All flags, feathers and rifts in 61 minutes
Videos for efficiently collecting all 83 above-ground flags, 10 feathers and 10 rifts (a.k.a. glyphs) are now available on the Brotherhood maps pages. We're trying something different this time. Instead of making these viewable by premium members only, they will be available to everyone and sponsored by video advertisers. Be aware that some advertisements contain audio that may play while you're looking at the maps. As always, premium members of The Hidden Blade will not see any advertising.
I actually show travel from flag to flag (no edits between flags). The total running time is 61 minutes - an average of one flag, feather or rift every 35 seconds. It could have been slightly faster except one of my requirements was to not use unlockable abilities such as Climb Leap and Parachute. Not all viewers will have these abilities and it makes reaching some flags a long and difficult task. Case in point: flag 77 in Antico East. I did make extensive use of Catch Ledge but that's an ability available throughout Brotherhood.
Some secondary goals were:
- To use the Hidden Blade sparingly. (Nine guards were killed in the making of these videos.)
- Not to use any other weapons. (Crossbow would have made it too easy.)
- To remain Anonymous. (Three times I was Exposed for a split second while assassinating a guard.)
- To leave Borgia Towers standing for an added challenge. (It was necessary to ignite a couple in order renovate aqueducts to reach certain flags.)
There are still 18 flags underground in Romulus Lairs. Videos for these are forthcoming.
Stabguy, you're amazing. I couldn't get all that stuff in 61 hours!
Stabguy, you're amazing. I couldn't get all that stuff in 61 hours!
Thanks, Dunan. When Ian and I first started making these collection videos for AC1 he said something like, "It's a marathon, not a sprint. You can't expect to play flawlessly for 10 minutes straight. I'd go crazy trying for perfection. Accept mistakes unless they're too embarrassing."
Well... I struggle with my perfectionist tendencies. 
These Brotherhood videos have smoother performances than the ones I did for AC1 and AC2. They are the result of sweating over many takes. I will have to double check my notes but I believe Antico West was the most challenging, requiring 18 takes to get the one you see here. My favorite sequence is the beginning of Campagna from flag 27 to 33. There are some cool mounts and dismounts followed by a wild catch ledge on an otherwise fatal fall from flag 32 to 33.
This is fantastic. stabguy = brilliant.
Thanks, Lisa. This series is what I've been working on for the past two months.
Where have you been lately? February is LisaMurphy month on THB! We missed you on stabby chat.
I'm sorry I missed it! I'll do my best to be there for the next one, though.
Does anyone else know that if you go inside the entrances (2:19 - 2:21 left side of the screen) under the rock formations, you're transported inside the hideout? I'm not sure if they're only on the outer part of Tiber island, though. I haven't investigated this that much.
Yeah, this has been mentioned a few times on GameFAQs. I haven't really checked it out either.
I gave it a try, and it most certainly works. You end up in the same spot you would've ended up if you'd taken the roof entrance. 
The vids hosted on the site seem to be of lesser quality (as in detail of the actual images). Is this because of the web player?
I actually use YouTube to convert the video format from WMV to MP4, so the MP4 quality should be identical. YouTube reduces the resolution from 640x480 down to 480x360. They're probably blurry because I'm stretching them back up to 640x480 in the player.
Can someone recommend a good Windows app for converting to MP4? The ones I've tried in the past have seriously degraded the video quality. Ideally it would preserve both the quality and the resolution. Otherwise, I will experiment with displaying them at 480x360 like we do on the front page.
One thing I've noticed about the web player is that it uses local resources (CPU and/or RAM). If the video freezes up frequently, it could be because your computer is busy doing other tasks or needs to be rebooted.
Can someone recommend a good Windows app for converting to MP4? The ones I've tried in the past have seriously degraded the video quality. Ideally it would preserve both the quality and the resolution.
I haven't played around with formats much when it comes to making videos for YouTube, but I start with the raw M2TS videos (at 1280x720 or 1920x1080) captured from 360 and open them directly in Windows Live Movie Maker. I do all my editing, then save as a WMV in the same resolution and I don't seem to lose any quality. Then it's right up onto YouTube.
I do all my ripping and editing in high quality WMV. Well... not as high quality as your videos, Asaic.
Whey you upload a WMV, YouTube converts it into a variety of FLV and MP4 formats (so each viewer can choose low, medium or high quality playback). YouTube actually does a good job of converting WMV to MP4. There's a "Download MP4" button that I've made good use of. I was looking for a desktop app that could do an equally good conversion while at the same time retaining resolution. These freebie tools don't seem to have what it takes.
I've remastered the Campagna video to be a 640x480 MP4. How does it look, TLS?
The Windows app I used was Any Video Converter. Their MP4 faststart option didn't seem to work for me, so I patched up the file with MP4Box. No longer bound by YouTube's 15 minute limit, I took the opportunity to merge the two Campagna videos into a single 17 minute video.
If you think this looks good enough, I will remaster the other flag videos. Thanks for your input. I want to make sure THB members are satisfied with these videos before promoting them on other sites.
It looks quite alright. Still a little more blurry than the YouTube video, but i presume this is due to stretching.
Still a little more blurry than the YouTube video, but i presume this is due to stretching.
That's exactly what Ian said. The thing is this video was never stretched. It was 640x480 at every stage of the pipeline.
I give up. The videos on the maps pages have been resized to 480x360. We will continue to use YouTube for conversion since it does a good job.