Video editing or video creation can be a tricky process, particularly for users who have not done a lot of video editing and conversion before. Video editing has many possible resolutions and settings which can affect playback quality and performance of the video. For videos, it is typical to consider resolutions, aspect ratios, bit rates, frame rates and other similar factors to make them play smoothly and at the best quality. Every hardware platform, use case and game engine has slightly different methods for video encoding to ensure best performance. This will require some experimentation and testing during the encoding process.

For example: playing back a single, full-screen video movie has relatively simple requirements because it is the only thing happening and can take up most of the system resources. However, when streaming multiple movies, background loading behind a movie, using alpha in movies, playing movies on a texture or doing other advanced features, some experimentation with different elements may be necessary in order to find the right settings.

While creating full HD 1080p videos might sound like the best approach for having the highest quality movies of the Xbox 360 and PS4, several factors must be evaluated prior to creating videos. First, editing HD video, because the file sizes are so large, can be extremely difficult and slow. Unless video editing is being performed on a very high-end machine, editing in HD should be avoided. HD videos, especially high bit rate 1080p videos look great, but also have much larger file sizes and take a lot more system resources to playback, so you really need to decide early on what resolution you need to have each video in.

Other things to consider when deciding if you should create 1080p video movies include: what the video source files are (live action, CG, in game, etc.), who is doing the videos, your budget and how long your production time is.

It is important to examine the real quality difference between 720p, 1080p and other HD resolutions; often there are smaller resolutions that look good enough, easier to create, smaller (don’t take as much disk space), are easier to edit, stream in better, and require less memory when played. It is important to iterate and test during the video creation process to ensure the project goals align with the reality of not just how the video plays in the game, but also how the pipelines and creation process will also be achieved.

It is best to author videos at the ultimate desired resolution, or downscale them. The Scaleform Video Encoder can resize video, but that can result in a loss of quality, stretching or other issues. This is especially true when attempting to upscale a video that has been authored in a lower resolution; it’s much better to author at a high resolution and then downscale videos to the lowest resolution required for a particular platform.

Almost any video editing program can be used in conjunction with Scaleform Video. For best results, videos must be uncompressed AVI files. It is essential to use uncompressed files when encoding Scaleform Video files. If an AVI has been created with another codec (like DIVX) that compresses video (and that causes artifacts), converting the video to the Scaleform Video format results in a double compression that doesn’t make the video smaller but does negatively impact the video quality in a significant way.

When authoring videos, audio is an important consideration. It is important to know if mono, stereo, or 5.1 support is needed; however, audio localization may be even an even greater consideration. It’s important to consider how voiceover files will be created, especially when planning on translating and re-recording all in video voiceover for each language (not just doing subtitles). Scaleform Video enables multiple center channel audio tracks, which can be used to play the voiceover for different languages very easily; it is possible to have one smaller video for multiple languages instead of separate videos for each language. However, if this approach is used, be sure that the voiceover audio is exported from the video/audio editing program separately, so that it can be mixed in at run time.

Again, before initiating video production, it is good to think through all of the game’s video requirements and perform tests throughout the development process to avoid wasting time or long-term performance problems.

Users new to video editing and computer graphics may be unfamiliar with the concept of an alpha channel or mask. Scaleform Video enables per-pixel alpha channel, which means that each pixel in a video can be solid, or have some level of transparency to it. In a typical video editing program, video can have places that are either completely or partially transparent, depending on the color that is assigned to the channel controlling the transparency.

This is most commonly seen in TV and movies in the use of “green screens”, where an actor is filmed against a solid green (or in some cases, blue) background, so that it is easy to remove the background and composite the actor in another scene. Bright green or blue are used most often because they stands out and are usually colors that don’t exist anywhere else in the movie, so they are less likely to clash with something onscreen. Videos can be encoded to have full or partial transparency.

Adding an alpha channel in most programs is relatively easy; adding alpha to video encoding may be as simple as clicking one extra checkbox button. However, keep in mind that a video with alpha could be twice as expensive to render as the same video without alpha. Use alpha carefully in your game, especially if it is being used in the real-time game engine.