Advice & Tips about making custom KW TV videos

[AlyxMS]

@whereandwhen had a pretty comprehensive thread about how to do it.
If you don't know how, check it out.
Link: www.loverslab.com/topic/53780-sims3-kinkyworld-tv-complete-guide-and-package/
 
This thread is for people who already know how to make a video to play in game.

However if you don't know how, I'll be glad to answer your questions if I can.
 
Capturing the raw video:
Proper capturing softwares like Fraps or Shadow Play is superior to the in game video capturing in both quality and frame rate. If you have one, use it.
If you are not using in-game footage, keep in mind that the in-game TV has quite a large aspect ratio (I think it's around 16:9), you'll have to stretch low aspect ratio videos or leave black side bars.
 

Planning ahead:
Since it's a in-game TV screen, performance is much more important compares to quality.
If a video is too large, the game would either refuse to play it or the video would stop playing mid-way.
 
256 x 256 would look "HD" in-game, 128x128 with low compression would look better or at lease at good as normal TV videos, even with a medium compression it would still look okay.
 
Remember, you can only have 4 videos per channel.(More can be achieved with modding the core package? I never looked into that.)
That's 20 videos in total (Kinky One, Kinky Exhibition, Kinky Lesbian, Kinky Gay, Kinky Zoolover)
If you choose 30 seconds per channel, then you'll only have 2 minutes of video per channel.
Through many experimentation, I concluded that the ideal size of one video should be around 10MB(the size of the final vp6 file). Anything bigger than that would result in performance issues. So if you make all the channels, the package will be 200MB.
 
These info may help you in deciding the resolution(Mostly estimations, result may vary)
Resolution - Compression - Max Length Per Video(Target size: <10MB)

256x256 - Low - 30s

256x256 - Med - 50s

128x128 - Low - 75s

128x128 - Med - 120s

 

Choosing a pixel aspect ratio:

If your editing software allows it, choose a 16:9 pixel aspect ratio. It would make your video preview in 16:9. Since the in-game TV is around 16:9 and it stretches videos out. This would make your work much easier. If you can't do this, you create a 16:9 video and you can fix it when exporting.

 

Editing:

Every one has different flavors when it comes to editing. Here are some general tips.

 

If you are using a video of other aspect ratio, zoom in so no black bar is on the side.

A filled TV screen looks much better compared to one that is not.

 

Sims 3's graphic engine tend to make your video look darker and lower-contrast then your raw video.

If you can, bump these options up.

 

Sims 3's TVs are quite quiet, even at high volume setting. If your raw footage is not very loud, increase the volume.

 

Exporting:

Some may not be able to find an option that allows custom resolution.

Try changing around the presets or the codec.

If you didn't change the pixel aspect ratio and created a 16:9 video, make sure to choose "stretch to fill" after changing the resolution to square.

The reason that I chose a square video is that horizontal stretching is not very noticeable and a 256x256 video is much smaller than a 400x225 one.

 

Video quality options:

Change the image depth to 16bit. Most people cannot tell the difference of 16 and 24bit when looking at raw videos, not to mention in game at a tiny screen.

 

Sound quality options:

If you've chosen Medium compression from my little chart, change the sound to 16bit, mono with a sampling rate of ~28000kHz.

(My editing software provides me with a sampling rate option of 22050kHz, just select one that is around 28000)

If you've chosen Low compression, still, set it to 16bit, mono.

 

Since sound in stored in wav format in the final vp6 file, for longer videos(100s+), the sound file may even be larger than the video if left uncompressed.

Because the TV in game is an object, and the game balances left and right sound channels by the position of your camera, there is nothing to gain from having stereo sound. Choosing mono will reduce the size by half.

Lowering sampling rate from 44100 or 48000 (default for most editing software) will hurt the sound quality by quite a bit. But since it is the sims, you've be hearing sounds of the environments, cars passing by, sims talking...etc. It's not like sound quality for the TV is important anyway.

About 16bit, 8 bit is too low but the difference between 16 and 24 bit is beyond what human ears can tell.

 

If you can't change the sound quality with your editing software, you can always edit the wav file generated from the Virtual Dub step with a audio editing tool like Goldwave.

 

The Virtual Dub Step:

This step will determine how big your video file is.

@whereandwhen;s guide suggests to set max quantizer in the compression step to 7.

This is a good value if quality is important, since the default value of 56 is absurd.

But if you are trying to make your video smaller, a bigger value would be useful.

 

If you've chosen low compression for the chart, 6-8 is okay, if you've chosen medium compression try 12-16.

Value - Effect

6 - Almost no sign of quality loss

8 - Very Little sign of quality loss

12 - Noticeable signs of compression if looking at the video file. But minimum if it's in game.

16 - About the same quality Maxis's TV channel looks like.

56(Default Value) - WTF is this mess? I see colours...changing... Wait, Is that boobs or buttcheeks? (In all seriousness, that is about what 144p youtube videos look like.)

 

After that, just follow the guide. And all should be well.

 

Thank you for reading this.

Here's an picture I used for making my Kinky One channel intro sequence, for shits and giggles.