Cock Hero Video Creation Work Flow
Tool Set
Davinci Resolve is a professional video editor that has a free download (free)
GIMP is a powerful image editor (opensource)
FFMPEG is a video processing library (opensource)
KDENLive is a video editor (opensource)
Audacity is a multi-track audio editor (opensource)
Quick Start
1. Create a story board
2. Collect assets (video clips, music , images, graphics) that you will need
Part 01
1. Create the video in Resolve including:
1. All the video clips added and transitions applied
2. Add the opening title
3. Add the music track(s)
This produces a file: <section>-phase-01.mp4
Part 02
1. Create the beat meter audio tracks in an audio editor to produce:
1. Audio track of the beat meter that the audience will listen to.
2. Audio track of the beat meter to generate the waveform that will be animated in the game.
This produces two files: <section>-beat-meter-audio.mp3, <section>-beat-meter-graphic.mp3
Part 03
1. Generate the waveform with FFMPEG
This produces a file: <section>-beat-meter-graphic.png
Part 04
1. Use KDENLive to add the beat meter
1. Import the files: <section>-phase-01.mp4, <section>-beat-meter-audio.mp3, <section>-beat-
meter-graphic.png
2. Animate the graphic using keyframes so that scrolls across the screen in sync with
<section>-beat-meter-audio.mp3
This produces a file: <section>-phase-02.mp4
Part 05
1. Use Resolve to:
1. Add instuction text and graphics
2. Final tweaking
This produces a file called <section>.mp4
Repeat steps 1 through 5 for each chapter or section in the game
Part 06
1. Post production in Resolve
1. Knit the opening and closing titles, and the <section> videos together
2. Add transitions between the sections
3. Add music to interludes and titles
This produces the final product: <game>.mp4
Details
Create a Story Board Organize your thoughts on the theme, how you want the game to flow, if you have
chapters, what music are you going to use, color schemes, and so on.
Organize your video, music and graphics assets There are a lot of moving pieces and its really import for
you to be organized.
Create titles and graphics in GIMP Create your titles in GIMP save the project file and then export a
transparent PNG file as the title to be imported into KDEnlive. Make a GIMP template that has the
dimensions of the video project. Setup palletes and colors so you can quickly make graphics.
Create the audio beat marker Export the entire video from Resolve and import it into Cubase. Setup a
virtual instrument with two sounds, one for the beat marker audio and one for the beat marker graphic. The
reason for this is that the sound we will use to generate the graphical beat marker is not the kind of thing you
want to listen to when you play the game. For the audio beat marker choose something that you can hear
easily but that is not too annoying. For the graphical beat maker its important to use a tone like a square
wave that has a very consistent tone with steep attack and decay characteristics.
Its a really good idea to time stretch the project so that Cubase's timing grid matches the song in the video.
This will allow you snap the notes you are about to play to the grid and make them perfectly in time.
You can now either enter the notes manually, or just play along on a MIDI keyboard. I do the latter, and then I
quantize the notes. I then go and fix any thing I missed, and tweak the beats to be exactly what I want.
Then export the audio beat marker track as a mono file. 'beat_marker_audio.mp3' Then export the graphic
beat marker track as a mono file. 'beat_marker_graphic.mp3'
Using FFMPEG create a wave form image from the beat marker audio track Use FFMPEG to convert
the audio file's waveform into a graphic. Make it really big, 10240x100 which is the widest graphic I can seem
to make on Ubuntu without crashing.
ffmpeg -i beat_meter_graphic.mp3 -filter_complex
"aformat=channel_layouts=mono,showwavespic=s=10240x100:scale=log:colors=magenta"
-frames:v 1 beat_marker_graphic.png
Setup the Beat Marker Import both the graphic and the audio beat markers to video and audio tracks
respectively. Set the audio starting position to the same place as the video. This should line up with the song
track if you exported and imported the same region length in KDEnLive and Cubase.
The graphic beat marker requires a little bit of fiddling to get it just right.
1. Position and size the graphic beat marker with a Transform effect. Even though the image is
10240x100, KDEnLive sets a different size so make sure to set the size.
2. Zoom into the audio beat marker and find the first beat. Set the timeline playhead to be at the first
beat.
3. Create a key frame for the graphic beat marker in the Transform effect. Set the position of the
graphic beat markers first beat to be at the mark where you want the user action to happen.
4. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the last beat.
5. You can then set a key frame for the start and end of the graphic beat marker so that it enters and
leaves the screen.
Render the video Render the video and go get coffee.
Notes
Video size 1920x1080
Beat marker size 10240x100
Hit marker size 1930x120
