remember that when you smooth a demo that you are in that the popping up and down will appear on the smooth.

#2: Yeah I noticed that, is there anyway to get around that besides using a sequence of time when you aren't shooting?

nah dude sorry, it sucks, you can recreate scenes with friends, and then when you do those scenes, you dont shoot, duck or jump, those are the things that cause the skipping, then you can get a fully smooth one.

Ah I see, that's ok, I'll just pick my time frames more carefully next time.

also your colors need work in my opinion

It was pretty good. I do have a few things I want to mention though.

The least important thing is that I feel as if the audio is too loud. If your volume meter in Vegas is hitting close to orange, I would suggest bumping down the volume some. I noticed that you had in game volume playing as well, and it was near impossible to hear it.

Secondly, using a one color only tint isn't a bad thing, but it didn't work too well. You used too much of it. It takes away from the natural colors of the game instead of complementing them.

Thirdly, your transitions didn't make much sense. The first one where it went from the Snakewater clip to the Badlands clip, it came out of nowhere. The second transition, if it can be called a transition, was after the medic kill on your Badlands clip. I feel like maybe you were experimenting with something and forgot to remove it.

Finally, if your smooths are going to have movement, make sure the viewer doesn't see when that movement stops like it does at the end of the video.

Good job on the video though, just keep going at it. It feels good knowing more people want to learn how to edit.

Yeah I agree, I was playing with some of the color effects in Vegas and thought I may have made them a little bit too strong.

I was originally going for a mild background where you can faintly here the in game noise, but with the Scout scene I obviously should have toned either the music or the shots down. I will keep the volume colors in mind for the future.

I'm glad you called me on my transitions, I definitely was having some troubles with them. I could not get them to fit properly for some reason, and you are right on about the experimentation, I was trying to find a nice balance and just couldn't get it right. Noted for future projects.

I was actually hoping that last smooth would be long enough that I could put text over the ending of it to give credit and all that rather then using a regular black frame, unfortunately it wasn't. I will work on cutting off the end of those, and maybe transitioning into another smooth to keep the flow going.

Thanks for the help guys, great to have a community that you can help you out and give you tips.

Could someone explain to me why you would use color correction in a video game that already has perfect lighting? Let alone one with a HUD. The sole purpose of color correction is to balance the temperature of the lighting. When video games (for the most part) already have fantastic lighting, I see absolutely no way color correction could possibly make the game look better. The only editing you really need to do to make a frag video good is simple cuts that don't take anything away from the frags (obviously the frags need to be good). Also, just like any other video a theme helps a lot, which is why the Red Light Green Light video was so good.

Note: none of this was directed at OP (or anyone in particular), just getting this off my chest.

I'm going to guess it's to bring out certain colors in places where editors see lighting could have been improved.

I think if done correctly and in light doses, it can highlight some of the beauty in the game rather then trying to change the color scheme completely. I just don't have the talent to do that yet.

I always thought it was to make the video look prettier, not particularly better or to fix the lighting.

Can't you smooth an STV demo?

Anytime you jump, crouch, take fall or splash damage in a demo it will translate into the smooth you created within that time frame. Your demo is stuttering try using "host_timescale 0.00001" to bypass this. Try to keep your smooths fairly relevant to the clip you are showing afterwards (sometimes exceptional for intros)

Don't throw in random ingame player sounds, its annoying. You need actual in game sound from the frag clip itself, your attempted sync would look better with in game sound. At 0:25 you used slow motion in the last frag for too long it hurts the flow of your video you could have easily transitioned into the next clip and kept the video going at a steady pace. At 0:29 you didn't key frame that blur looking effect to ease in and it doesn't look good at all the way you randomly threw it in there.

0:31 there is a random purple box appearing at the bottom left of your hud get rid of it, there is a small lawena update that fixes it. Oh and speaking of hud, why aren't you using movie hud all the way through the video? You started with it, then you ended up having the full hud in the scout clip then you went back to the movie hud. Stick with it all the way through. Crosshair always needs to be on for frag clips (with the exception of sniper clips)

At 0:35 there is a ramdom black flash, this means you failed to zoom into your timeline to make sure there isn't a random empty space between two split clips. At 0:36 those random transitions are unnecessary, I understand you are trying to add effects to enhance the clip and make it look better but that isn't what transitions are used for and it certainly isn't done properly It hurts the overall flow of your video plus the viewer can't see the frag clip that well because of it.

0:45 you cut in to the next clip, a fade would have worked better. Cut in transitions are okay in some areas but you should have faded the two clips there. At 0:46 the whole airshot scene was slowmo, don't do that. You should have left the frag scene normal speed and slowmo at the very end once he hits the airshot. Your smooth for that airshot was not good at all, you let the frag clip go on for far too long when you should have cut to the smooth right away. Instead of going with the slowmo for the frag clip you should have used it for the smooth instead considering the smooth was to give the viewer a better angle on the kill.

At 0:56 there is no movement in the smooth the camera is still you should cut the smooth off before this happens. At the end, you should have faded instead of letting the smooth cut to credits. Your credits need a better font and layout.

good attempt and good luck :)

oh and your color correction needs work

@ikpure, you just made me feel rather silly. I went over that clip a ton of times due to some difficulties, and I never noticed the purple box OR the fact that I didn't use the movie hud. I guess I should learn from that and work on reviewing more carefully. Appreciate the feedback on the transitions, like I said I definitely struggled with them throughout.

Also appreciate the feedback on the slow motion, I didn't know the "rules" on tf 2 edits as to how much is too much, and when to properly use it. I was planning on cutting off the smooth and transitioning into the credits but didn't follow through with it, should have. And I agree about the credits, if you have any recommendations or downloads for good fonts that could be used in SV then I would appreciate them, a lot of the stock ones seemed sort of bland. And what sort of format do you suggest?

I feel like some of the slow-mo bits last too long, especially the one with the soldier's airshot.

Pure gave me some good help when working on my last video in terms of colors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMKkiZ6fRlQ&hd=1). What he told me was that for intros you should "go hard" and make them look pretty. So that's what I did and it turned out looking good color wise.

After having a talk with Decap some time ago, I came to the realization that I shouldn't use colors to change the colors that you see (for example how you turned Snakewater Blue Last into a red area), but instead add on to them, or complement as I said in my previous post. I think my best bet on showing you what that means is to link you to what I think is my best looking video yet when it comes down to how I make it look with colors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maV9FdV3OP0&hd=1). You'll probably say or think, "but there aren't any color changes." That's my point. I didn't change how the colors look, but instead I made the already existing colors look better. That's what you should try to accomplish.

Wow, that 2nd video really looks amazing. Could you share anything in particular you did to make the colors look so crisp?

Mess around with the plugins: HSL Adjust, Levels and, if you want, Unsharp Mask. Unsharp Mask doesn't really do too much unless you make it, which I don't. You can also use Saturation Adjust if you want, but I really only use that for Gullywash since that ground is bright as hell.

i liked the song

I feel like the second clip started too early, there was a solid 6 seconds of strafing, if it was intended as a sync then you could have shown the start of the push into last in third person to take up time, then linked it to 0:17 to have made it look like the push had just started.

I also didn't like the frequency of the voice clips, the only one I felt like it worked with was the scout clip.

the syncing was really good though

#20: Alright, i'll mess with some of those today and see what I get.

#21: Yeah I actually got the song off of the Frag Music thread on here, it had went pretty unnoticed for some reason.

#22: I agree, i'm going to work on those voice clippings and probably not include them anymore, they just seem sort of forced.

#23: Thanks, this song was a really easy sync for the most part with a constant beat throughout.