Help!

The Tender Tab

You may have noticed a small tab on the right of the Moviestorm front page for the last few weeks. We've recently been trialling a new support system, called Tender, as an alternative to the Knowledgebase / FAQ / email / help forums we've been using for the last few years. With the number of support queries we had coming in via different routes, we were starting to lose track of them. We didn't have a way to keep track of who was answering what, who was waiting for responses from customers, or anything like that. So Ben, Johnnie, Amos, Chris, Alex and everyone else just piled in and hoped for the best. It's worked pretty well until now, but we felt we needed to be a little more organised about everything.

Query entry and knowledgebase

Here's how it works. Click the tab (or go to support.moviestorm.co.uk) You can now enter your query or search the knowledgebase to see if someone's already answered your questions. When we get a query, it's logged in our system, and gets assigned to one of us. You immediately get a confirmation email which will, in due course, include links to relevant support articles. We've found that many of the questions we get have already been answered, so this hopefully means about 60% of problems will get solved instantly. We'll then get back to you as soon as we can, usually on the next working day. Our stats show that right now we're answering all questions in an average of one day, which we're quite pleased with.

This opens up a discussion, so we can go back and forth with you until we've dealt with your issue. You can attach files, include links, and so on, as you'd expect.

Discussion page

One big advantage is that unlike the forums, all issues can be kept private. This means you don't have to worry about what other people will think, or deal with idiots posting unhelpful comments on your query. If , once we're finished, you're happy to make the discussion public so that others can learn from it, that's something we can do.

support.moviestorm.co.uk

Over the next few weeks or months, we'll probably move a lot of stuff over to Tender, so we don't have to maintain things like the FAQ separately. The help forum will stay, but we'll be regarding that as a more informal support system, where you'll be just as likely to get help from another Moviestorm user as from one of us.

Obviously, the main reason we're doing this is to make our own lives easier. However, the aim is to provide you with a better service at the same time. We'd love to get your feedback on the new system, so please let us know what you think, and how it compares to using the forums.

Halloween Morphing Heads

A few of the heads in Chris's Halloween Morphing heads pack are proving a little elusive. Here's how to get to the Cutter, Piggy, Frank, Mouldy and Vampyre characters.

1. Select the Halloween '09 Monster Morph head - you'll need a male character.
2. Click the arrow next to the morph slider, and choose your monster.
3. You can now morph between the basic human face and the monster face, so you can make him as monstrous as you like!

Moviestorm memory problems - workaround

If your computer is above the minimum spec, you may want to increase the memory available to Moviestorm, so that it is less likely to run out of memory.

Possible symptoms of Moviestorm running out of memory include:

• Significant slowdown after using Moviestorm for a while, or when going to the Cutting Room or the Dressing room.
• 'Error switching scene' messages when loading or changing scenes.

First, ensure your Moviestorm install is updated to 1.1.6 or later.

PC:

• Find the install directory for Moviestorm (C:/Program Files/Moviestorm General Release, if you went with the default).
• From that folder, browse to boot, and open boot.properties in a text editor (such as Notepad).
• Edit the following line (or create it, if it does not exist):
• heapsize=256M
  or
  heapsize=300M
• Change the default of 256M to a larger number (we recommend that you dont increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory).

Mac:

• Use Finder to find Applications/Moviestorm 1.1
• Right click (or control click) the application and select 'Browse Contents', and look in the Contents folder
• Open info.plist in the Properties List Editor
• Expand the java tab
• In the VMOptions property, find the bit that says -Xmx256M
• Change the default of 256M (or 300M) to a larger number (we recommend that you don't increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory)

That should help!

Of course, if you only have 512Mb RAM to start with, you're going to have problems regardless. Sorry, but there's not a lot we can do about that.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

We're looking for some native German speakers to help us out with testing the translated version of Moviestorm some time in the next couple of weeks. Our translators are good, but they're not film-makers, so we want to be sure everything's just right.

If you'd be willing to help out, please email John O'Boyle at joboyle [at] moviestorm [dot] co [dot] uk

Thanks,

The forbidden love of one man for his microphone

If you've been using Moviestorm for any length of time, you'll have begun to realise that there's a lot of functionality there. Teaching people how to use Moviestorm fully and effectively is a difficult job. Unfortunately, it's also my job. It's made even harder by the fact that, no sooner have I finished a bit of documentation or a video tutorial than the blasted dev team selfishly releases a new update to Moviestorm with lots of extra whizzy bits and improvements, and I have to start all over again.

Nonetheless, I proceed undeterred. I've just put the finishing touches to a brand new (and up-to-date) set of video tutorials. They'll be going live on the moviestorm website any day now, and they'll replace the existing tutorials. As well as the four tutorials we had before ('Moving Around', 'Giving Instructions', 'Creating Characters' and 'Changing Your Set'), I've also managed to squeeze in a fifth - an introduction to the camerawork system. Each tutorial is between 5 and 10 minutes long, and designed to give you the basics of Moviestorm as quickly and simply as possible.

I've been using Camtasia Studio to produce these videos, and I've been very impressed with the package. Although it's practically unusable on anything but the beefiest powerhouse of a machine, it has a lot of incredibly useful options for video tutorials and the like. I'm also loving - and I do mean that in a slightly obsessive, scaring-your-friends-and-family kind of way - my Samson CO1U USB condenser microphone. Technically, it's Short Fuze's property, but if anyone tries to take it back, they'll have to get through me. I'm prepared to defend my precious mic with physical violence if needs be. I use Skype for voice chats fairly regularly. Since I've started using the CO1U, every single conversation now starts with the phrase "Wow, the audio quality is crystal clear - what mic are you using?".

Creating these tutorials is quite an involved process. As well as having to constantly work to tone down my usually gravel-strewn North-of-England accent, I also have to deal with the fact that sometimes I simply forget how to speak [1]:



Once the script has been written and the screen recording done, I edit the video down to the shortest length I can make it, and then add in all the overlays that show mouse button presses, screen highlights and zoom and pan. Finally, I tag the video with bookmarks at suitable points and then render it out as a streaming Flash video.

Somehow, despite my best efforts, QA always manage to get hold of these vids before they make it to the website. I live in fear of Ben_S wandering over to my desk and muttering, "Johnnie, that last video tutorial you recorded ... are you aware that you didn't mention [insert crucial bit of information]?".When that happens, there's nothing for it but to dry my tears, release Ben_S from the headlock, and re-record.

It's usually around this time that the next version of Moviestorm is released.

[1] Listen carefully at the end and you'll hear another thing that forced me to retake - the Squeakiest Chair In The Universe.