for 2.125

[thyme]

btw , to have a flv from ffmpeg ..you need to have a wav in ...

so ...what when you don't need a sound ?? LOL

Good question Alain you are ahead of me I can see it would be good to make it so seamless checks to see if you have a wav file and only add sound to the command line for ffmpeg when generating the pov files but it is also easy now to not add sound.
Just open the bat file and remove this text from the first line:

Code: Select all

-i build_av.wav

Make sure the first line remains on the first line when using notepad before saving or it wont work!

[thyme]

humm....
I don't like very much flv files ..
it is ok to put that on youtube , but that's all

Why don't you like flv Alain? because of the quality or because of problems finding an offline player that can play them reliably?
I play flv files offline mostly using nFLVPlayer:
http://zeraha.org/file.41.html

I think nFLVPlayer is fine for playing flv files at their actual size or close to their actual size but seems poor if you expand them a lot.

mplayer (not to be confused with windows media player):

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

is much better for playing flv files full screen when it plays them correctly.

mplayer is another ffmpeg related program and seems to have the same capabilities as SUPER(C) for playing, just it has a different interface.

If you don't know what to download its difficult like many of these open source projects arrrrg unlike seamless you have to pass their intelligent test to prove you are worthy of their program lol
I downloaded the exe: gmplayer.exe from their site by downloading the source (which comes with the exe too but they don't tell you this!)
just unzip it and look for gmplayer.exe (which has a nice icon) and run that.
mplayer seems excellent for playing full screen and seems wonderfully fast and efficient but same as SUPER (C) a lot of the flv files have some problem which makes nFLVPlayer less of a hassle if you are happy to play a movie at actual size.
When I play a favorite movie of mine (Wallace & Gromit) encoded in mp4, QuickTime distorts a lot of the movie badly where as mplayer plays it perfectly.

I am no longer so sure flv files are any better for YouTube than mp4 files now.
I showed Ep 3 movies of my build_av demo I uploaded to YouYube:

one using ffmpeg flv
one using ffmpeg mp4
one using blink avi

She could not tell the first 2 apart (and now I cant be sure) but we both could see plainly a blemish in the one done by blink.
However for only 2 seconds of movie it would be unfair to permanently conclude which is best.

I remember when you used SUPER(C) to make an AVI file you had trouble uploading it to YouTube Alain because of the codecs.
So I tried ffmpeg and I had the same problems
however I found you can specify codecs for Microsoft Media Player.
Just open the batch file (build_av.bat) and replace the text:

Code: Select all

build_av.flv

with:

Code: Select all

-vcodec msmpeg4v2 build_av.avi

this will work for YouTube too

[Alain]

hum ...
I got that first , in the coincoinwar2.bat

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -r 12 -f image2 -i coincoinwar2%%02d.png -i coincoinwar2.wav coincoinwar2.flv
pause

I changed into

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -r 12 -f image2 -i coincoinwar2%%02d.png -i -vcodec msmpeg4v2 coincoinwar2.avi
pause

but I got :

Code: Select all

D:\Mes documents>"C:\Program Files\\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -r 12 -f image2
-i coincoinwar2%02d.png -i -vcodec msmpeg4v2 coincoinwar2.avi
ffmpeg version 0.5.0-pre1,build 4743 Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Fabrice Bellard
  configuration:  --enable-mp3lame --enable-faac --enable-faad --enable-amr_nb -
-enable-amr_wb --disable-ffserver --disable-ffplay --enable-small --enable-memal
ign-hack --enable-gpl --enable-xvid --enable-dts --enable-a52 --enable-vhook --e
nable-pthread
  built on Nov 13 2005 21:13:33, gcc: 3.3.1 (cygming special)
Input #0, image2, from 'coincoinwar2%02d.png':
  Duration: 00:00:01.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
  Stream #0.0: Video: png, 320x240, 12.00 fps
A>-vcodec: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.

D:\Mes documents>pause
Appuyez sur une touche pour continuer . . .

.............................................


and ..........

Why don't you like flv Alain?

First of all because I can't hack them from youtube , LOL !!!

I know how to get a flv from youtube and how to play it ...

But I find nothing to edit it , and there are many free movies on youtube I want to take parts from , to use in vrml , to play with etc ...

[thyme]

Please try this Alain:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -r 12 -f image2 -i coincoinwar2%%02d.png -vcodec msmpeg4v2 coincoinwar2.avi
pause

I have simply deleted the last:

Code: Select all

-i

-i means "input file" and so when you delete the wav file you must also delete the -i in front of it.

[thyme]

I know how to get a flv from youtube and how to play it ...

But I find nothing to edit it

Have you tried converting flv to mpg, mp4 or avi Alain?

I am interested to hear, what do you use for playing flv files offline?

[Alain]

I have simply deleted the last:
Code:
-i

ah ! ok ! many thanx !
I got the avi , it is ok ...
22ko !! LOL

I will retry with another animation more long ...

Have you tried converting flv to mpg, mp4 or avi Alain?

I am interested to hear, what do you use for playing flv files offline?

I serached on Google but for the moment I found nothing working ...
to convert flv , I mean ..

and isa's husband says that it is impossible

????

to play them I used , last time , the player you told ..
nflvplayer ,

but I got a stupid trick from web , months ago ,

I got a "video.swf" and I know that he opens a video.flv

( but I can édit the video.swf )

so I rename my flvs .....video.flv ...and I open the video.swf from a wideo.html .....

am I clear ? LOL

[Alain]

this sort of stupid trick

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louizeforum/sea ... ncoin.html

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louizeforum/seamless/video.swf

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louizeforum/seamless/video.flv

[thyme]

I serached on Google but for the moment I found nothing working ...
to convert flv , I mean ..

and isa's husband says that it is impossible

????

I knew it was possible Alain because I did this some months ago with a demo program but the movie had an annoying water mark through out it because the program needed money to get rid of it! LOL

But ffmpeg is free and it works! Woooo Hoooooo!

The movie ends up smaller after the conversion but I guess the movie has degraded in quality too

please try this Alain:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -i my_file.flv my_file.mpg
pause

works for mp4 too but I need to try something for avi

[thyme]

This works for converting flv to avi Alain

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -i my_file.flv -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec mp3 my_file.avi
pause

It specifies a codec for the video and a codec (mp3) for the sound

[Alain]

wowwwwwwwwwwwww !!!!

bravo !!!!!!!!

[Alain]

I wrote the ressources for LouiZE ,
many thanx ,

I copy here

Scripts VIDEO / MOVIE Aujourd’hui à 11:09

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had a great help from Thyme to convert flv

still some probs with the sound but I will look closer ..


for the moment I converted the flv into avi ,
and I added a sound


http://dumenieu.free.fr/vrml/avatarspub ... rqueen.wrl


the sound is 181 ko ,
but wait for the video , it is 5 MO




THyme told me to use
ffmpeg ...... free et open


you write a myvideo.txt in blocnote ,

and you change the extension into myvideo.bat

it must contain these lines

Code:
"C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -i my_file.flv -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec mp3 my_file.avi
pause


It specifies a codec for the video and a codec (mp3) for the sound

then you double click on myvideo.bat


I used that one



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY9STJoyD4U


I edited it in a video prog when I got the avi file

[thyme]

Hi Alain, I hope you are having as much fun as me

I found you can use -sameq for the conversion command to get better quality.

I assume -sameq means "same quality"

So I tried adding -sameq:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe" -i my_file.flv" -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -acodec mp3 -sameq my_file.avi"
pause

During the conversion lots of warnings scroll up the window but I don't think they are of much concearn.
I played the converted avi movie side by side with the original flv movie and I could not notice any difference in the quality!

The only problem is -sameq makes your files a lot bigger but this should not be a problem if this is only for editing movies and you intend to convert it back to a more compressed format when the editing is done.

-sameq also works when converting to mpg

[thyme]

I see your extracted queen sound track playing in a wrl Alain

I got a "video.swf" and I know that he opens a video.flv

( but I can édit the video.swf )

so I rename my flvs .....video.flv ...and I open the video.swf from a wideo.html .....

am I clear ? LOL

Is the problem that you can not embed a flv file into html Alain? (like you can an avi) but if you convert a flv to a swf it can then be embeded into html?
How do you convert flv to swf?

[thyme]

I think I understand now, the swf file contains flash code thats plays the flv file?