M2TW Cinematic Editor Video Tutorials, Info and Fan Videos!

[D|major]

Try on of these paths:

The default folder of the Medieval II installation on 64bit version of Vista/Windows 7 is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\Medieval II Total War
Vista/Windows 7 doesn't save the Replays there, though. They are saved at this folder by default:
C:\Users\[USER_NAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\SEGA\Medieval II Total War
Instead of [USER_NAME] it should be the name of your Windows user account.

[John Doe]

I did notice I don't have this folder. Could that be it?

Just create one, it's easy enough.

Also, a little below, make sure

[features]

editor = true

mod = J:\Medieval Total War 2\mods\Stainless_Steel_6

or whatever path leads to your SS mod on your HD.

[Phil of Loreauville]

I'm using Windows XP.

I'm telling you, I poured over the .cfg files over and over yesterday all afternoon looking for an error.
At the end of path lines, I have included a "\". Will that make a difference?
I did create a cameras folder, it didn't help.

Just tell me, how do I "activate" the edit window?

[D|major]

It'll automatically create any folder that is needed, so this is not the problem. Please check on the FAQ in the OP and make sure any issue from there is ruled out.

[evenmov]

excuise me , I really have a strange question
I want to use the cineED as the articles said,and i just make it , the game is runing ,and the replay is loaded , i can move at the game ,but when i want to use cineED, i find i can click it ,but noting happen ,i can see cineED's window on task bar, but can not "call it out"
who know what happen to me ?thank you , i'm Windows7

[evenmov]

and i look the log file ,it say , cine.cfgxml is missing

[D|major]

I'm not sure whether I do understand the question...

[Phil of Loreauville]

Ok, I'm back at it.
Still having the same problems.

Can someone please tell me.......................
How do you bring up the window with all the camera controls??? This is not appearing. I'm assuming this is the "CineEd" window on the task bar.
Is it suppose to already be active and viewable?

[Phil of Loreauville]

One other problem I've noticed......................
When I finally find the unit formation, only my units are viewable. The AI formations are nowhere to be seen.

[John Doe]

One other problem I've noticed......................
When I finally find the unit formation, only my units are viewable. The AI formations are nowhere to be seen.

That's normal IIRC, the replay include the time you spend organising your units, during that time the enemy remains invisible until you pushed the "start battle" button ingame.

EDIT: could you attach you cine-ed_edit.cfg so that I have a look.
IIRC, for some moment the camera controls were invisible for me, I think you need to push some botton on the windows taskbar or something.

[Phil of Loreauville]

Sure.

[audio]

speech_enable = 1

speech_vol = 1

music_vol = 0

#-------------------------------------------

[camera]

campaign_map_smoothing = 1

default_in_battle = default

fov = 75

move = 30

restrict = 0

rotate = 10

#-------------------------------------------

[video]

detailed_unit_shadows = 0

glints = 0

gloss_mapping = 0

reflections = 0

smoke = 0

splashes = 0

unit_shaders = 0

vegetation = 1

shadows = 0

unit_detail = medium

building_detail = low

terrain_quality = low

effect_quality = low

vegetation_quality = low

depth_shadows_resolution = 1 

texture_filtering = 1 

bloom = 0 

anisotropic_level = 4 

tga_aspect = 1.33333

tga_input_scale = 1

tga_width = 5000

widescreen = 0

show_banners = 1

windowed = 1

tga_reserve_space = 0

anti_alias_mode = off

battle_32_bit = 1

battle_resolution = 720 480

campaign_32_bit = 1

campaign_resolution = 720 480

cloud_transitions = 1

desync_animations = 1

graphics_adapter = 0

multi_texture = 1

no_background_fmv = 1

safe_refresh = 1

stencil_shadows = 1

subtitles = 0

triple_buffer = 0

ui_32_bit = 0

movies = 0

#------------------------------------------- INSERT REPLAY HERE!!!

[replay] 

play = 1

file = J:\Medieval Total War 2\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\replays\battle.rpy

camera = J:\Medieval Total War 2\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\cameras\

show_battle_ui = 0

info = 0

#-------------------------------------------

[features]

editor = true

mod = J:\Medieval Total War 2\mods\Stainless_Steel_6

#-------------------------------------------

[capture_tga]

enable = 0

fps = 30

dir = J:\Medieval Total War 2\mods\Stainless_Steel_6\video_capture\

#-------------------------------------------

[cine] 

show = 1

[John Doe]

We have the same file, except for the path to the file and mod,

I just need to click on the button far right (CineEd) on the taskbar to get the camera command screen. Sorry, I can't help you further.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Phil of Loreauville]

Thanks.
When I click the CineEd button nothing happens.

[Phil of Loreauville]

FIXED IT!!!

I realized that when I play MTW2 I use the following code in the medieval2preference.cfg.

windowed=1
borderless_window = 1

I use this to Alt-tab out of the game between turns.

I figured out that I could maximize the cined window, but do nothing else.

When I removed the above code, I could access cined.

[Juliusz]

Hi All,
I'm new to Medieval 2 TW and came across Cine Ed only recently. In fact, I decided to get this game after I watched the Cine Ed tutorial on YT, in purpose of making battle videos, rather than regular gaming!
However after playing a bit with the CineEd I find it a bit awkward and time consuming to get desired results. To be more specific:
1) it takes very long time (sometimes 30 seconds if not more!) to jump to a particular time. It looks like the replay was reloading from scratch when clicking on fast forward/backwards buttons. This really ruins the interactivity. Ideally I would love to be able to have the battle playing forward/backward together with the movement of red line in the Timeline.
2) I find it strange that we can't move camera keyframes in time. That would be the most basic feature I would expect from such a program, to be honest.
3) I'm not sure why there is always a keyframe created at time 0:00. I can live with that, but I find it a bit annoying, as it just adds random camera movement, before the first key. Often camera hold at the beginning of the shot would be desirable and I can't see any way of adding that hold, if I don't do it explicitly at the start of keyframing.
4) UNDO function would be very welcome too.

I hope I don't sound too critical... I know I have some high expectations from any sort of animation/video related software and I do appreciate all the effort author had already put into it.
I'm just wondering - do at least some of the above have some workarounds, which I am not aware of? Or is this software still in development? I would really like to hear yes, even though the chances are probably small...

Any advices highly appreciated!

[D|major]

Yes, sometimes it's really frustrating to work with the cine-ed, and I think the same about most of the things you list there. The problem is: this is not primarily a video/animation software. This actually is the tool used by the game devs internally, for doing promo vids etc. We can consider ourselves lucky that they released it for the public in the first place. All following Total War games did not ship any comparable tool

[Juliusz]

Thanks for the reply!
I actually thought (maybe even read somewhere) that this was a fan made add-on. Now that you're saying it was only a one off "gift", I'm starting to feel lucky indeed! Too bad it's no longer supported. With a few extra features and tweaks this could go far beyond just "cool video" making tool. Maybe that's what they realized...

BTW. thanks for the great tutorial - really useful and well explained stuff!

Can you just confirm, that fast-forward button works so slow for you too? On your video tutorial I couldn't see any lag, but you could have just cut it...

[John Doe]

Hi All,
I'm new to Medieval 2 TW and came across Cine Ed only recently. In fact, I decided to get this game after I watched the Cine Ed tutorial on YT, in purpose of making battle videos, rather than regular gaming!
However after playing a bit with the CineEd I find it a bit awkward and time consuming to get desired results. To be more specific:
1) it takes very long time (sometimes 30 seconds if not more!) to jump to a particular time. It looks like the replay was reloading from scratch when clicking on fast forward/backwards buttons. This really ruins the interactivity. Ideally I would love to be able to have the battle playing forward/backward together with the movement of red line in the Timeline.
2) I find it strange that we can't move camera keyframes in time. That would be the most basic feature I would expect from such a program, to be honest.
3) I'm not sure why there is always a keyframe created at time 0:00. I can live with that, but I find it a bit annoying, as it just adds random camera movement, before the first key. Often camera hold at the beginning of the shot would be desirable and I can't see any way of adding that hold, if I don't do it explicitly at the start of keyframing.
4) UNDO function would be very welcome too.

I hope I don't sound too critical... I know I have some high expectations from any sort of animation/video related software and I do appreciate all the effort author had already put into it.
I'm just wondering - do at least some of the above have some workarounds, which I am not aware of? Or is this software still in development? I would really like to hear yes, even though the chances are probably small...

Any advices highly appreciated!

1) yeap, it lags, putting the video option to minimum might help, as the PC has to recalculate the battle to jump to the future).

2) I don't understand

3) I usually add a keyframe before what I want, and I used the point to point camera mouvement (third on the right, the 2 horizontal parrallele lines with the 2 red dots), it requires more keyframes (not a good idea if camera moves fast as it may creates a 2 frames slow motions).

4) oh yes!! After a while the frustration forces you to think ahead.


There is a little known fact: you may edit the .cam files with notepad and you'll be able to move the keyframes in time that way (or do a lot more than that).

[Juliusz]

1) yeap, it lags, putting the video option to minimum might help, as the PC has to recalculate the battle to jump to the future).

Really? Is it not just calculating postitions of units without actually displaying them? I get standard loading screens when fast forwarding.
Anyway, I'm using D/Major's .cfg files and they seem to lower down all the video settings.

On the other hand - structure of the .rpy files is a total mistery to me. How can thousands of seconds of animation of thousands of units be saved in merely few hundreds of kilobytes!
Ideally the editor should read every frame into memory, so we could scroll forward and backward in realtime. At least some range of time, if whole battle would eat up too much of memory.

2) I don't understand

Basically you answered my question at the end of your post. ("a little known fact").
Better that than nothing. Next time, when I want to change the timing of camera, I have to try saving the camera, then manually editing it and reloading it back.

[John Doe]

On the other hand - structure of the .rpy files is a total mistery to me. How can thousands of seconds of animation of thousands of units be saved in merely few hundreds of kilobytes! .

from what I've read, the .rpy is just a save of the army compositions and the orders that are given to each units, then the computer recalculate the battle. You will experience a few time that what happens in the replay is not what happened during the battle, it's a rare bug that has no fix. Also there is a campaign_battle.rpy in the TEMP subfolder (it's the last battle of your campaign automatically saved), some people are able to use it in the cined, for some (like me) it gets a CTD each time, nobody knows why.