Make Your Own "FOX" Style Theater Logo - Page 2

Anyone? I download the Blender program, then the blender file. When I double click on the file (after saving to my hard drive), Blender opens but says the file is incomplete. Any thoughts?

My blender 2.4a is weird too. When I open the file, it doesn't show anything. It shows the button but sometimes, the text on the buttons is not shown. Maybe, blender requires huge amount of RAM. Any clues guys? I only have 512mb.

Very Cool - Mine is rendering right now.

THANKS!!!

I reinstalled the program and the file and it now opens.

How many jpegs are output when the animation is completed? Mine has been running for 30 hours and I have 166 images for the animation so far. Hope it will be done soon! Next I need to figure out how to put that on a dvd with music and make the slide show fast enough for animation.

Gary

Gary,

If you look at the screen below the ANIM button in Blender, it will tell you how many frames (it shows the start and stop frames for the animation). The one I am doing shows 600 as the stop frame. I am seriously feeling the need to upgrade my PC as at the rate I am going (about 100 frames every 12 hours), this is going to take way too long!!

blazer003,

Will changing the output resolution change the rendering time? If I drop it down to NTSC instead of 1280 x 960, will it render faster?

By the way, thanks for putting this together. Great job and much appreciated!

-Gary.

Thanks to Reaper and Blazer for taking the time to share this with us - it amazes me what some people are capable of...

I'm in the process of rendering my custom intro in HD - taking a long time but well worth the wait. I've got a question for the board though in its implementation. I'll have a new 1080p PJ in the home theater currently under construction and wanted to leave the intro in HD to get the full affect. I've been researching different ways of implementing this intro in front of HD-DVD and DVD playback but am struggling with what is the best solution. I'd like the intro to be "seamless" with the main content but not sure how to accomplish this. I'm very green in the area of media streamers, HTPC, etc. - I'm guessing there is a way to do this, but I haven't been able to figure out a solution. Has anyone got detailed info on how to set this up with seamless integration into our movie watching? I'm willing to purchase some hardware to accomplish it if it is south of $400 or so. My current setup is VERY basic - Harmony 880 remote and a Toshiba HD-DVD player. I also have a HP Pavilion dv8000 laptop with XP and Windows Media Center on it that would be available for use as well. Thoughts?

Yes, thank you Blazer and Reaper.

This is fantastic... within a few minutes I was able to get it done (except the rendering of course) .

Ned

Thanks for the detailed instructions, it was very easy to follow and I had one rendered in minutes. I am currently animating the logo and it looks like it is going to take about 12 hours to do on my laptop. Is there a way that I can add this AVI file to movies so it automatically runs before the movie starts, using something like DVD shrink to make a new copy or something?

This was well timed as my efforts have been limited lately. Glad everyone is continuing to enjoy Blazer003's intro. Perhaps the old thread will die off and Blazer can support everyone in this thread. Cheers to the forum and Blazer for helping keep this alive.

Very very nice.. Thanks for sharing this with us. I won't have to bother reaper for my intro now. Just finnish it. Look's just great. Thanks again...

Does anyone have a tutorial for muxing the AVI and ac3?

I have not had success with VirtualDubMod or AVI-Mux_GUI.

Still searching for an answer to this one. If I wasn't set on HD, another DVD player would accomplish this ok. Any thoughts on how to implement in HD?

I don't know the details. But Alan Gouger told me that he ripped the disc to his hard drive in his HTPC and set a simple flag to tell the software to play the intro before all movies. He said it seamlessly plays his intro and then goes into the movie. So, perhaps you could ask him what software he is using to get this to work... or ask on the HTPC sub forum.

Thanks Reaper - I'll PM him and see how he has it set up.

I was just planning to have a cheap 2nd DVD player for the intro. Then do a macro that will switch to the intro DVD, play that and then switch back to the main player and show the movie. Should be simple to do. Only problem is that I would probably have to do this in a lower resolution and let the scaler do the work to get it back to the higher resolution for the projector.

But how do you bypass the trailers etc on the movie - or do you pre-set the primary DVD player with the movie at correct point (i.e. play option in menu) so when youy switch players you just hit enter (or marco enter).

What a wonderful program!, Thanks to Blazer and Reaper for their work.
I downloaded rendered and animated my first one in about 20hrs total. It came out perfect. I do have several questions about file formats and saving the file to a dvd. First off, I have no experience except for backing up my dvds with Nero 7, Decrypter, and Dvd shrink. They are pretty much automatic. What I would like to do is use this clip in a demo Dvd that I made from THX , Dolby digital trailers, and segments of good action scenes from various films that I like. I would like to know how I can add this clip to a Dvd disk that will play in a non computer dvd player. I cant burn this file to disk in any of the burning software that I mentioned above. They all say they don't support this format. I did the first clip in avi raw from the list. Is there a better codex in the list instead of avi to store the file in so I can burn to Dvd?. Do I need some other software to convert avi format to vob so I can burn and play it on a dvd?. Sorry for the dumb questions, I am video file stupid at this point. But this is a great program and I would like to learn more!

Thanks Ed

Thanks for everyones patience, I just found the answers to my questions. Sorry for my ignorance, the answers were right in front of me.

Ed

Most players have the trailers as an option. All you have to do is preload the movie DVD before your guests walk in to give it time to play through the DVD intro.

I just made my jpeg last night and it looks amazing! Thanks for sharing the program and your expertise. My animation is crunching right now (looks like it will take about 32 hours - wow). I can't wait to see it.

Sorry if this has been asked but is there sound with this animation or is it just the graphics? I was wondering if we needed to add the fanfare music (or something of our own choosing) and how it is done. I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to adding sound and editing a video file (avi).

You have to add sound. You can do it with an mp3 and VirtualDub. There are instructions in the other thread. I will let Blazer003 support this thread though. So, if you can't find the answer, be sure to ask Blazer what to do. I'm sure he will help out.

Please let us know if you come up with a solution to this. It would be really nice for it to automatically play before every movie.

You should be able to add the sound with VirtualDub - mp3 and VirtualDubMod - ac3, but I have not been able to do it. I'm sure I'm missing some little step but just can't quite figure it out. They are both freeware, just google for 'em.

Blender has been a lot of fun to play with, thanks again reaper and blazer003! My laptop has been working overtime!

If you figure out how to add the sound electr0n please share!

I added sound and converted it to an MPEG file using TMPG Enc Plus which has a trial download available. I found a 20 second sound clip that matches up perfectly here.

Another option for obtaining the audio file is to use DVDDecrypter to extract the audio from some DVD that you happen to own. Then, use another program to "join" it to the animation file you have rendered. For this second step, I used NeroVision Express, which I happened to own. I was able to load up the animation (mine was an AVI file), and then overlay the audio file I had already "ripped" from my DVD. As I recall, I used a Star Wars DVD as my original source.

One advantage of this route was that the source audio file I found was a true 5.1 Dolby Digital file.

Also, for those who suspect that their animation is taking much much longer than it should be, it may be important to remember that it is best to shut down any and all Virus protection programs for the duration, and also any other programs which might potentially rob the PC of its system resources. I would also check and double check any screensavers and power management schemes which might cause your PC to "partially shut down" due to apparent inactivity from the keyboard or mouse. For example, if your Windows is set to disable the hard drive after a half hour of inactivity, this COULD cause things to run much slower. I forgot these things at first, and watched frames take 3 and one half minutes and longer to render at times. After shutting all of the "extra stuff" down, I saw times ranging from 54 seconds to 92 seconds, depending on the frame.

Hope some of this helps someone,

-Bruce

How do you identify the Fox fanfare in DVDDecrypter?

My video ended up being 19 seconds long.

I took the second MP3 from this website. It had a little better sound with the Cinemascope Edition. The music is 18 seconds long, but the second of no audio isn't a problem.

I then used Acoustica MP3 to WAV free program to convert the MP3 to a WAV format. It's VERY simple to use once it's loaded.

Then I used the free VirtualDub that Reaper suggested. Just open the AVI file in the program, click on the audio tab and select the WAV file you converted. Then save it as a new AVI file and you are done adding the sound to the video.