Thanks for the advise. Another interesting thing, I noticed that the videos have far less noticeable compression artefacts when played with VLC Media Player than with Media Player Classic or Windows Media Player.

@Smeagol
That's also how I've been working so far on The Long Way Home apart from planning to export the end result to AVI.
I have now tried exporting it to MP4 but to similar results. I have two MP4 related codecs, one being AVC and the other being XDCAM EX; are either of these related to the h.264 codec? I'm using Vegas.

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I think the best way would be some post-production CGI effect.
Some people use cotton to wonderful effect as smoke, but I don't think it'll work as steam very well here.

If you can't do it, there are a number of folks on the site that are very skilled in that kind of thing, and I'm sure one of them would love to take on the job.

Very nice set by the way!

What I do is export as an uncompressed avi (or QuickTime) and then compress to an h.264 MP4 file with HandBreak, I've never had much luck using my NLE to compress video.

Mac or PC? I've had good luck with MPEG Streamclip on the PC front. That's what I used for exporting final products in h.264 for YouTube purposes before I began using Adobe Software. But HandBreak may be just as good, or better.

Okay, so I've been messing about with Handbreak and I have been seeing improvements though very slight.
Here's a frame from Handbreak's MP4:

Here is the previous avi which I showed before:

Finally here's the uncompressed:

@SlothPaladin. What settings in Handbreak that you find give the best results?

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How would you go about creating a dead atmosphere with sound? In the scene from the photo above, I'm hoping to give the city the minifigure is in a recently abandoned look and feel. So far I've been experimenting with silence but that seems to make the scene feel less like an abandoned city and more like an abandoned soundtrack. However I'm concerned that if I add too many sounds of machinery and pipes it will give the scene an over-animated feel. Maybe a fine balance inbetween?

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What about a dog bark turned to quiet to make it sound far away.

I think a very quiet muffled ambient background noise might help.  Also, I'd suggest exaggerating the sound effects you do hear to make the silence greater by comparison.  For instance, if the minifig is walking down the street, make he footsteps sound loud and echoing.  If possible, try adding in the sound of cloth swishing together, the creak of the soles of his shoes, perhaps even make his breathing audible, that sort of thing.  You could also animate some litter blowing around in the background, and add the sound of it blowing across the pavement along with a soft wind sound effect.  The odd wooden/metallic creak or groan could also be added in to make the atmosphere feel a bit more surreal.

@Vertigo, wow, that's a good idea, I'll have to try that myself sometime. I think that would create a very nice empty atmosphere effect.

@William, Most sound editors like Audacity or SoundForge have an echo, delay, or reverb that does that automatically.

Last edited by rioforce (August 11, 2015 (02:37pm))

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