The Flame in the Flood - Holding Loop (Patreon)

Here's a new holding loop I've made this morning, for the game with the same title. This is a clean version that I use in OBS before the stream starts and after it ends. It gives me time to grab a coffee and let the packets settle in on the right path. 

I have quite a few of them and always forget to share them with you, so I thought I'd make a start. I might post some others so I don't forget. Feel free to use them for your own projects (video game footage is usually OK to use, if it relates to the game itself somehow). 

The tricky bit with loops is always finding a good spot to make it not obvious that it's actually looping. Usually a simple dissolve works with mostly static backgrounds, but this in this case, I've used a Morph Cut in Premiere. That's a very clever calculation that checks which parts of the image are changing, then changing the bits that need to be adjusted. This worked great for the dog and the birds, but there was a static leaf that literally appeared in the middle of the scene, growing in size, then flying away. It's great to see the Morph Cut filter in action, but it destroyed the fluid motion. I've covered it up with a crop from a still of the first scene, then blended it out when the leaf was on its way. Now it's seamless. And yes, I did all this before the stream this morning (which is why I was a tad late, having only discovered this game yesterday at 10pm).

Tricks of the trade as they call it!