Recording demos

Street

Street

Street

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
8,770
Location
Liverpool
Just wondering what the best software is for recording demos in CS:S..

I've been trying to use Fraps, but it doesn't seem to work very well. The FPS I select in Fraps limits my game down to that FPS, also the videos seemed a bit jumpy. Any other programs to try?

Cheers! :)
 
Already on the case.. Just did a search and came across it just before I refreshed this thread, just installing now! :)
 
You're not trying to play and record with FRAPs at the same time are you? I take it you know about recording in-game demos (cant remember the commands for the console but i'm sure someone will hop along and tell you; probably something like recorddemo *name*).

You should record an ingame demo, then play back that demo and then record that with FRAPs. It will stutter as you play back the demo, this is because it's encoding the AVI on-the-fly. Use 25/30fps and a low resolution (e.g. 800x600 max) to record with FRAPs; any more is overkill. Only use a higher FPS if you want slow-motion for a certain section or whatever.
 
Ahha... Cheers for that!

I'm a n00b when it comes to this recording malarky! Have tried the ingame thing but it didn't produce anything playable.. Didn't think about replaying it and recording that with Fraps...

Nice one! :D
 
old HL engine used:

startmovie <filename> <fps>

Typical FPS values are 10 for speeded up action, 30 for normal action and 120 for slow-mo.

If they weork in the new engine I really dunno :o

Yep!

http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/Half_Life_2_Client_Console_Commands

buried deep in here there is reference to the startmovie command.


***WARNING*** Starting this WILL consume masses of disk spaces as at 30fps it will save 30 bmp's per second!!! change to a max res of 800*600 and work from that!

Make sure you have the space for it ;)

Once your ready make sure you have bmp2avi and the xvid codec :)

Then finish off with your favourite video editing package :)
 
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Psymonkee, that's a very old-skool way of doing it. I think using FRAPs or something similar to capture a demo is the norm now.

Street, no probs. If you take a look around there are bound to be a million movie-making guides, especially for CS. Just make sure they're fairly recent. The thing with recording *in-game* demos is that they barely take up any space at all. I used to record every single CS match i played in and i'm sure each one was only a couple of meg. That was a long time ago so i might be wrong. Once you've got a decent selection of footage you can be picky about which bits to capture with FRAPs. Just remember there's no need to use an FPS above 30, and remember to change your game settings to low (800x600) before you capture. If you capture at, say 1600x1200, then resize in a video-editor, it'll look terrible (cant see crosshair, unreadable text etc.).

Have fun :)

EDIT: Here's an example. Captured @ 800x600 @ 24fps. I think i actually used the BMP way that Psymonkee said about too. Looks fine eh.
 
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Meh old school or not I think it gives better results - you control the source directly and choose the initial video compression which will make a huge difference to final quality. Also fraps if unregistered (;)) leaves an annoying watermark

It's a fair point about resizing images but when I made my avi I captured at 1024*768 and made a high quality version just for me - took a while to process mind :(

I then resized the bmps before converting to video thus retaining a decent level of quality :)

The only version I have of my video that is online right now is on google video which of course comes with free crap quality maker :/

My ISP only gives me a measly 20MB webspace so I can't even throw up the 640*480 version or any of the other avi's of HL I have lying around :(

Anyone know where I can get some cheap hosting/webspace?
 
Psymonkee said:
Meh old school or not I think it gives better results - you control the source directly and choose the initial video compression which will make a huge difference to final quality. Also fraps if unregistered (;)) leaves an annoying watermark

It's a fair point about resizing images but when I made my avi I captured at 1024*768 and made a high quality version just for me - took a while to process mind :(

I then resized the bmps before converting to video thus retaining a decent level of quality :)

The only version I have of my video that is online right now is on google video which of course comes with free crap quality maker :/

My ISP only gives me a measly 20MB webspace so I can't even throw up the 640*480 version or any of the other avi's of HL I have lying around :(

Anyone know where I can get some cheap hosting/webspace?
Click to expand...

This site has a crazy deal going on at the moment. Plenty of space for all your videos...

http://www.site5.com/hosting/
 
sup3rc0w said:
Am i being daft... but $5 x 24 months, and you get 110 GB Space and 5 TB bandwidth??
Click to expand...

Yup, after those 24 months, it will go upto $50, but even at that price it's pretty decent. And you can always move if you don't want to pay that much.

Good site as well, was using it for the last year and never had any problems and the support was excellent. But I didn't have any use for the server anymore so I cancelled.
 
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