how to make Banner videos for stepmania

[fruitscatlover]

Banner videos for stepmania
how can you make banner videos for simfiles? do you know any good sites that can tell me how to make banner videos for stepmania?

[Chewi☆]

Like an animated banner? First, you have to make an .AVI video that you want to use as a banner. Then, in the SM you should put:

#BANNER: (file name).avi;

[KyahRyorin]

^ I think he's asking about programs.

I used to know a few. Eh. Oh, hang on. I asked this from someone who makes animated banners and he sent me a long PM explaining how to do it.

Originally Posted by fooby

You need a couple things before you start:
1) VirtualDub
2) DivX Codec (important for video compression)

Once you have those, it's pretty simple.

1) Open your video
2) Go to 'Video' -> 'Filters' -> 'Add' -> 'Resize' -> and set the dimensions to 320 x 240. I think this is the most compatible dimension for most people. I've tried bigger dimensions and it lagged like hell. The only other thing you MIGHT need in 'Filters' is the cropping feature in the same window with 'Resize', but I recommend to only use that when you have black borders on the left and right of the video. If there are black bars on the top and bottom, I highly recommend to just leave them there so it doesn't distort the video when you resize it. Click OK when finished.

3) IMPORTANT: Go to 'Video' -> 'Compression' -> select the DivX Codec (I have version 6.4.0, but there might be a newer one). In the dialog box, it should say something like, width must be a multiple of 4, height must be a multiple of 2. Click OK when finished. If you don't select this, your video will be incompressed and it'll be like 50 MB for a second of the video. It's retarded...

4) Go to 'Audio', select 'Full processing mode' and select 'No audio'. Since we're using a mp3 on stepmania, we don't need sound for the video. This also minimizes the size of the video.

5) Go to 'Video', and make sure it's set to 'Full processing mode'. It should be by default.

Something to keep in mind:

If there's a couple seconds of blank stuff right before the video, I recommend to delete it. To do this, move the bar to the start of the frame you want to delete, press 'Home' on your keyboard, and then move to the end of the frame you want to delete and press 'End'. Then press 'Delete'.

While Stepmania allows you to sync the video by marking where it should start, it doesn't let you move any further behind the first bar on the step chart. So if your song starts right away, but your movie doesn't, ideally you'd want to set the marker further behind so it will sync with the song, but it won't let you do that. Thus, cropping any excess footage will give you a little bit more flexibility.

6) Go to 'File' and 'Save as AVI'. Double check the info window that pops up to make sure the Output size isn't insanely high. It should be less than 30 MB at most, but it depends on the length of your song.

I pretty sure that's everything you need to know. Let me know if you run into any problems.

This is what he told me. So, hope that works! I can't make animated banners, because for some reason my Mac hates Virtual Dub, but I hope this helps.

EDIT: D'oh. That's apparently for videos. Oi. I'll see if I can pull up the one he told me about banners.

EDIT 2: FOUND IT. Really short, but to the point.

Originally Posted by fooby

The video banner took a while for me to figure out, but you'll need VirtualDub yet again to do it coupled with another program called "Wax" to merge the layers (avi + image). Basically I have to search through the video to the near exact point I want to start my preview music, cut 12 seconds (default length) of it, resize it to 256x80 and crop it to the portion I want. It's a grueling process.