On platforms like TM tube, you'll find hundreds of Trackmania videos, most of them very basic, some of them really maxed out, with an almost cineastic quality.
We'll show you how you can create your individual little video.
The basis of every video shooting in Trackmania are saved replays. Here's the basic scheme.
Section 1: The Sources
The basis of any TM video shooting is a replay file, no matter what kind of, as long as it contains the track data and some driving data; that's what a "Replay" consists of".
A replay also doesn't have to contain the complete "start-to-finish" driving, also little driving snippets can be saved and used.
Example:
You want to make a "super crash" video: You start driving, make a horrendous crash and land on your back.. now you can't finish the driving track anymore and TM won't show you the replay screen, where you have the "Save replay" option.
That's no problem, because you can press "S" anytime during a race to save the existing driving data as a replay, no matter where you started driving or if you finished the race.
Select the sources
Click Icon to download the Videotrack_Player1(00'08''37).Replay.Gbx
Click Icon to download the Videotrack_Player2(00'08''89).Replay.Gbx
Put the Files into C:\...\My Documents\Trackmania\Tracks\Replays\Downloaded\
Now Start TM
- Press Editors / Edit a Replay.
- Go into the Replays/Downloaded folder, where you placed the 2 replays.
- Select the 1st of the both and press "Launch"
- Press "Edit" in the popup menu.
Now you will be taken into the Replay Mediatracker.
ATTENTION ! A NASTY BUG !
Normally, you could put multiple replays into the folder and select them ALL TOGETHER (with the little folder icon that looks like piled-up cubes) and then press launch/edit.
As long as all of these replays were recorded on the same driving track, TM would automatically load all of them together into the Replay Mediatracker at once. With this method, you could easily load hundreds or even thousands of replays at a time.
For some unknown reason, this doesn't work reliably anymore.
Sometimes it just happens that you select all tracks and press "Launch/Edit", but only 1 Replay Ghost will appear in the Replay Mediatracker's timeline (where normally all ghosts from all selected replays would be!). This one replay is somehow "defective" and causes TM to neglect all the other selected replays.
You can still import "Driving Ghosts" from other replays with the "Import Ghost" button in the Mediatracker, but this won't work if you intended to create a video with hundreds or thousands of cars.
A workaround
Some half-assed workaround would be "trying to load" all replays, then look in the listing which one(s) is responsible for the failure, write them down on a piece of paper, go back to the file selection menu, select all others BUT this one replay and load them together into the mediatracker. AFTER that you can still import the driving ghost from this 1 defective replay.
By the way
We have the same problem with the 2 replays you just downloaded. I drove them both and saved them right after each other, but for this unknown reason described above, only Player1's ghost will be loaded into the mediatracker, even if you selected both of the replays!
The bug was immediately reported to Nadeo, let's hope it gets fixed in a future update.
As you can see, there's no clip listing, no triggers, no conditions...
That's because all data is recorded, all the driving action is given: there's no need for these features anymore.
Click on the "Import Ghost Button", Select the 2nd replay and press "Open". The driving ghost of the 2nd replay will be imported into our new "big replay".
You could import ghosts of -any- other replay here, even if recorded on completely different tracks... When being played back now in our new replay, these ghost cars would drive on an "invisible track". This feature can be used to create some stunning effects.
Section 2: Adding effects to the Replay
If you don't want to add any FX, just save your replay as "Videotrack_Bigreplay" (the save button is in the upper left corner) and proceed to Shooting the video.
All the effect tracks you know from the normal mediatracker can be used in the replay mediatracker as well.
If the driving track (the one, from which our source replay was recorded) had some mediatracker content in the "End game" section, then this content will appear here in the Track listing... you can keep it or use the trashcan icon to remove these effect tracks.
Let's start adding our own content.
First, delete the existing "Camera" track. As you remember from the mediatracker lessons, only 1 camera track can exist at a time, that's why we need to delete the default one, so wen can place our own camera track.
1st camera setting
0. Insert a "Custom Camera" track at 0:00.
1. Select the start keyframe.
2. Set the End block to 00:05:00
3. Place your camera in front of the start ramp (use our values for optimum position)
4. Select the end keyframe and copy the values from the start keyframe.
It plays until the cars vanish behind the turbos (at 00:05.00).
The 2nd camera setting
1. Move the timeline slider to go beyond the ending of the camera block, just a bit.
2. Insert a new Block, 3. Camera custom.
Now click & hold the mousebutton on the red body of the camera track and move it to the left, so there's no space anymore between the 2 camera blocks.
1. select the start keyframe of the block.
2. edit the start/end block values to 05.00 and 07.00 .. our block is only 2 seconds long...
3. Edit the XYZ camera values.
4. Chose Player1 as "Target".
Now the other camera values will be changed accordingly and the camera will focus this ghost while playing the block.
5. Select the end keyframe and copy the values from the start keyframe to it.
At the end of our 2nd camera setting, both cars are shortly before the jump ramp.
3rd and final camera setting Our last camera will keep Player2 focused and will circle around him as soon as he hits the ramp...
1. Insert a "Path Camera" Track after the Camera track and drag it to the left.
2. Select the start keyframe and set Block Start-End to 07.00-12.00.
3. Set Target + Anchor to Player2.
4. Enter the XYZ values as shown in the picture.
5. Enter 9.00 at the Time Value and press the "Insert key" button to insert a keyframe at this exact time.
6. Set Target + Anchor to Player2.
7. Enter the XYZ values as shown in the picture.
8. Go to the end keyframe and copy the values of the middle keyframe to it.
Some final polishing!
9. Select the end keyframe of Player1's Ghost block.
10. Change the End block value to 12.00, so both ghost blocks are the same length. Otherwise Player1 will disappear too early...
Basically, that's it. That's how the replay mediatracker works. Go to the beginning of the timeline and press the "Play" button to watch the whole replay. So far for the very basics, but we're not yet finished with this track !
If you ask yourself what the "Start offset" value is good for, we talked about it in the GPS tutorial.
One more word on camera useage in the replay mediatracker
From the normal mediatracker you know, that handling cameras is often a bit complex, because so many different cars can possibly drive many different routes and in many different ways.
The replay mediatracker has this 1 big advantage: all driving is done. There are no more uncertainties about what a driver will do or where he would go.
If you want to, you can fully control your cameras to the very last bit, place them exactly where you want, relative to the car(s) you're focusing. This way you could make awesome transitions from the outside of a car to the inside, leaving you with additional options you never had in the normal mediatracker... use them, it's worth it.
Section 3: Timeline handling
Haven't you asked yourself why there is a "Time" track in the track listing ? It's a powerful feature that only exists in the replay mediatracker.
Basically, you have 2 seperate timelines
One of them is well familar to you... you place your blocks in them, slide around keyframes or just play it ... it's your "superior timeline", where 1.0 seconds in the timeline = 1.0 seconds of playback.
The other one exists within the replay you loaded into the replay mediatracker, it does not necessarily relate to your superior timeline... the keyframe values of the time track give you some control over it.
What could this be good for ?
You can control "time" with it. You can make time run slower or faster, you can rewind time and you can jump to different points in time with this function ! A few examples: Example 1: Everything normal
Start keyframe
End keyframe
The time block is 2 seconds long in your superior timeline, you can tell this by looking at the "Block Start +End" values..
The keyframe values for the time track show 0-2, which means that within the 2seconds of the block, second 0-2 of the replay will be played back... 2.0 seconds in the replay timeline equal 2.0 seconds when beeing played back by your superior timeline.
Example 2: Fast forward
Start keyframe
End keyframe
Within the 2 seconds of the block, second 0->4 of the replay will be played back... everything will move with 200% speed !
Example 3: Backwards in Time
Start keyframe
End keyframe
Within the 2 seconds of the block, second 2->0 of the replay will be played back... although everything is at 100% speed , everything goes backwards this time.
The "Tangent" value is a bit similar to the camera interpolation values, it influences how smooth or harsh transitions in time are.
Exercise track continued...
Let's add some nice little "Matrix effect" to our replay.
Our time track is 0.6 seconds shorter than our both ghost tracks.. we can use these 0.6 seconds for some simple fun, so we don't have to do complicated calculations. Later on, you'll see why.
Go to 09.00 in the time track and create an additional keyframe there.
Go to 08.40 (=0.6 seconds earlier) and create another keyframe.
Go back to the other keyframe at 09.00 and change the Time value to 8.4.
Now both additional keyframes have the same Time value. The cars won't move at all during these 0.6 seconds, but the camera in our superior timeline will still move on.
That's what a "Matrix effect" is all about !
Go to the end keyframe of the time track, change the Block End to 12.00, but leave the Time value at 11.4.
This is necessary, because we had a total standstill for 0.6 seconds earlier, so these 0.6 seconds must be substacted from our superior timeline value.
FINISHED ! Save it under as "Videotrack_Bigreplay" (the save button is in the upper left corner) and let's see how good it looks during playback.
Click Icon to download the Videotrack_Bigreplay.Replay.Gbx
You can also load the final big replay and put it into the same folder as the 2 single replays.
One more word on time track functionality
If you want to add multiple time track effects to your replay, you should be prepared to make lots of calculations concering the differences between your superior timeline and your replay's internal timeline.
Instead of using many keyframes within a single block, you can add multiple time blocks to keep a better overview (in some cases, e.g. when switching from time to time point, using blocks is a must!).
Section 4: Shooting the video
Now that we've saved our final big replay to harddisk, we can use the video shooting function.
You know where to find your newly saved big replay :-)
You'll get a dialogue for setting your quality options.
For getting the best possible quality, you must temporarily set all your graphics options to the highest settings in the TM launcher/config, before starting TM.
My recommendation is that you shoot with at least PC3 shader, 800*600 resolution, 30 frames per second, 9 x AntiAlias and NO motion blur. This will take quite some time to shoot, but you will get the best results for further processing.
In order to shoot in real high quality,you must enable these functions (PC3,shadows etc...) in the config launcher BEFORE starting Trackmania !
After pressing OK, you'll get a little window where you can chose the video codec, which will be used for storing the video to harddisk.
My recommendation is to use a lossless codec, either full uncompressed RGB format or something like Microsoft-DV...
Don't be so silly to use anything like XVID here, you will have to compress the whole video later on anyway. After pressing OK, the videoshoot will begin... depending on your quality settings, this can take lots of time.
In the end you can find your saved AVI video in C:\...\My documents\Trackmania\ under the name Video01.avi or something similar.
Hint for good workflow: It pays to shoot many little clips, instead of 1 large one. Not only, that the AVI output format normally has a hard limit of 4GB of size, many small clips will give you more freedom in "post-production", while editing and re-arranging clips for your final video.
Recording Audio
If you experience problems while recording audio with the video, read this Discussion thread.
Section 5: Video editing and compression
To add more effects and cuts to your video, you might want to get familiar with a video editing software...
If you don't have a good video editing software, you should consider creating most effects within the mediatracker itself. After all it can implement pictures, music, create transitions, text effects etc... but of course there are lots of flashy FX, that only a real video editing software can do.
Depending on what you want to do with your uncompressed AVI video (e.g. upload it to tmtube), you need to convert it, respectively compress it.
For unexperienced users, my recommendation is "SUPER", a free program which can convert lots of formats between each other.
If you got questions on specific formats, write into the Discussion thread.
Preparing your video for TM-TUBE
You should convert your video to the right format before uploading it. This way, you can prevent tmtube from re-compressing it again (and ruining the quality). Convert your video to:
Format: .FLV video Resolution: 640*480 pixels (this is the resolution that tmtube uses) FPS: 30 (chose the same FPS in which you shot your video before) Bitrate: 1150-2000 (depending on the action in your video)
That's it, we're finished. These were the basics of creating a TM video :-)
english
TM Creative offers online games, electronic computer hardware and of course internet programming services, like for example free music (HiFi luxury) for mobile phones or graphics software. 2D/3D texture models and buying dvds and bluray are supported,too.
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TM offre una creativa giochi online, hardware elettronico e di servizi internet corso di programmazione, come ad esempio la musica gratis (di lusso HiFi) per i telefoni cellulari o software di grafica. Texture 2D/3D modellizzazione e di acquistare DVD e BluRay sono supportati, anche.
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