Computer Graphics World

14 May 2009 'Video' Games A lexander Mejia is an Emmy Award-winning video editor based in Champaign, Illinois, with a background as a television and fi lm editor and shooter. After rolling off the fi lm Fraternity House, he was approached by game developer Volition, which offered him a job as an editor. With a person- al background in video games, he accepted, and has been working with game titles under development. Here, Mejia describes how he applied his video editing skills within this interactive medium. A video editor is a relatively new position in the video game industry, and one that game developer Volition was looking to fi ll. The studio wanted to move more media production in- house because it wanted more control over the subsequent advertising process. Shooting video games, though, is a different ball game compared to television and broadcast. Typically, as an editor, you only have the footage in front of you and stock footage available from your resources; however, in the video game industry, we have to go back and "shoot" new shots when- ever we think it would be appropriate for the edit. This requires online, real-time editing hardware to get the lightning-fast turn- around times needed for cutting promotions, while still trying to balance revisions from the game director, legal, or publish- er—for us, that is THQ. Before I joined Volition, all game ads were outsourced, result- ing in issues about instructions to other production companies on how to navigate an unfi nished game. This was necessary to create high-impact Internet multimedia that would showcase the game in the best fashion. Many times we were trying to show off game features that hadn't been fully implemented, yet they required creative shooting to show them off. Turn the wrong way in a level and you would be greeted with a face full of magenta and cyan checkerboard textures. In the past, we would have to spend many weeks communicating back and forth, trying to get a shippable product. But after implementing a Blackmagic Design Multibridge Pro workfl ow, we were able to shorten the process, allowing more time for programmers to implement features before we shoot for our deadline. When I came to the company, I was asked to build the editing suite so that we could capture the highest-quality game footage with surround- sound audio. Mac-based systems were not an option because our systems had to integrate with the Microsoft Xbox 360 development kit. All the hardware we bought had to have full compat- ibility with Vista x64 to make use of the RAM we had in our workstation. We also had a limited budget and couldn't afford high-end HDMI-to-HD-SDI converters needed to ingest 4:2:2 YUV Xbox 360 footage from an HDMI port into high-end capture cards. There were cheaper analog solutions, but with sharp video game graphics, analog wouldn't cut it for broadcast television. Furthermore, we needed multiple real-time monitoring, as more than one person would be supervising. It was a lot easier to have three people in front of three monitors, as opposed to three people in front of one computer screen. After visiting NAB last year, I discovered that Blackmagic USER FOCUS: GAMING A Blackmagic card helped speed the editing workfl ow at game developer Volition, enabling the promotions group to "shoot" new game scenes with greater ease for the title Saints Row 2. By ALEXANDER MEJIA

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