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Custom Intros the easy way!

post #1 of 61
1/10/11 at 8:09am
Thread Starter 
I read about vipidme.com over in the Blender topic. I finally got around to trying some of their intros yesterday. I must say, I'm pleased with the ease (and speed) that their servers create these intros. I can remember doing my first Fox blend on my Mac and it took 24 hours for the Blender file to run. Then I had to add the music myself. It was fun, but it also a bit of a pain and I could see many home theater buffs being put off by the complexity.

Anyway, I purchased the $35 "Pro-Level" package at vipidme.com and I've been making custom intros ever since. Four examples of the "Booth Bijou" custom intros I've created can be viewed here:

http://www.thephotobooth.net/Booth-B...52554481_FsuLv

On the Pixar one, it was originally limited to a maximum 10 characters (including spaces) for the theater name. For "Booth Bijou", I needed 11 characters. I shot off an E-mail to vipid and they responded in less than 24 hours to tell me that they'd increased the limit to 12 characters! Excellent customer service!!

I'm waiting for a response from the vipid team on a couple of other suggestions I've made. I'd like to see them add a second line of text capability below their "Universal" and "Lucas Film" intros, so I can add "Feature Presentation" or "Coming Attractions" below those intros. I've also suggested adding fade-in from black and fade-out to black on the intros that don't currently do that (some do, some don't). But that's a relatively minor quibble.

Anyway, I have no affiliation with vipid, other than being a satisfied customer! Check them out at:

http://vipidme.com/

Mark
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post #2 of 61
1/10/11 at 8:51pm
Those are great, but how do I seemlessly run these before the movie starts?
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post #3 of 61
1/10/11 at 10:31pm
Thread Starter 
I run my pre-movie entertainment from a home theater PC. In my case, it's a Mac Mini. I use VLC to queue up all of the various custom intros, cartoon, movie trailers, etc. and VLC plays them one at a time in the order I choose. It's just like the "real" theater.

Mark
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post #4 of 61
1/11/11 at 6:41am
I'm waiting for queuing to become an option on my popbox media streamer and then I'm totally buying some of these, I've been watching them for a while. very slick!
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post #5 of 61
1/12/11 at 7:32am
Nice work!

I am amused, however, at the note at the bottom of your pages:

"Please do not copy, print or otherwise reproduce without prior written permission"

Seriously? Isn't that exactly what you've done? Can't have it both ways, dude!
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post #6 of 61
1/14/11 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 
I just noticed that vipid.com has added a second line of text capability to their Universal and Lucas Film intros. That was one of the features I requested. The change allows you to put something like "Feature Presentation" or "Coming Attractions" under the logo.

For our next movie night (tomorrow night), I've decided to run five intros before the movie. They will be "Welcome to Booth Bijou" (Fox), "Now Showing" (Pixar), "Coming Attractions" (Warner), "Cartoon Time" (Homewood), and "Feature Presentation" (Universal). Of course, there will be various trailers, a cartoon, and some other fun stuff (THX and DTS intros) mixed among the custom intros.

We're entertaining a crowd of 20 tomorrow night with 'The Social Network' being the main feature. Fun stuff!!

Mark
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post #7 of 61
1/15/11 at 8:19pm
And they dropped Pixar it looks like?
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post #8 of 61
1/15/11 at 11:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by slaveunit View Post

And they dropped Pixar it looks like?

It's still there when I go to the site.

Mark
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post #9 of 61
1/16/11 at 8:04am
Very strange. I have another person telling me its gone as well. Maybe refresh your page? I do see the Warner Bros is there now.
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post #10 of 61
1/16/11 at 9:39am
Interesting. I logged onto the vipid site to make my first Hi-Rez intros (purchased the 10,000 point package). When I initially opened it the Pixar was not present, after down-loading and going back to make a 3rd I see that the Pixar is back. I saved both intros (MP4s) to "my videos" on the PC in my office (win7). Went to the basement and viewed them both flawlessly thru our PS3 they turned out great.

A question: what would be the reason to download these as "flv" files?
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post #11 of 61
1/16/11 at 9:47am
Yeah I still dont have it even after a refresh on he page.

The flv might be used on a web page to show friends or something. Or even as an intro page to your website.
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post #12 of 61
1/17/11 at 3:16am
We have some troubles with some useres who reseles our FREE contet via other resources. Therefore some intro's temporary will be avaiable only for paid users.
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post #13 of 61
1/17/11 at 6:38am
Thread Starter 
On Saturday, before our guests arrived for a showing of 'The Social Network' in the Booth Bijou Garage Theater, I shot some video of the pre-movie entertainment, which included five different VipID custom intros. Of course, mixed among the custom intros was movie trailers and other fun stuff. The video is 8 minutes long. To save time, a few of the segments were intentionally cut short (the movie trailers, the 5 minute countdown and the cartoon). But the video gives you a good idea how I "stitched" everything together (played from a Mac Mini HTPC using VLC).

http://www.thephotobooth.net/Booth-B...58336650_k7YnP

Please ignore the rolling color bars throughout the video. They are not visible in person.

Spoiler Warning: The first 30 seconds or so of 'The Social Network' is displayed at the end of the video. That's playing from my Blu-ray player, rather than the Mac mini. I switched to it using a macro on my RF remote.

Oh... I should mention that I modified the "Universal" intro myself by importing it into iMovie and adding "Feature Presentation" at the bottom. VipID has added this ability to the Universal theme in their theme creation process. However, I felt their text was too small and I also wanted "Feature Presentation" to appear at the exact instant of the crescendo in the music. I also used iMovie to add fade-in from black and fade-out to black on the intros that didn't already do that, as well as adjusting the volume level of each clip in iMovie to "normalize" the volume level across all of the intros (some were quite a bit lower than others).

Mark
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post #14 of 61
1/17/11 at 1:42pm
Mark very cool thanks for sharing. Do you mind sharing where you found those old school videos in the beginning, the voice dubbing welcome, and the THX trailer? Thanks again!
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post #15 of 61
1/17/11 at 2:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tildawn10 View Post
Mark very cool thanks for sharing. Do you mind sharing where you found those old school videos in the beginning, the voice dubbing welcome, and the THX trailer? Thanks again!
The 60's & 70's era theater trailers were ripped from the DVD, Drive-In Discs Volume 1, which I own. Amazon is out of stock on Volume 1 but they still have Volume 2 and Volume 3 in stock. I do not know if 2 & 3 contain the same trailers, different trailers, or just additional trailers. In all, I ripped a total of 16 shorts from Volume 1:

1) Betty Boop Cartoon
2) Chilly Dilly Pickle Ad
3) Hey Kids, Be Quiet (used this one in the video linked in my last message)
4) Hey Mom, Eat Here
5) Hot Dog Ad
6) It's Intermission Time Countdown (This starts at 10 minutes. I used the last 5 minutes of it for my video.)
7) National Anthem
8) 'On With The Show' Sign (text with music)
9) PIC Mosquito Repellent Ad
10) Popeye Cartoon
11) 'Previews Of Coming Attractions' Sign (text with music)
12) 'Selected Short Subjects' Sign (text with music)
13) Tex Rides Again Intermission Time
14) The Giant Gila Monster Trailer (movie featured on Drive-In disc vol 2)
15) The Wasp Woman Trailer (movie featured on Drive-In disc vol 2)
16) Let's All Go To The Lobby (used at the beginning of my video)

There is one additional text/music sign/short on the Volume 1 disc titled, "Young Lovers". It's a warning to couples, admonishing them about public displays of affection. For whatever reason, I am unable to rip that one from the DVD. When I try, I only get about half of it.

The custom voiceover was done when a group of us (led by mheadroom) pooled our money to hire a professional voice guy right here on AVS back in 2007:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=711484

As it turned out, there were three different volumes of the voiceover recording. I got in on the first two. I have dozens of words and phrases, all done by the same voice guy. I use Amadeus II (Mac audio program) to stitch the words together to create sentences and phrases. My "Booth Bijou" stuff and "Mark" and "Cathy" were recorded on the first volume of the voiceover. For the second volume, we submitted this custom phrase:

Mark and Cathy are....

We've used that one on friends from time to time!

The THX and DTS-HD MA trailers were downloaded from this site:

http://www.demo-world.eu/

The ones I used are the 1080p versions. I've tried using various DVD resolution versions (720x480) but they never look crisp enough on my big screens.

Mark
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post #16 of 61
1/17/11 at 6:09pm
Awesome job Mark. I like the garage as well.
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post #17 of 61
1/19/11 at 3:17pm
Mark, beauteful work. VipID Team is very impressive and glad to be useful for your project's.

Just a little anounce
http://vipidme.com/news/2011-01-19-l...ves-this-week/
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post #18 of 61
1/20/11 at 10:15am
Just want to add my 2 cents to this thread. Love VipID intros. I have been wanting something like this for a looong time, and now I can.

Also, I am really excited about the new intro...this is the one I've really been waiting for.

Bricktop
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post #19 of 61
1/21/11 at 9:10am
+1

Not that Blender was hard to do but having VipID sure is nice to have. I made a WB based intro yesterday, just took a few minutes to generate. Added to my setup at home and the quality of the video is very good.

Definitely worth the "pro level" as I plan to make several more. Will also be nice to have specialty intros like at holiday time.

If the VipID authors are listening, a nice thing to have would be able to generate the intros at a certain aspect ratio. In my theater I play an intro that matches the aspect ratio of the movie to be played. With the "masking" installed on my screen for 4x3 or 2.35:1 movies playing a 16x9 intro doesn't look great as the masking doesn't eliminate the video completely.

As I did for my Blender project, I'll make a 4x3 and 2.35:1 versions using Handbrake but it would be cool just to be able to generate them on the site.

Great work VipID!!
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post #20 of 61
1/21/11 at 9:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by djb61230 View Post

+1

Not that Blender was hard to do but having VipID sure is nice to have. I made a WB based intro yesterday, just took a few minutes to generate. Added to my setup at home and the quality of the video is very good.

Definitely worth the "pro level" as I plan to make several more. Will also be nice to have specialty intros like at holiday time.

If the VipID authors are listening, a nice thing to have would be able to generate the intros at a certain aspect ratio. In my theater I play an intro that matches the aspect ratio of the movie to be played. With the "masking" installed on my screen for 4x3 or 2.35:1 movies playing a 16x9 intro doesn't look great as the masking doesn't eliminate the video completely.

As I did for my Blender project, I'll make a 4x3 and 2.35:1 versions using Handbrake but it would be cool just to be able to generate them on the site.

Great work VipID!!

+1 for the idea to make 2.35:1

I'm currently in the process of tryign to learn how to convert 16x9 to 2.35:1 using Handbrake, and failing miserably.
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post #21 of 61
1/21/11 at 10:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dzirkelb View Post

+1 for the idea to make 2.35:1

I'm currently in the process of tryign to learn how to convert 16x9 to 2.35:1 using Handbrake, and failing miserably.

The simplest way is to just "cut off" part of the top and bottom.

1) Load the video.
2) Hit "Picture Settings" and a window will pop up.
3) Uncheck "AutoCrop"
4) Increase the top and bottom "crop" values. It will display the current aspect ratio in that window on the right as you change the crop values.

I just did this for the intro I made yesterday and it took less than a minute to generate. The intro was the WB one - the logo and text at the bottom are still nicely visible. I clipped 86 pixels from the top and bottom and ended up with a 2.34:1 video.
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post #22 of 61
1/21/11 at 10:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by djb61230 View Post

The simplest way is to just "cut off" part of the top and bottom.

1) Load the video.
2) Hit "Picture Settings" and a window will pop up.
3) Uncheck "AutoCrop"
4) Increase the top and bottom "crop" values. It will display the current aspect ratio in that window on the right as you change the crop values.

I just did this for the intro I made yesterday and it took less than a minute to generate. The intro was the WB one - the logo and text at the bottom are still nicely visible. I clipped 86 pixels from the top and bottom and ended up with a 2.34:1 video.

Awesome, I think I did do that successfuly, but at my work cpu, so I couldn't actually tell if it worked like I wanted to or not. I'll have to play around with it to see if I want to crop it, or resize it...resizing gives black bars on teh left and right, but cropping looses actual picutre. I'll have to think about it, and may be dependant on the video.

Like, the Pixar one, I'll be fine cropping that for sure...which my wife loves btw
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post #23 of 61
1/21/11 at 5:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Booth View Post

The 60's & 70's era theater trailers were ripped from the DVD, Drive-In Discs Volume 1, which I own. Amazon is out of stock on Volume 1 but they still have Volume 2 and Volume 3 in stock. I do not know if 2 & 3 contain the same trailers, different trailers, or just additional trailers. In all, I ripped a total of 16 shorts from Volume 1:

1) Betty Boop Cartoon
2) Chilly Dilly Pickle Ad
3) Hey Kids, Be Quiet (used this one in the video linked in my last message)
4) Hey Mom, Eat Here
5) Hot Dog Ad
6) It's Intermission Time Countdown (This starts at 10 minutes. I used the last 5 minutes of it for my video.)
7) National Anthem
8) 'On With The Show' Sign (text with music)
9) PIC Mosquito Repellent Ad
10) Popeye Cartoon
11) 'Previews Of Coming Attractions' Sign (text with music)
12) 'Selected Short Subjects' Sign (text with music)
13) Tex Rides Again Intermission Time
14) The Giant Gila Monster Trailer (movie featured on Drive-In disc vol 2)
15) The Wasp Woman Trailer (movie featured on Drive-In disc vol 2)
16) Let's All Go To The Lobby (used at the beginning of my video)

There is one additional text/music sign/short on the Volume 1 disc titled, "Young Lovers". It's a warning to couples, admonishing them about public displays of affection. For whatever reason, I am unable to rip that one from the DVD. When I try, I only get about half of it.

The custom voiceover was done when a group of us (led by mheadroom) pooled our money to hire a professional voice guy right here on AVS back in 2007:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=711484

As it turned out, there were three different volumes of the voiceover recording. I got in on the first two. I have dozens of words and phrases, all done by the same voice guy. I use Amadeus II (Mac audio program) to stitch the words together to create sentences and phrases. My "Booth Bijou" stuff and "Mark" and "Cathy" were recorded on the first volume of the voiceover. For the second volume, we submitted this custom phrase:

Mark and Cathy are....

We've used that one on friends from time to time!

The THX and DTS-HD MA trailers were downloaded from this site:

http://www.demo-world.eu/

The ones I used are the 1080p versions. I've tried using various DVD resolution versions (720x480) but they never look crisp enough on my big screens.

Mark

Thanks Mark. I pulled some trailers from the demo-world site but did you also then convert the mt2s format? I wasn't sure what format to change it to in order to keep the 1080p resolution.
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post #24 of 61
1/21/11 at 9:51pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tildawn10 View Post

Thanks Mark. I pulled some trailers from the demo-world site but did you also then convert the mt2s format? I wasn't sure what format to change it to in order to keep the 1080p resolution.

No, I left them in the m2ts format to preserve the 5.1 sound. The whole point of a THX or DTS trailer is to ROCK the room with awesome sound. The m2ts files play back fine with VLC.

Mark
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post #25 of 61
1/22/11 at 2:55pm
Funny, I just found the Vipid site today while surfing some xbmc forums and came here to see if there was any mention of it. Working on my second intro now...This looks like a cool site. I hope they keep adding intros.
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post #26 of 61
1/22/11 at 4:12pm
So anyone that bought the "unlimited" 3500 point account from vipidme, is it really unlimited? I bought it a couple of days ago and in 2 days my points stayed at 10000. But today they are dropping with any videos I make.

EDIT: So I think I understand it a bit better now. So only the FREE INTROs are unlimited. So are they unlimited for only 30 days or throughout the account. Dronson, can you explain this a bit better? Even though it's too late for me now.
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post #27 of 61
1/23/11 at 8:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by slaveunit View Post

So anyone that bought the "unlimited" 3500 point account from vipidme, is it really unlimited? I bought it a couple of days ago and in 2 days my points stayed at 10000. But today they are dropping with any videos I make.

EDIT: So I think I understand it a bit better now. So only the FREE INTROs are unlimited. So are they unlimited for only 30 days or throughout the account. Dronson, can you explain this a bit better? Even though it's too late for me now.

I purchased the unlimited package, and I think it is unlimited. I have made roughly 10 intros so far.

I have made an intro for all the theater intros, and some with multiple different configurations.
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post #28 of 61
1/23/11 at 10:43am
Ok so I found out all the details. The "free" templates are free for 30 days when you purchase a package. All the other ones use up your points depending on the size you choose to make them in. Once your 30 days are up you no longer can make the free ones. So say it is day 31 and they release a new template and you want it in 1080p. You will have to spend another $14.99 to get the 30 days again. What Dronson has posted in here is a bit misleading, to me at least. That's what I get for believing forum posts I guess.
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post #29 of 61
1/23/11 at 10:51am
I was definately mislead on the web site also...call me old fashioned, but saying 35 dollars for unlimited video creation, to me, means unlimited video creation.
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post #30 of 61
1/23/11 at 11:00am
Right. When Dronson posted this:
"- all our Famous (Fox, Pixar, Universal) intros are now free (we don't plan charging any money (Creation points), the only limitation is how much movies you can produce per 24 hours. "

I figured that well, like it says, they will always be free with the ONLY limitation being the number you can do per day. Well that isnt the case after going back and forth with support last night. I realize this is a Russian site and the English can be a bit broken but still I think it's pretty misleading and would have changed my mind on purchasing the Pro Plan.
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