Software for making CH Videos

[Toodo]

Hi guys,

I was wondering, what names of software do you guys use for producing CH videos?

[Liquid]

I use a couple of Adobe products from the Creative Cloud.

• Audition for Beats
• After Effects for the Beat Bars
• Photoshop for banners, stills and similar stuff
• Premiere Pro for everything else

I posted a tutorial for step 1 and 2 a while ago. The images are gone, but the text might still be useful.

[Required]

This is what I use for the Islands.

Adobe Illustrator: Create menus, titles.
Adobe Photoshop: Create maps, characters.
Adobre Premiere Pro: Create the rounds, create the "videogame" scenes.
Adobe After Effects: Create the text for the characters.

For the beats I use a little trick I will share with you. It can be BORING to put the beats one by one. So what I did was to download these videos from youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ii1YRFwns

I downloaded from 30 bpm to 300 bpm. Then I add the song to Premiere Pro, and start adjusting the beats by segment of the song. This allows me to create 1 or 2 rounds per day, sometimes. 3 or 4 if the rounds are easy and short.

Hope it helps.

[lovecraft]

I use the free basic software of mac OS X :
- garage band for the beats
- imovie for the edition

I use adobe after effects if I need a beat meter.

For the beats, I've created my own collection of loops (1234, 123 123, 12 123, et caetera) and I can change the bpm easily with garageband.

[Maskeraid]

Here's what I use:

Adobe After effects: Beat meter.
Adobe Photoshop: Text, image editing & creation, titles etc...
Sony Vegas: Movie editing + video rendering + Audio editing.

A typical way I build a round of CH:

1: Find the song and video material I want to use for the round. (most time consuming part by FAR!!!!)
2: Place the audio file into Sony Vegas.
3: Place the beat sound effect onto a separate audio track from the song in vegas. And then plan out my beat patterns accordingly.
4: Use Vegas to render that beat pattern into a .mp3 file.
5: Import that new mp3 file into After effects to create the beat meter that sits at the bottom of the video.
6: Head back to Vegas and cut together my source material to make the video for that round.
7: Use Photoshop to make titles/beat changes/teases etc... to overlay onto the video.
8: Place the rendered beat meter from after effects into sony vegas and have it sit where it's needed.
9: Render the whole thing into a completed round.
10: Watch the newly rendered file to see if you've made any mistakes (missed frames, audio errors etc...)
11: Move on to the next.

[Toodo]

Okay guys, thanks allready.

Is it possible for someone to post here a big list of beats ( loops ) i can make?
Like 12-12, 12-123 etc etc.

You would really help me.

[Liquid]

The most basic ones would be:

1-------
1---2---
1-2-3-4-
123-4-5-
12345-6-
1234567-
12345678

(unless you are using a waltz of course )

[Tittyluvr1334]

123-123
is also a commonly used pattern.

And in stead of 123-4-5, (as mentioned above), you could reverse it to 1-2-345.


Just remember (and this getting into my knowledge as a drummer), that most songs have a pattern of 4 counts. So by speeding up the count 123 pause-123 pause is the same as 1234, just that you're skipping the fourth beat on each measure (in the former example), but actually hitting the fourth beat in the latter. 1234 is frequently considered Doubletime for CH; which is essentially "eighth-notes" - or 8 notes per measure, vs 1-2-3-4 which is fourth-notes or 4 notes per measure.

So you can really get creative with patterns of four-counts such as:

123-123-1234567
(123pause123pause1234567pause) that's 4 and 4 and 8.

123-123-12345-6-
1-2-123-12345-6-
1-2-3-4-12345-6-
1-2-3-4-1234567-
12-12-12345-
(or reverse any of them)

So if you can add the beats, and the pauses (including the pause at the end of the pattern before it repeats), and it's a multiple of 4, you should be able to use it.

-TL

[Toodo]

Okay thanks, and is there anybody that also use Hydrogen to create beats?

[ComboNo1]

Okay thanks, and is there anybody that also use Hydrogen to create beats?

I do all my stuff on linux, and I use Hydrogen for making my beats. It's a cool program, and I'm probably only using like 10% of it's functionality, but I like it a lot.

[ComboNo1]

Just remember (and this getting into my knowledge as a drummer) ...

I'm going to remember you, as a resource if I ever have a question regarding the technical aspects and music theory of beat creation.

And thanks for reminding me of 123-123-1234567, I'm making beats right now & that's an inspiration that I'll try and use somewhere.

[Maskeraid]

Here's a screenshot of my 'beats' folder. All the different beats i've used or made pre-emptively for my current file.


Edit: I'm aware that some of them are redundant or are the same as others (1-2-123 and 1-2-345 for example) just havent spring cleaned my folders in a while lol

[Tittyluvr1334]

Just remember (and this getting into my knowledge as a drummer) ...

I'm going to remember you, as a resource if I ever have a question regarding the technical aspects and music theory of beat creation.

And thanks for reminding me of 123-123-1234567, I'm making beats right now & that's an inspiration that I'll try and use somewhere.

And I didn't even get into the 16th notes! one-ee-and-uh-two-ee-and-uh-three-ee-and-uh-four-ee-and-uh. LOL. But that would make for some crazy speed CH style strokes. Too fast. My high-hat tics can keep up with 16th notes, but I doubt an up and down stroke could.
I may or may not have used a few creative/complex beat patterns based on the 4 beat patterns in the upcoming Inferno including the one you quoted above..... yes I did!

Combo - once you understand the four beat patterns of a measure, you can easily listen to a song and pick it out. The high hats usually hit 8th notes, the bass (kick) hits on the odd (Bass-and-two-and-bass-and-four-and), and the snare hits on the evens (bass-and-snare-and-bass-and-snare-and), while the high-hats hit all 8 to keep the rhythm going for the band. Everything else is just fills and runs with creative mixes of those, add an extra kick, add an extra snare, stutter the beats, do a tom run in between measures, etc. Listen to AC/DC as a cut and dry example of this pattern "bass-and-snare-and" beat pattern. (at least this is standard for most pop/rock/jazz/country music at least).

-TL

[Toodo]

Is it maybe an idea we all upload our beats to some place, so we can easily share and download those all?

[Maskeraid]

That screen i posted was of the images I overlay when a beat change approaches. I wouldn't be able to share any base beat files really since I make them manually each time I start a round. Since not all songs have the same BPM (beats per minute) I find this far easier than trying to paste a whole beat pattern and spreading it out to match. This is a shot of part my audio track in one of my rounds.



- So that top track there in Vegas is the song file.

- The bottom one was the individual beats that I placed manually (one at a time until I had enough to copy and paste) in time to the beats of the song. This is always muted when I come to render.

- The middle track is the same as the bottom one, only the beats have been rendered into a single audio file instead of lots of individual segments.

If that makes sense...

I do this manually each time I start a round. I go along with the beat of the song and place a beat in a 1-1 pattern until I have 8 or so aligned with the beats of the song. I then simply copy/paste those 8 beats along the song where needed. Doubling the frequency of them to make double time, then deleting one every so often to make beats like 123-123 and so on.

If you google or youtube search for "metronome" you can get all sorts of speeds of 1-1 beat patterns, all at varying a BPM. These could serve as a base.

If you'd like I could do a full write up on how I block out / plan my beats during each song.