Saturday, May 10, 2014

Montages Are About to Hit the Fan - So Here's Some Tips to Get Yours Noticed


With the Ps4 and Xbox One hitting the markets with gusto it's easy to lose sight of a few things that will have a profound impact on the gaming community. What am I talking about? Montages, Frag Videos, those awesome five minutes of watching skilled players rip apart the gaming community with sick headshots and other kills to music that we love.

Now I'm not saying every video that gets out there is rockstar quality. In actual fact, there's a lot of failures out there. But everyone needs a starting point, and the field is about to be leveled... well in a few updates at least.

When montages first started hitting YouTube they made jaws drop, eyes got crossed and made gamers drool for days on end. But what was the main issue? Capture Cards for the PC were like 200$, and external PVR devices were near double that. Over the years prices have gone down. Hell if you go to Amazon right now you could pick up a Used Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition for around $110 (That includes shipping) where the new out of the box ones at retail stores are between $130-200. That is if you can find a HD PVR at the retail store that works with a PS3 or XboX 360, most stores will direct you to the Bell/Rogers or whatever else cable company you have in your area HD PVR having NO CLUE about what you're looking for.

With the new systems, that won't be needed anymore. Sony and Microsoft have both put the PVR ability into the console. Now, I won't say this is flawless (Sony has already stated that the PVR ability needs a patch that will be released at a later date to function. Xbox One is stating "limited PVR capabilities" which basically means they don't want to comment on what it lacks) but this is all technicalities to anyone who sees the forest for the trees. Gamers are not slow indaviduals, you can bet that there will be a work around of some sort, or something along those lines to get you your desired result.

Now, I said back up there that "there's a lot of failures out there." Well, that's mainly because of a lack of knowledge. You can't simply chop your video, add some music, and call it a day. Well... You could do that, but then you'll end up wasting your time on a video that will barely blip on YouTube... and we all know you want the world to see how awesome your skills are.

What I recommend is watching a boat load of Montages. Find the ones with the most views study it. Then, adfter your eyes and ears have had so many joygasims you can barely contain yourself start recording yourself.

Hey, Johnny Hotshot, 2 hours of recording is not gonna cut it. I mean seriously, in 2 hours of gameplay you might have three or four really awesome games where you can get a couple of seconds of video. Yeah, I said it, a couple of seconds. You're going to want a day or two of gameplay, just remember the maps you did awesome on and skimming through the footage won't be a problem.
Awesome, you got your clips, and your music, but what should you use to make the video? For first timers... Windows Movie Maker... seriously, but don't expect AMAZING results. This will get you familiar with what goes into making a montage. "But Swoop, I want an Epic Montage!" well then, Sony Vegas Pro is your answer. But that's NOT cheap, it could cost you anywhere from $200-$600. A step down would be Corel's VideoStudio or Sony Movie Studio (They tend to be around $50-$100 depending on which one you buy) after you get that, spend some time learning it, go on YouTube, find some tutorials, play around with it.

After all this is said and done, your montage is ready to go, the world will see how awesome you are!
I'm giving you an example of one of my first videos I created. The quality suffered, but that was because of the method I used to capture the game clips. Some of you might remember that you could upload a clip from Black Ops to YouTube, limited to about 30 seconds however. So, I did just that, uploaded to YouTube, downloaded from YouTube. The quality took a hit big time, but these were my first steps, and I'll admit I'm still working on my skills editing, but you have to start somewhere right?
So now it's all a question of when, and will you sit back and simply watch the movies? Or will you be the start of one of your own?

Swoopster out.
http://www.theinformedgamer.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8132727

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