Harry Potter discussion forum for movies, books, and more! - The Leaky Lounge: Tutorial: How To Make A Video Avatar - Harry Potter discussion forum for movies, books, and more! - The Leaky Lounge

How to make this avatar:




Materials Needed:



-the video from which you are making the avatar of

-Macromedia Fireworks (you can download a 30-day trial at http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/ )

-QuickTime Player (Download at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html )

-Lots of Patience, and perhaps your favorite episode of PotterCast to listen to.



Ok. First off, you need to figure out what you want to do. I recently watched the Live in New York (2006) video for the second time, and I like the part at 0:13:00 and 0:13:02 when John is doing his weird clapping. So after locating what I want to put in my avatar, I move the little backwards "L" to roughly a minute or so before the bit that I want, while the other "L" should be right after my clip.

Marker before the clip:



Marker after the clip:



Then, I go to Edit; Trim to Selection. And then it trims the clip down to a more manageable size. Don't worry, it isn't permanent, you just need to remember to click "Don't Save" after you exit out of Quicktime. Next, we need to edit down the clip even more to get just the clapping. So we do the same thing all over again, and we end up with a 2 second clip of John clapping. It helps to click on the "L" and drag them back and forth until you get exactly to the spot. Next, I need to get this into pictures, so I click on File; Export. I make a file on the desktop called "clapping john" to export the pictures to, and I set the export: to "Movie to Image Sequence" which will make every frame into a picture for you to use.





(click to see pictures)



http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...al/picture3.gif

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...al/picture4.gif





Now you can close out of Quicktime. Open Macromedia Fireworks, when it opens up, click on "Create New: Fireworks File" Then you need to type in how big you want it. I usually make all of my avatars 100x100. I also make the resolution 99999 because it doesn't make the pictures pixely. I also usually make the background white or black for video avatars.


http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...al/picture5.gif
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...al/picture6.gif

It should look like this:



Next, open the "clapping john" file, and see how many pictures you have. exported out to 40 photos. Next, you click on "Align and History and Auto S..." Click on Frames. Go down to the bottom of the frames box, and click on the paper with a plus (new frame) until you get 40 frames.


http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...al/picture8.gif
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabriellejoya/Video%20Avatar%20Tutorial/picture9.gif

Next, you need to get each picture on to its own frame. I like to resize both the Fireworks program and the "clapping john" file so that I can just drag and drop the pictures on to each frame.


http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...l/picture10.gif
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...l/picture11.gif

Don't worry about resizing the photos or putting them in the right spot, we'll do that later. The thing that helps me is to see that "clapping john 01" goes on "Frame 1" and that "clapping john 02" goes on "Frame 2" and so on. Click on a frame and drag and drop the picture, click on the next frame until it is all done. Now, we are going to resize everything.



Go back to frame one, and click on the image. Down in the left hand corner of the program, a properties bar appears with "W: 343" "H:273" etc. That is what we are going to resize everything with instead of manually doing it. But, before doing that, we need to get John in the avatar. Sideclick on the picture, go to "Transform" and then "Scale"



http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...l/picture12.gif
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...l/picture13.gif

Scale the picture until you reach the desired size and placement on the frame. I scaled mine to 283(w)x189(h) and

–8(x)by –43. Do that to all the pictures until they are all the same size and on the frame at the same place. Because when I play it (the little play button under the frame) I see that the camera man panned away from John, I am going to add another frame and add some words to it so it looks better.



All the frames should be 7/100 Seconds, while the 41st one should be 200/100 s. To change this, you click on the number after the frame in the column on the right. (here it is 7). To change all of them, hold ctrl and click all the frames, and click again on the number and change it.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri...l/picture14.gif

After all that is done (whew!) Click file, save as and rename is as you wish (here it is clapping john) Then, I always save it again and save it as a animated gif so I can upload it onto my Photobucket album. Congratulations, you've just made your first video avatar!

If you have any questions, please ask me, I tried to make this so that a beginner would be able to do it no problem, but I don't know if I did that. (I hope I did!)



I will put all the pictures in my Photobucket album so that they will be bigger.




http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a45/gabri.../00000001-1.gif

This post has been edited by gabriellejoya: 25 August 2006 - 06:34 PM

Thanks for the wonderful tutorial. I've owned Macromedia Studio 8 for almost a year now, and I just made my first animated avatar! It also happens to be my avatar right now, though I probably won't leave it up forever.

Hey, this looks great, but I'm coming across a wrinkle. How do you open a .gvp (google video) file in quicktime, or rather, how can you make it a .mov?

This post has been edited by Aornis: 01 September 2006 - 04:03 PM

Okay, I wasn't sure myeslf, so i searched google a bit.
Apparently, you can download and save GoogleVideos in avi. format. See the article here. Also, here is a gvi. to avi. formatter.
Next, you can use this converter, to convert it from avi. to a different format. If that doesn't help, please contact me again!
Gabrielle

question..i did all this but i am tryin to get the speed to where its normal....and for some reason all i get is a slowed down version of the video im tryin to use.......any help?

Using fireworks, the fastest you can make the frame is 1/100 s (by typing 1 in the frame speed box.) I think that this is pretty close to the original speed of the video...I'm not exactly sure how to get it to the original speed...sorry.
Gabrielle

for now i`m using a single complete piece of software called Video Avatar at geovid
it creates a gif avatar from a video file with crop function. its just a great.
here is the example.

its from SAW II

That certainly is an effective way to make a video avatar, though i'm not sure if i like the picture quality of the avatar, Video Avatar made the avatar pretty grainy and pixely. My avatar is not of the greatest quality either, though that is because i used the video for the ipod that was on the feed, and i had to blow the picture up a bit to get it to the size that i wanted.
Gabrielle

Believe in the unbelieveable: Closet Draco/Hermione, Jack/Elizabeth, Eragon/Arya, Janevera/Raxen shipper.
(HP, Pirates of the Caribbean, Inheritance Trilogy (Eragon/Eldest), Eyes of War (avalible in Montana).

This post has been edited by gabriellejoya: 14 September 2006 - 07:09 PM

Yeah of course the quality is not the same, I`ve cropped a video a lil bit. and also its an avatar and not a "small video" its just a user picture there is no need it to be very best quality.

omg .. nice tutorial . wanna try it now .. thanks