Long live Uru Live

"Let us end this cycle with rewards, before we start the next cycle." -- Yeesha

Gorahyantee is the D'ni word for Clocks. (5m10s, 32 MB, Windows Media Video v8)
Gorahyantee (direct download)

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The Making of Gorahyantee | More Videos!

This music video is a machinima, with footage captured in a video game called Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles (license presently held by Ubisoft) and synchronized to Clocks, a song by Coldplay and Copyright (c) 2002 Capitol Records. The video was assembled using Windows Movie Maker 2.1.

Myst Online: Uru Live is a multiplayer adventure/puzzle game from Cyan Worlds, the makers of MYST and Riven, available through GameTap in the US and Canada and standalone from some international countries.

The Making of Gorahyantee

Project took just over one week from start to finish.
As with Unwritten, video and still pictures were captured with FRAPS, and the video and song were assembled in Windows Movie Maker 2.1. I also used VirtualDub to improve the video quality; details below.
I discovered that variable-bit MP3 files are a problem in Windows Movie Maker 2.1 when doing scene synchronization. Use constant bit-rate formats instead. Do that and synchronizing to the music is easy.
Some time-lapse scenes required the capture of 16+ gigabytes of video at a rate of 10 frames per second using FRAPS (the slowest it will capture). I then used VirtualDub to "decimate" the video (kept only every 2nd, 3rd, or even 500th frame) and then accelerated the frame rate to 30FPS. Accelerated scenes include: Eder Gira, Kadish Gallery Clock, D'ni Neighborhood Clock, Kadish Tolesa falling leaves, Gahreesen sky view, and Ahnonay chair Part 3 (past the waterfall). To change video speed with VirtualDub, Drag-and-Drop the video onto VirtualDub, then select "Video->Frame Rate..." and the dialog should be self explanatory. When you want to save changes, go to "File" and pick "Save as AVI...".
Also used VirtualDub to increase the contrast/brightness levels on scenes that were too dark. Windows Media Video (WMV) format tends to lose contrast in dark scenes. All scenes were brightened some, but especially dark scenes included the white dial in the Watcher's Sanctuary, the Great Tree, and the Nexus. To brighten things up, first drag and drop the movie onto VirtualDub. Select "Video", "Filters...", "Add", then pick the "Levels" filter from the list. Once you've got the levels dialog up, you'll want to get a reading for the brightness distribution in the video. Click "Show preview" then click "Sample Video..." and pick the top option (One keyframe per second), and OK. Once the video is sampled, you'll be able to adjust the max whiteness, the max darkness, and the gamma (the grey pointer) on the input. You can also adjust at the output but I've found that washes out the video too much. Typically, I'll slide the white arrow on the input to the left until I'm a little above the end of the graph. Hit "OK" to accept your levels filter. When ready to convert, go to "File", pic "Save as AVI...", and then the waiting begins.
A word of warning about VirtualDub: It defaults to saving uncompressed video, so expect the output to be much larger than the input video. If you compress the video from Virtualdub, you may get unpleasant "banding" in your video, so handle with care. To set video compression, choose Video->Compression...
VirtualDub also has batch capabilities (so you can brighten many segments of film to the same specifications); select File->Job Control.
The D'ni script at the beginning says "Gorahyantee", which means "Clocks" in D'ni. Many thanks to RAWA for the word.
All scenes were filmed solo using Uru: Complete Chronicles with a "FlyMode" patch installed (many shots would have been impossible without the patch).
Used Windows Media Profile Editor to create a custom profile for encoding the movie. The standard list of formats didn't work well enough. I downloaded and installed "Windows Media Encoder 9 Series". Then, I read and followed the instructions for creating custom profiles provided on Microsoft's website. Here is the exact setup that I used:
- Enter a name, such as "Uru Videos". When you're done, this is what you'll choose for your profile when creating movies in Windows Movie Maker.
- Check the Audio box. Set Mode to "Quality VBR" and Codec to "Windows Media Audio 9.1" (which should be the default). Do not use Professional or Lossless.
- Check the Video box. Set Mode to "Quality VBR" and Codec to "Windows Media Video V8". You could also use Windows Media Video 9, but I find that V8 compresses better and the quality is very similar for the settings I used. Absolutely do not use Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile. Some computers (Macs in particular) do not support the Advanced setting.
- Click the "Add" button to the right of the "Target bit rates" box.
- Set Audio format to "VBR Quality 75, 44 kHz, stereo VBR."
- Check the "Same as video input" box. Leave the Frame rate at the default of 29.97. Leave the Key frame interval at 6. (If you have a lot of rapid changes in your video, you may set this lower, but never set it to 1. A setting of 1 will cause Windows Movie Maker to hang the entire Windows XP OS.) Set the Video quality to 90.
- Click the "Save and Close" button at the bottom.
- Careful now. You'll get a pop-up box with "Save in" set to "Profiles", but this is misleading. The full path (not shown to you) by default is \Program Files\Windows Media Components\Encoder\Profiles. This is not where you want to save your new profile! As explained in the instructions at step 4, enter a filename for your profile (such as "uruvideo"), then browse to the \Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\Profiles folder. Now you can click "Save".
Positioning for the bird's eye views of Ahnonay (all four spheres) was completed entirely by hand. No co-ordinates were used to provide the identical camera angles and distance. Positioning for the Relto shots was accomplished in the same manner. The transition between Phil's Relto and my Relto is the one part of the film I'm unhappy with; I felt I could have lined things up a little better.
An early test version of the movie had only one shot each of Gahreesen and Teledahn; sequences removed included an additional view of Great Zero before it was turned on, and climbing the curved Library stairs. The Quab had more screen-time too, but this had to be reduced to provide better synchronization between scenes and the music.
Capturing the Eder Kemo time-accelerated scenes required between 20 to 30 gigabytes of disk space per scene, so, ~ 50 GB of space for about 17 seconds in the final movie. Originally, the opening perspectives were going to be reversed (waterfalls during sunset, canyon pillars during sunrise) but I changed it so that nightfall matched the lyrics, "Lights go out and I can't be saved."
I'm particularly happy with the linkage between scenes for not only Ahnonay, but Er'cana, Gahreesen, and Teledahn. Capturing the bird-like creature in Teledahn for both shots made the scenes made me really happy.
I was originally going to use the shot of the Great Tree in another movie I had planned but did not make, set to Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know."
Synchronizing of the Ahnonay Chair was actually very easy. Originally I wanted to have some shots external from the vehicle, but there's no way to travel outside of the vehicle and use first-person perspective mode using FlyMode.
The addition of the cleft windmill was one of the last shots I decided to add, providing a nice transition between the rain there and the rain in Phil's Relto.
In the video, my Relto is made to look as close as possible to Phil's as possible except for one addition: A clock in the lower right.
No quabs were harmed in the production of this film.