OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Not about OpenMW? Just about Morrowind in general? Have some random babble? Kindly direct it here.
MortimerMcMire
Posts: 11
Joined: 04 Nov 2012, 07:32

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0

Post by MortimerMcMire »

Vixizen wrote: 27 May 2020, 15:23 Maybe it is time to change the format of these videos? As was stated earlier -times of big features added in a single release are long gone. Do we need every bug fix shown? I think these videos could be a more visually pleasing change log or only very significant features/fixes could be presented. This way the video should not hinder the actual release.
^^^ I agree with this

PS I'm not trolling, i'm been getting people to install openmw and telling them no the official release is extremely old here download these nightlies with years of work is pretty dumb.

why not just release....and THEN do the release video? why does it have to be day-and-date with the release?

PS DarkElfGuy makes morrowind videos of openmw release quality many times per week, I think your workflow could use some improvement dude
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiULQ ... O7A/videos
User avatar
Atahualpa
Posts: 1176
Joined: 09 Feb 2016, 20:03

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0

Post by Atahualpa »

MortimerMcMire wrote: 27 May 2020, 15:54 why not just release....and THEN do the release video? why does it have to be day-and-date with the release?
IIRC, we've already discussed that and finally agreed that a synchronous release (builds, videos, twitter, our outreach pages) raises the most attention.
MortimerMcMire wrote: 27 May 2020, 15:54 PS DarkElfGuy makes morrowind videos of openmw release quality many times per week, I think your workflow could use some improvement dude
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiULQ ... O7A/videos
What makes you think that the workflow for Darkelfguy's videos (which I really like btw) can be the same as the one for our release videos? Because they have the same visual quality? - And if you think that my workflow is seriously flawed, feel free to create our next release videos in a few days, document your superior workflow, and everyone will be happy. I'm just a volunteer, not a professional video producer, and I'd be glad to learn from you.
User avatar
sjek
Posts: 442
Joined: 22 Nov 2014, 10:51

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0

Post by sjek »

just throwing here as have tried to make job interview videos from ground up. four, each about minute long. figuring out what to say is it's own hurdle and depending on person can take time or less. Then memorizing that said text and iterating to something that you can naturally speak, memorize and present takes whole lot of time. professional actors might have practise proven ways to do this for short takes or theatre but otherwise it's really time consuming as you can't just cut and paste the parts.

if release videos are made over time,
it can be eased with documentation for which there's already draft up but picking the issues to show would with multiple different issues, as said, take even longer time to make videos for and much for nothing. so what it can only do, is to help with choosing when release is about to happen, which is the less time consuming part anyhow. personally don't have skills for making newsposts but one in about four months sounds good.

but yeah. topic for another thread .p
1Zero
Posts: 38
Joined: 09 Feb 2020, 18:44

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by 1Zero »

Pretty sure it's the most sane approach to simultaneously release a video together with the new version, definitely not afterwards though. The big publishers release their final trailer before a release usually even 3-4 weeks earlier. From a marketing perspective, it's important to attract new developers with those video, which in turn can further advance OpenMW.
User avatar
Greendogo
Posts: 1467
Joined: 26 Aug 2011, 02:04

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by Greendogo »

I agree with both the premise of this topic and with Atahualpa.

The video should be released synchronously to garner the highest impact, however it shouldn't hold up the release because it should be done faster.

HOWEVER, this is volunteer project and I am entirely sure that Atahualpa has to attend to his private life and work so please give him a break.

On the flip side, Atahualpa, if you don't mind working collaboratively with others in order to speed the video making process along, then establishing a video TEAM should be a high priority for you in order to set release dates that can be met.
User avatar
AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by AnyOldName3 »

That's kind of what we've done this time.
User avatar
Atahualpa
Posts: 1176
Joined: 09 Feb 2016, 20:03

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by Atahualpa »

Disclaimer: I'm going to assume that we want to keep the current video format. From the feedback we get, people really like it and while the majority of our viewers may not notice all of the small details, inside jokes, and references those reflect one of our project's core motivations: The deep love for Morrowind (or The Elder Scrolls) and the will to save it from the ravages of time and to keep it alive with a modern, cross-platform, open-source engine. As I've stated in the past, the release videos have always been a major part of each release (0.13.0+) and there are quite a few people who only loosely follow our project but get really excited when a new release video arrives.

That particular approach leads to a drastically increased amount of time needed to produce videos that hold up to that standard compared to a more superficial visual change log or a video concentrating on only a few core features. It also makes dividing the production into smaller chunks more difficult, as the format requires a strong coupling between general narration, in-scene narration, scene transitions (auditory and visual), actual scene footage, and background music. At least in my workflow, there are constant feedback loops between all these aspects, and simply splitting tasks up between several people may cause issues.

Some in-depth thoughts on dividing tasks:
__________________________________________________

Splitting tasks horizontally; several tasks per person are possible
  • Narration: general and scene-specific
  • Footage: in-game and editor scenes
  • Audio: in-game music and sound effects, backgroud music
  • Cutting: putting everything together
  • Dubbing: timing and content of closed captions
  • (Translation: translation of script and closed captions)
  • (Thumbnail: creating the thumbnail)
  • Supervisor: coordination, upload management
Evaluation:
  • (+) The workload for a single person would be significantly smaller.
  • (+) Supervision and more eyes on the product could make it less error-prone.
  • (-) The abovementioned coupling between all these tasks would require a constant communication between all parties, with everyone feeding their results back into the pipeline. Given a good chemistry between all team members, it should be possible, but a noticeable increase of total production time (not time until completion!) is to be expected.
  • (-) Who creates the core concept? There has to be a basis which the different branches build upon. This is a non-trivial and tedious task, even more so as additional information is needed compared to the one-person-does-it-all approach.
  • (-) It would be extremly difficult to maintain the usual narrative and visual consistency of our videos.
  • (?) Speculation: Recruiting volunteers might turn out to be a problem.
__________________________________________________

Splitting tasks vertically; several tasks per person are possible
  • Intro and Outro (engine and editor)
  • Main Engine Part 1
  • Main Engine Part 2
  • ...
  • Main Editor Part 1
  • Main Editor Part 1
  • ...
  • Supervisor: coordination
Evaluation:
  • (+) The workload for a single person would be significantly smaller.
  • (+) Supervision and more eyes on the product could make it less error-prone.
  • (+) Internal consistency of the main parts.
  • (-) We still need constant and good communication, although not as much as with the horizontal approach.
  • (-) Who creates the core concept? Despite the vertical division, there needs to be a concept for the whole video and a list of issues to be covered for all main parts. Additional information might be necessary and must be coordinated by the supervisor.
  • (-) The supervisor needs to take some extra effort to maintain overall consistency of the videos.
  • (?) Speculation: Recruiting volunteers might turn out to be a problem.
__________________________________________________

Splitting engine video production and editor video production
  • Engine Video Producer
  • Editor Video Producer
  • (Supervisor)
Evaluation:
  • (+) Only two volunteers needed.
  • (+) Consistency of both videos is easily maintained.
  • (+) Communication between the producers may speed up the production process and reduce errors.
  • (+/-) That's still a huge amount of work for both producers, but most certainly less than in case of a single producer.
  • (-) The engine video usually requires a lot more work than the editor one: there not only tend to be much more solved issues for the engine than for OpenMW-CS, but recording the footage is more tedious and less predictable than for our editor. Also, cutting and rendering are much more time-consuming. So we are still left with a significant imbalance.
  • (-) Start of video production needs to be timed so that both producers are availabe.
  • (?) Who wants to be the second producer?
__________________________________________________

I know that these are the extreme cases and that derived or mixed forms are possible. Feel free to give it some more thought and correct me when necessary.

Finally, a (possibly incomplete) overview of things we already "outsource" to make video production more efficient...
  • Proof-reading of the script (technical)
  • Proof-reading of the script (semantic and syntactic)
  • Evaluation of WIP versions of the videos
  • (Translation of closed captions)
... and a list of things we could outsource as well as their estimated effectiveness:
  • Conceptual input: suggestions and concrete concepts for parts of the video => potentially big time gain; already done in some cases; can be done before the release phase starts
  • Footage: recording of footage for major features or features that are best presented with certain mod setups => varying time gain; highly specific for each release; e.g., shadows feature
  • Dubbing: timing and content of closed captions => saves a couple of hours; difficult to do without a somewhat finished video
  • (Translation: translation of script and closed captions => saves a couple of hours; can be started with WIP script)
  • Thumbnail: creating the thumbnail => minimal time gain; can be done before the video is finished
  • Upload management: video upload, video description, publishing => minimal time gain
__________________________________________________

Conclusion: Under the assumption that we want to keep the current video format, turning video production into a team effort may be problematic. However, smaller changes to support the main producer(s) may yield noticeable results. From my perspective, a team of two producers which closely work together - maybe one focussing on the engine video and one on the editor video - is the closest we can get in terms of dividing the workload without running into new issues. Moreover, more input before the start of the actual release phase may help reducing production time. We've already done that to a certain extent and it helped a lot with categorising issues and building up the narrative of the videos.
davidcernat
Posts: 256
Joined: 19 Jul 2016, 01:02

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0

Post by davidcernat »

MortimerMcMire wrote: 27 May 2020, 03:38 wasn't this an issue before where everyone sat on their hands waiting for the last guy to release his vids
akortunov wrote: 27 May 2020, 06:15 It was an issue with 0.45, where RC phase took about half of year because of missing videos.
akortunov wrote: 27 May 2020, 11:42 And in this case we have two bad choices - either delay release for unknown amount of time (for a half of year, for example)
Atahualpa has told us he was going through personal hardships and burnout at the time, so can you please stop with this? There's nothing kind or encouraging about the fact that you're not letting it go. You're turning it into more of a thankless job than it already is and making other people hesitate to want the responsibility of making videos on their shoulders.
kuyondo
Posts: 243
Joined: 29 Mar 2016, 17:45

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by kuyondo »

I don't need to worry about videos because I'm always in touch with OpenMW, and get the latest nightlies.

But for other people out there, who are still using 0.45, asking about the next release date and complaining about bugs in it that have already been fixed in 0.46. I'd say, time to gear up guys. We have many enthusiastic OpenMW players and YouTubers eagerly waiting for the next release.

No pressure, but if this gets delayed for another 2 or more months, we really need to start thinking about team and time management to avoid future delays.
davidcernat
Posts: 256
Joined: 19 Jul 2016, 01:02

Re: OpenMW 0.46.0 Video Complaining Thread

Post by davidcernat »

kuyondo wrote: 28 May 2020, 16:24 I'd say, time to gear up guys. We have many enthusiastic OpenMW players and YouTubers eagerly waiting for the next release.

No pressure, but if this gets delayed for another 2 or more months, we really need to start thinking about team and time management to avoid future delays.
Okay, if you want other people to make sacrifices, perhaps you can make some as well. How much money are you willing to donate to the most active developers?
Post Reply