Arma 3 Prairie Fire Bullshittery - Update #3

Good evening folks. Apologies for the fairly late post. I should have typed up one about a week ago. I've actually jumped quite far ahead in the edit.

• In the last post I said that I'd completed the initial cut and was moving onto keyframing/animating.
• I was actually able to complete that process in just under 2 weeks.
• It's now in the quality assurance phase. The final part before getting the video to you.

On that front, gah...some nasty challenges are being revealed in this particular render. The QA is taking a while I'm afraid.

One thing that always comes up when trying to edit Arma is that it's actually really difficult to edit. Apologies for sounding like a broken record for regular patrons. I say this every time. For it's almost always for the same reasons that are mostly unique to Arma:

• Text needs to pretty flawlessly track heads in order to be convincing. And those heads are often obscured. With this game featuring literal camouflage to blend in. Or shapes/colours that are not consistent when the player turns their head. Meaning a lot of the animation has to be manual and frame-by-frame. 
• Frame rates are often very low due to the very large scale nature of the operations we run. With 50-60 players + NPC's. It's a challenge to avoid making the text seem janky.
• The foreground usually consists of very geometrically complicated shapes (foliage, other soldiers). Which makes "masking" difficult. The cutting out of shapes to make the text look like it's going behind stuff.
• Rarely am I looking at the speaker when something funny happens. As the nature of Arma is to have soldiers split up over a wide area or communicating over the radio. So adding the text isn't a problem, but making it track things in an interesting way often is.

And pretty much all of these issues have been plaguing this quality assurance process. With scene after scene undergoing rework.

In original cut even lost a scene. Replaced with an alternative. Because the frame rate was so appallingly low. The joke happened during the load in to a server, and the frame rate was essentially a slideshow. At a time when first impressions on the video are important.

So things like that, finding replacements, is a little bit of a time sink.

Additionally I'm afraid to report that I've made a major error during the first 6 streams of MACV SOG. For I accidently had my monitor set on a much higher refresh rate than the recording software on my other PC had. Meaning that many of the good jokes caught in the net have a major problem with screen tearing. Giving this horrible effect if I look around.

It's obvious if I slow it down like this:

To solve it, I'm having to try to select shots where I've kept my head relatively motionless. Or freeze-frame the worst offending moments. Which is a trade off because then it can look too skippy if you're having to take out too many frames.

A frustrating mistake on my part. Sorry about that.

Another notable problem in this video is a pacing issue that's revealed itself in the first third. For I like to alternate between slow gags and quick cuts. And I felt that the quick cuts were FAR too quick in this case. Bewilderingly so. I'd clearly made a structural mistake in dire need of correction.

Cyanide amused himself during MACV SOG by running around briefings and firebases, yelling "JASON DERULO" - the name of an American singer/songwriter.  Appearing suddenly, singing spontaneously, before vanishing into the scenery like a bizarre ninja. 

I'd cut the scenes far too fasts. Necessitating the selection of short briefing sequences, or replacement slower scenes, just to bring the energy back down and make it watchable. And adding fresh entire scenes is quite heavy for what is meant to be the QA phase.

You might have to forgive me for shenanigans on this part. Cyanide's interjections are now rarely in their original placement. For pacing improvements and visual variety, they're now attached to other scenes.

I'm up to my usual editing tricks.

Additionally, the last major headache in this edit has been the aforementioned "not looking in the right place", problem.

There's one big scene in a helicopter that embodies why Arma can sometimes be such a hassle. For hilarious banter happened in one helicopter journey. But I had the misfortune of sitting in the worst possible seat for it - the middle of the passenger compartment. Meaning multiple people would always be off screen, no matter how much I tried to look at whoever was talking.

A big part of the quality assurance is going to be to shuffle the visual component, to try and look at the right person at the right moment. Or know when to disable the text entirely because it's drawing the viewers eye away from the interesting bit.

So in summary, whilst the initial keyframing and editing went smoothly, the quality assurance phase is dragging due to more serious screen tearing, pacing problems, or eyeline consistency concerns. Not as easy to fix compared to simple mistakes.

But work steadily continues and I hope to churn through the issues as efficiently as I can. Also not helped by some unusual hardware problems that are heralding an obvious problem I've been ignoring - my workstation is getting old and needs a major upgrade.

To be scheduled this year. Not mid project.

I've actually made another one of those google sheet tracking documents by the way. I seem to be getting into a habit of doing it now, this being the third. If you're curious to see my progress. I might actually continue this in the future and make it accessible as early as possible to the Patrons and Twitch subscibers. Seems a sensible way to communicate precisely what I'm doing without big posts.

Anyway, thank you for your patience folks. QA continues on these issues. And I hope I can get this out of the door in the next few days. Would still like to do that musical montage. But that's an optional flourish. I need to complete the main show first.