SANDS of FIRE - Part One

27/03/2010 SANDS of FIRE - Part One
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created by Daniele Ciccone and Davy Staelens

File Info:
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File : Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 2.01 GiB
Duration : 19mn 11s
Overall bit rate : 15.0 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-03-27 21:05:38
Writing application : mkvmerge v3.3.0 ('Language') built on Mar 24 2010 14:59:24
Writing library : libebml v0.8.0 + libmatroska v0.9.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format profile : Baseline@L3.2
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 25.000 fps

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format version : Version 4
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz

SUBTITLES
Text #1
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Language : English
Text #2
ID : 4
Format : UTF-8
Language : Dutch
Text #3
ID : 5
Format : UTF-8
Language : French
Text #4
ID : 6
Format : UTF-8
Language : German
Text #5
ID : 7
Format : UTF-8
Language : Polish

You will need VLC Media Player or any other 3rd Party Media Player that supports MKV to be able to play this file. We added VLC Media Player in the download package.
If you want to enable subtitles of your language, just go to Video>Subtitles Track>... and choose your language.
You can also play this movie on any Media Tank that supports MKV (not the PS3). This movie was tested on a Popcorn Hour A-110/200 and worked fine.

IMPORTANT ISSUE:
There's only one problem watching the movie on a big screen and in FullHD. We noticed the gamma levels were incorrect, this resulted in blacks appearing too black and whites appearing too bright (washed out colors). After some investigation, it appeared that the HD codec in Vegas had issues with color levels. The colorspace is affected and you can workaround this issue by changing the colorspace on your TV. PC monitors are not affected by this issue. Please keep this in mind when watching in FullHD. We are trying to find a way to encode without the loss of quality and with correct colorspacing.

Story:
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Coalition Forces are at war in Iraq. On March 31, 2004, a group of American soldiers are sent to the City of Fallujah. After a fierce attack from Iraqi insurgents, one soldier is captured and held hostage. As a response to this horrific event, the US military sends in American troops to rescue him. But will they arrive in time, can he survive?

Movie Facts:
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The idea for SoF originates in 2005. Daniele and I were both looking forward to making a successor to The Fallen One (a machinima recorded in BF:Vietnam). Around the same time, BF2 was released. This game did not only have an updated game engine but had recording tools which made it much easier to create movies. In late 2005, we started to work on a script and storyboard and did some early visual effects. We decided to try and produce an eye-catching visual presentation. The recordings were all done with members from clan LRRP. For the exception of an Italian clan and some guest actors that helped us from time to time. The recordings for the whole movie took almost 3 years. The post-production took a lot longer. And a lot of things happened during this time span, both personally and professionally, and there have been periods we both were out of it for a bit. Explaining mostly why we've been working on it for so long. But we were always able to pick up from where we left and always supported each other to carry on and finish this movie. That's also why we suddenly decided to release the movie in parts so we could focus on each part and treat it as an individual movie. The production time of 5 years captures both parts and the second part is ready for final tweaks and editing. So expect it later this year.

Technical Facts:
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SoF was recorded with Fraps. In 2005 we both used a Nvidia Geforce 6800 before switching to an 8800GTX in late 2006. This resulted in early shots looking visually inferior compared to other shots. You may see visual artifacts or bad aliased environments due to the fact that they were all recorded with a lower quality graphics card. All shots have been visually enhanced in post production though. Daniele spent a huge amount of time working on the composits of these shots. He used PS, AE and Combustion as compositing tools. For the editing we used Sony Vegas but only for the video part, not the audio, because we used Nuendo for the sound mixing. This release will have stereo sound but we will be working on a full DTS 5.1 surround track for the final release of the movie, when both parts will be merged.

Clanhost:
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SoF was completely recorded on servers from Clanhost.nl The best game server provider in the Benelux. Clanhost is also Official Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2 Trusted Server Provider. If you are interested in hosting your own clan game server or if you just need a place for you website, please visit their homepage http://www.clanhost.nl and ask for conditions. You'll get a very good service for a very good price! Digital Warriors garuanteed!

Copyright Info:
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This movie is recorded in Battlefield 2™ "vanilla" (without mods or customizations), a game developed by DICE™ and produced by EA, and can be downloaded for free. This movie is for promotional purposes only and we don't have any commercial rights to distribute nor make profit of it. All rights to the music go to their legal owners, only used for promotional use. If you're interested in showing this movie on TV, please ask for permission first! Don't use it for own personal reasons without our notice. Respect the hard work of its creators, don't go copying and changing content for personal benifit.

Personal Note:
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We have worked very hard on this project and we hope you can enjoy this first part as much as we do. Please pay us a visit on our forum and leave a message. We appreciate every comment! See you for the next release of SoF - Part Two!

Digital Warriors singing out,
Davy Staelens & Daniele Ciccone

site: http://www.sandsoffire.com
forum: http://forum.sandsoffire.com
blog: http://www.digital-warriors.be

Bilder