Hey guys - As promised, here's a small tutorial on how to create great looking videos with music for the HP previews while keeping the file sizes as small as possible.
Part I - Software
Here's all the software I use. Everything's free so no need to pay for any fancy software.
- Video capturing - I use CamStudio (available here: http://camstudio.org/). Very simple and straightforward. Also comes with its own lossless codec. You should download both the software and the codec from the main page and install them. Optionally, download a lossy codec instead of CamStudio's lossless codec. I'd recommend Xvid (available here: http://www.xvid.org/).
- Sound editing - My choice is Audacity (available here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). Audacity is bit of a complex software but we'll just use a few basic options to edit the audio before adding it to the video.
- Video encoding - I go with Avidemux (available here: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/). It's a very simple video editing software. In our case, we'll just be using it to trim and rotate videos where necessary, adding an audio track and re-encoding.
- Other software - I use all the software described in the "How to rip sounds and music from ROMs" tutorial (available right here on VPF - http://www.vpforums....ials&article=54) to grab sounds and music from the ROMs.
Part II - Video capturing
The easiest part about video capturing is if someone has already done that for you. 
I've actually only captured just two or three videos. For the most part, I just use one of bitupset's excellent videos available here on VPF. If you really want do it yourself, here's what you should do:
- Fire up CamStudio. CamStudio has relatively few options for basic video capturing.
- On the upper right corner of the window it should say "Record to AVI". If it says "Record to SWF" press the SWF button on the menu bar to switch to AVI.
- Next, go to the Region menu and choose Select Screen.
- Now go to Options > Video Options.
- The only thing you need to select here is the Compressor. You can go with all the default options but feel free to explore if you want to tinker with some of the quality settings.
- You have two good options for the Compressor: 1) you can go with the CamStudio Lossless Codec that comes with CamStudio (see above) or 2) you can use Xvid or any other lossy codec (see also above).
- Using the lossless codec provides a high quality video without any compression resulting in a huge file. You'll eventually compress it when you go through the encoding process. I personally prefer to use the a lossy codec and deal with smaller files and the additional video encoding options Xvid gives me. You will NOT notice the difference between the lossless and lossy versions (assuming you stick with the defaults).
- After selecting the Video options, disable audio recording on your video by selecting Options > Do not record audio.
- Finally go to Options > Program Options and enable Hide flashing rectangle during recording.
- You're now ready to capture video.
- To start recording your video you need to move the CamStudio window to the second screen. The first screen should re running VP full screen.
- Once VP starts running, click on the Record button and select the screen where VP is running.
- Grab a good full minute of video so that you can later trim it if needed.
- Just press Stop on CamStudio and that should be it.
Once the capturing is completed, just save the file and play it back on your normal video player to see if everything is ok.
Part III - Preparing the audio
The way I like to add audio my videos is: trim the audio sample to the exact duration of the video, convert it to stereo if it's in mono (common for WAVs grabbed from ROMs), normalize it and fade it out in the last 3 seconds. Normalization is important to make sure all your video previews are the same sound level when you're browsing your tables in HP. Fading out is also important to avoid an abrupt cut off when the video begins it's next loop.
I'm assuming you already have an audio track (e.g. either an MP3 or a WAV you grabbed from the ROM) so here's how you prepare it based on the method above:
- To check the exact duration of the video, open it up in Avidemux. You should be able to see it at the bottom of the window.
- Now open up the audio sample in Audacity.
- Check if the sample is mono or stereo. If it's stereo you should see two similar sound waves in Audicity and it should say "Stereo" on the upper left window that contains the sample.
- If it's mono, you should only see one sound wave and it will say "Mono". To convert it to Stereo, Select All (Ctrl + A) and then Duplicate (Ctrl + D). You should now see two sound waves. On the dropdown with the sample's name on the top sound wave select "Left Channel" and select "Right Channel" on bottom wave. Go back to the dropdown on the upper sound wave and select "Make Stereo Track".
- Now trim your sample to the exact same size as the video. Easiest way to do this is to click on where you want the music to begin for your video and then select "Length" at the bottom of the window and enter the video's length. Copy this selection to a new window.
- Next step is normalize. Just Select All and choose Normalize from the Effects menu. Go with the default options.
- Finally, fading out. Just select the last three seconds of the sample and choose Fade Out from the Effects menu.
- Just save your edited sample as WAV file.
Part IV - Adding the audio track and encoding
Now that you have the video and the audio, it's time to put it all together and encode it.
Only if necessary, there are two things you should do before encoding your new video:
- Trimming - If your video is NOT already trimmed to the exact length you want it, you should trim it first before adding the audio (and you should probably only create the audio sample after this step). Trimming is easy: just open up the video in Avidemux, use the "A" and "B" buttons at the bottom of the window to set the beginning and end. On the "Ouput Format" select the same as the one you're file was originally in (AVI Muxer for .avi, MP4 Muxer for .mp4, etc.). Save the file and open the new file.
- Rotating - If you capture your own video, you will have to rotate it 180 degrees. A video needs to have the apron on the left handside of the image for it to display properly on HP. If it's not on the left hand side when you play it on a normal video player, it will show up upside down on HP. If you ever see a preview video on HP that is upside down, this is the reason. Rotating is easy and can be done simultaneously with the encoding so I'll explain it below.
Now assuming that both your video and audio sample have already the same length, this is how you put everything together:
- Open the video in Avidemux.
- If the apron does NOT show up on the left hand side of the window, you need to rotate it 180 degrees.
- To rotate the video 180 degrees, select Filters from the Video menu (Ctrl + Alt + F). Click on Transform, select Rotate and select 180 degrees and close the window.
- To add the audio, select Select Track from the Audio menu.
- Enable Track 1 and select "Add audio track..." from the dropdown. Choose the file with your audio and click on Ok to close the window.
- Now the most important part: the encoding options.
- Video Options - Select "Mpeg4 AVC (x264)" if you've captured your own video. If you're using one of bitupset's videos just leave it at "Copy".
- Audio Output - Select "AAC (lav)".
- Output Format - Select "MP4 muxer".
- Finally, just click on File > Save and your video should start encoding. Note that you're going to save an MP4 file and not an FLV file! If you selected "Copy" for the video options it should be very quick if not, it should take a while but not that long.
Once your file has finished encoding just play it on any video player to see if everything is ok. You should also check the file size, it should be rather small compared to a real FLV file (10-15MB vs 50-80MB). This is the biggest trick in getting video files small for HP. HP will actually play MP4 files if you just rename them .f4v. So, if everything is ok with the file, just rename it from .mp4 to .f4v and put in on you HP video preview dir. It should work without any problems on HP.
That's all folks!
Please let me know how this works out for you and if you're stumbling on any part of the process. I can keep updating it until it's clear for everyone to create their own videos.
Edited by marauder, 20 August 2013 - 09:18 PM.
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