Watch on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFkIdanNEs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeqHL0vnqlE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GffmHtv90yY (1080p available)

This is a replacement for the original intro cinematic, faithfully re-shot and edited to capture the spirit of the original video. Very little artistic license was taken, with some minor exceptions.

At the time of shooting, over 200 mods were running in my build of Morrowind. However, the ones visible in the video are:

Morrowind Graphics Extender rev186 (SM3.0 Water, dynamic ripples)
Animated Grass (Vality, Yacoby, Liztail)
Connary's Textures
Vurt's Bitter Coast trees (and I believe some of Ashlands Overhaul)
Better Bodies (Psychodog Studios)
Better Heads (Gorg, Arathrax, Motoki)
Weather Packs by StarWarsGuy
New Moons by doccolinni
"On the Rocks!" by Taddeus

Thank you to the artists who contributed to making Morrowind a better looking place. If I mistakenly omitted crediting your work, please accept my apologies and post here so I can add you to the list.

Requirements

You MUST be using Morrowind Code Patch 1.9+ by Hrnchamd, and have "High-def cutscene support" enabled! If you do not, your game will crash immediately upon loading the video.

You must also be running a fairly modern PC (1.5GHz+), or playback may stutter or have other problems.

Installation

1. Copy the contents of the archive into your morrowind\Data Files directory. This archive is safe to install via Wrye Mash.
2. MAKE A BACKUP of your original video, located at morrowind\Data Files\Video\mw_intro.bik (Note for retail copy players: you may not have this file, or a Video directory at all under Data Files. If not, create a folder named Video under Data Files, and place the .bik file inside.)
3. Rename the file you unzipped to "mw_intro.bik".

Download

Make sure to download the version that corresponds to your game's aspect ratio!

English: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39329
French: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39343
Russian: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39367
Polish: Encoding :turtle:
German: Pending


Thanks

Huge thanks to:

*Hrnchamd for lending his expertise in adding support for this in the MCP.
*papill6n and rhymer, for all of their translation assistance.
*all of the artists mentioned above whose work is featured in the video.

Enjoy!

-Chesko


Boring Technical Details

The original video files were shot at 1920x1200 as uncompressed AVIs. The video was cut and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and encoded with the Bink encoder from RADTools. Bink was also used to scale the video down to be more suitable for playback in Morrowind. The final resolutions are:

4:3 960x720
16:9 1280x720
16:10 1152x720

I would like to have included 1080p versions for playback in Morrowind, but RADTools (makers of the Bink codec) state that 1280x720 is the highest recommended resolution for in-game playback. A 1080p version of the video can be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFkIdanNEs

I like this! Going to try and have this included with the next version of MGSO?

Incredible! Very well done. This is the sort of thing that you didn't know you had missed until you have it. :thumbsup:

Gorgeous! Any plans to do the other cinematics? It'd be cool if you redid Azura's cutscenes with http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7326 so we don't have to look at the vanilla granny face

I would be honored, we'll have to see if KingPix likes it



I had intended to do all 3 (Intro, the Nerevarine Cave, and Ending). They don't look like they would be as difficult as the intro, since there is very little text on the screen. Getting the text to look right is what took up 80% of my time.

I recently went all OCD on my load order and am starting to organize everything from the ground up, so it may be a bit yet before I start to work on them.

Congratulations on the release! Very nice work. :goodjob:

New Azura's cutscenes would be awesome as well if you have plans for it.

This is excellent work; and quite good of you to include multiple aspect ratios. 16:10 is my ratio of choice.

Thanks for the download! I look forward to any future work, too.

Interesting...

I may have to throw up a link to this on my mod list when I'm talking about that feature of the MCP.

Awesome looking.

Course you could technically also recode the video using http://www.radgametools.com/bnkmain.htm to a lower resolution and just have a much better quality intro. If memory serves me right, the original had a lower framerate and was a lot more blocky.

As for compression during capturing you might consider 'Lossless JPEG', or 'Huffman LosslessYUV'. Some compression even fast during capture is better than none. Course a compressed directory might work too, assuming it doesn't decide to start taking a lot of time for compression at inconvenient moments.

Amazing Thanks for your work on this!

I don't have a 'mw_intro.bik' in my Video folder, and if I try to stick your video in it anyway I see no difference. I renamed it according to the readme. Enlighten me please.

Looks great! What would you need to make another foreign language version?

Are you sure you're looking in the right place? Both the disc copy and the Steam version of Morrowind have the following video files located in morrowind\Data Files\Video:

bethesda logo.bik
mw_cavern.bik
mw_credits.bik
mw_end.bik
mw_intro.bik
mw_logo.bik
mw_menu.bik

Please double-check your path. You should have these files.

Note that you need to manually copy them yourself.

I need a copy, written in an email, of all of the text in the video ("Each Event...", "In the waning years", and "Many fall, but one remain"), a copy of the original mw_intro.bik file in your language, and a copy of any special fonts I may need, if there are special characters. I already have the fonts used for French and Russian which takes care of most latin-based languages. Send all of this to chesko.tesmod@gmail.com, and I'd be happy to!

The French version of the intro is now available. Hopefully I didn't inadvertently insult someone's mother with my machine-translated readme :whistling:

Oh thank you Chesko!!! :foodndrink:
:mohawk:

If you want I can rewrite your french readme ^^ ?

Looks great! I'd like to see more alternate versions of the intro since this one looks very good. You seem to have a knack for video editing, Chesko.

Agreed. He's done a fabulous job with this

sweet as!

ahhh I was wondering when this project will be complete.
Thank you so much Chesko!

Congratulations on the release :celebration: I've just sent you all necessary files for Polish version :flamethrower: Thanks for the additional work involved in translating your intro into foreign languages!

Thanks Logitech, I'll get on it.

If I write the text in an email, don't you have a copy of the special fonts? German needs the ?, ? and ü, but it's all in the written text (each event). Or do you need it in a special way? I just make the package for the Germans to send it to you

@Sister: I have a Goudy Medevial font (the font used in the video) with accented characters now.

The problem was more with things like Russian, which use Cyrillic characters not found in the fonts I used, and had to be provided to me by Rhymer. A copy-paste wouldn't work in that instance.

So German, Polish, Spanish, etc, I should be good in terms of fonts. If you want it in Japanese though, I'll need a font file :sweat: