Help talk:Recording demos
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Please review and edit. Thanks! Also, if someone else could tackle the angle of making AVI / Youtube videos, I would appreciate it. I tried to use the startmovie command listed on the help page and made a movie, but it's absolutely horrible (tons of artifacting on the video, video and sound not synched). I imagine fraps or something is the only way to go...? Has anyone else tried the startmovie command? --Wipnum 12:46, 23 February 2008 (CST)
- Aurora would be the one to talk to about it me thinks. --WanderingFox (Talk • Contribs) 16:31, 23 February 2008 (CST)
- Understood, thanks. I did find a link to an interesting video in the CP Forums: [1]. whitebean91 went through making a movie (like avi) and the method he demonstrated was one that I accidentally tried but didn't understand what it was doing. I'll give it a shot tomorrow evening and if I can make a successful TF2 movie using whitebean91 method, I'll try to wikify it. None of this has anything to do with Fraps, however. Would a write-up for recording TF2 with Fraps be appropriate at all, and if so, should it go here or another article since it has nothing to do with the Source demo recorder?--Wipnum 00:58, 25 February 2008 (CST)
- You can use fraps but it's frame rate doesn't record every single frame like the internal recording tools do. Fraps is used mainly by people that don't understand the demo recording utils. The artefacts you mention wouldn't be anything to do with the HL2 demo tools, more likely a codec issue, but you don't say how you output from HL2/TF2. You can use the
startmovie avi filenamebut you then need to specify a codec to output to, this is personal preference but some codec’s aren’t suited to this (for example - it's impossible to output to a dual pass codec like xvid, but is possible to output to single pass xvid). I personally don't use this method because the quality isn't very good, I tend to output the video frames and audio separately, remux them and do my editing in Adobe Premiere; this way it gives me total control and I can use additional effects. One thing I also found out was that I couldn't the export straight to avi, encoding to divx or xvid (or any codec not directly supported by Premiere) without a certain amount of block smearing or excessive artefacts. The only way to do it at high quality (so far, I'm still learning myself) is to export with one of the supported formats, like FLV with the media encoder; or in my case, I used a frameserver to output from Premiere to Virtualdub and use VDub to encode both video and audio using the compression I specified. This method does incur a speed hit but the quality is exceptional, have a look at the test 720p HD video at http://www.stage6.com/user/Aurora101tf/video/2251469/Flame-retardant you can see the time taken is worth it. Send me a message through steam (you can do a search or catch me next time I'm in CP's chat) and I'll try to answer your queries, although bare in mind I've only just started myself. --Aurora 11:33, 25 February 2008 (CST)
- You can use fraps but it's frame rate doesn't record every single frame like the internal recording tools do. Fraps is used mainly by people that don't understand the demo recording utils. The artefacts you mention wouldn't be anything to do with the HL2 demo tools, more likely a codec issue, but you don't say how you output from HL2/TF2. You can use the
- I appreciate the response, Aurora. I had fun watching your Flame Retardant movie (nice run!) and did notice the high quality. I was able to create a movie and I used the XviD codec for video compression; it's not 100% perfect but it generated output more than suitable for a test. I edited the output movie file using Windows Movie Maker which lowered the quality a bit and YouTube I think slaps more compression on top of that but it's still watchable... I think. I fear that my new sections are too wordy or the entire article may now be too cumbersome. Editing assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, everyone! --Wipnum 18:01, 25 February 2008 (CST)
- It looks fine to me, especially like the voice over :) The article seems ok as well, not too wordy at all, it's quite a complicated thing to explain and that's just the basics. Any advanced stuff would need a separate article but if you look at any tutorials others have done, yours is easy to understand and straight forward. Fantastic work! --Aurora 20:50, 25 February 2008 (CST)
- Thank you very much. By the way, it's a shame about the Stage6 site going down. Will you repost the Flame retardant video somewhere else?--Wipnum 07:47, 26 February 2008 (CST)
- I didn't know it was until you mentioned it and I read the news. It's a great shame because it was a nice site to use and find quality video's. Still, they've opened the door and there are a few more high quality video sites that have popped up since Stage6 showed the way. I don't doubt that in this age of affordable broadband and HD becoming mainstream that more and more will appear. YouTube may even up their own standards because, although they have provided a great service when broadband was in it's infancy, it's resolution is now a bit behind the times. I really only posted the video as a test, it's also on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREkQ1qJ7ug (193 views!). I've been playing about with doing some machinima and although I understand the basics now, I lack creative ideas and spare time :( --Aurora 08:16, 26 February 2008 (CST)
