Looking for guidance/wisdom on settings for Cinematics

[LHP]

Hi there,

I'm a very small-time creator, looking to get into a few small DCS cinematics/music videos sort of thing, I was wondering if any of you out there may be able to point me in the right direction or enlighten me about some settings and what they do and what settings are best for the best quality possible within DCS,  I'm aware that re-shade and other things yield great results but before I go down that road is like to get the game looking as good as it can just using the in-game settings

in terms of equipment, I have a 13900k and an evga 3090ftw3 with 64GB of DDR5 ram at 6000mts, for editing software I use Da Vinci Resolve 

 

I've tried many settings but can't seem to get the cinematics looking as awesome as most of them do. I'm also aware that there is a big difference between playing and cinematic settings, I'm not worried about playing settings just cinematics

 

I eagerly await your replays,

can't wait to get stuck into these!

Cheers

LHP

[jonsky7]

Well this is a huge topic really.

Resolution, the higher the better, if you're using a 1080p monitor, you are going to struggle to keep up with the cinematic pro's.

Framerate, the higher the better. A trick is to fly what you want to film in lower quality settings.
Then to do the actual recording, bump up the settings and slow the time down in game (LCTRL+Z), the problem is getting the camera movement speed right while recording in reduced speed, but you can certainly max out the quality settings this way.

Depth of field can make a scene look good, that's where the main object is in focus and everything else is slightly blurred.

As with real life photography/cinematography, film in the "Golden Hour" by changing the time in game.

A head-tracker, the only way I know of to get smooth camera movements, everything with the mouse is jerky.

Realise that all of the best DCS videos have a tremendous amount of post production in a pro level video editor, including colour correction and special effects, blurring, masking, transitions. It's a lot of work to get close to the best, nevermind matching them.
The also have modified files to allow greater freedom of camera movement.

Realise that some of ED's videos may not be filmed in game, but maybe "Blender" or similar
(I say this because some of them just look so much better, parts of the Mosquito video for example, the spinner on the prop is perfect, but in game there is a texture join)

 

That's my 2 cents anyway. Good luck.

 

I've dabbled, I can tell you it is a monumental pain the ass to get the shots you want
And about 3/4 of the time making these was wasted on things that didn't work out.

 

These two are mine:

 

 

Nowhere near the greats though, but I think there's a reason Adrian/Reise puts out like one video a year!
I have no idea how he manages to get some of these shots. Must of took hours upon hours.

My favourites from Adrian/Reise

 

 

Match it with the right music and title and you could be onto a viral video with 4 million views like Krauadri did here
While it's a great video, I don't think it was nearly as much work as Reise's above.

 

Edited August 29, 2024 by jonsky7

[LHP]

oh wow, thank you! That is a wealth of information I appreciate you taking the time to not only help out!

I do agree that it's opening a can of worms but what you said is exactly the kind of info I was looking for and the videos are awesome, really helping build some good mental pictures on what to do, some of your times are next level, I never would have thought of flying it low res then filming high res, or even better using the slow-mo feature, I never would have thought of that!!!

thanks again for your help really means a lot, to me, and I can't wait to dig in and try some of these tips and tricks out!

[Junkyness]

I’ve worked on a few cinematics myself and had similar challenges when I was getting started. One thing I found really helpful was focusing on DCS's "Post-Processing" settings. Try tweaking the "Anti-Aliasing" to MSAA x4 or higher and adjusting "Motion Blur" to give it that cinematic feel. For the best color depth, don't overlook the "HDR" settings if your monitor supports it—it can really make a difference.

When I was working on a video, I spent hours tweaking my settings and wasn’t happy with the results until I came across a helpful guide on https://www.praguefilminstitute.cz —it gave me a fresh perspective on adjusting lighting and contrast.

 

Edited January 28 by Junkyness

[cptmrcalm]

I wish I had access to software to produce extra scenes for my videos.

Some of these artists produce fantastic work -but they use assets outside of DCS. I only use OBS to catpure (free) and capcut (free version) -along with audacity (free) for my audio and its all using my DCS footage. (except for some sound stuff I source from all over the place -tweaking here and there to get the sound I want)

 

...but to think what I could achieve if I had adobe suite like I used to have years and years ago - and blender for extra 3d work... 

 

foaming at the mouth thinking about it!

 

I dont have a high end PC either -so footage is limited to 2k. Tip: fly with whatever settings you like -as low as you like - and then, when you watch the track file to get your more controlled shots, whack the settings up to what you can afford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alphagamer1981]

On 1/30/2025 at 8:34 AM, cptmrcalm said:

I wish I had access to software to produce extra scenes for my videos.

Some of these artists produce fantastic work -but they use assets outside of DCS. I only use OBS to catpure (free) and capcut (free version) -along with audacity (free) for my audio and its all using my DCS footage. (except for some sound stuff I source from all over the place -tweaking here and there to get the sound I want)

 

...but to think what I could achieve if I had adobe suite like I used to have years and years ago - and blender for extra 3d work... 

 

foaming at the mouth thinking about it!

 

I dont have a high end PC either -so footage is limited to 2k. Tip: fly with whatever settings you like -as low as you like - and then, when you watch the track file to get your more controlled shots, whack the settings up to what you can afford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello cousin fancy seeing you here. I use blender, 3ds max, daz studio, after effects with the element 3d plugin. I'm planning on knocking up some pretty good flying scenes and story based videos mixed with ingame footage