Fraps smells, but i want to make videos!

[Dwaggy]

K so, first post, and it sucks, i know.

When i try to record some of my demos to .avi with fraps, the fps slows down to a death-crawl.

I faintly remember there being a command to record directly to .avi, but i might be wrong!

This a chance, or MUST i use fraps? :|
(Or maybe, is there a nicer program? )

 

[BigWalnutZ]

type "record <namehere>" in console
type "stop" when your finished.
then you can go back and fraps the demo u just made

 

[Dwaggy]

yeah, i'm doing that.. it still goes to 5fps while fraps records, making it choppy indeed!

Even at 640x480 (ugh, i play the damn game at 1280x1024!!) :|

 

[SubKamran]

Use 2.2.5 demo, and use 25fps. Thats what I use. Other versions suck.

 

[^Ben]

Something called game cam i think it is.

Meant to be nifty.

 

[SubKamran]

Something called game cam i think it is.

Meant to be nifty.

Doesn't work for me

 

[Synthaxx R-or]

Wasn't there supposed to be a "demo render" option somewhere in the HL2 engine itself?

It's supposed to dump your demo in its original resolution into an avi file after wich you can edit it however you like...

Haven't found it yet though

 

[RogueShadow]

yeah, i'm doing that.. it still goes to 5fps while fraps records, making it choppy indeed!

Even at 640x480 (ugh, i play the damn game at 1280x1024!!) :|

I admit to have never done this.
But did you let it finish?
Did the video turn out to be 5fps as well?
Maybe it goes slow but it turns out alright.

When your playing the game it doesn't have to dump 30fps in images to an avi file. That's a lot of stress.

 

[Chris D]

K so, first post, and it sucks, i know.

When i try to record some of my demos to .avi with fraps, the fps slows down to a death-crawl.

I faintly remember there being a command to record directly to .avi, but i might be wrong!

This a chance, or MUST i use fraps? :|
(Or maybe, is there a nicer program? )

Record a demo then follow these steps:

host_framerate 30 (forces fixed framerate for playback)
playdemo xxx (starts the demo playback)
startmovie css (starts dumping demo frames to file and writing the .wav)

After this, import the individual frames into Adobe Premier and then you're pretty much on your way to making a movie.

Bare in mind that the engine dumps individual .tga images into a certain folder. These images are usually about 3mb each. That's 3mb a frame which could mean in excess of 90mb a second until it's all compressed into video.

Chris_D edit: Props go to Valve's Yahn Bernier for those instructions.

 

[Conkorg]

just go to console type record filename and tahst ti and then type playdemo filename

 

[Chris D]

just go to console type record filename and tahst ti and then type playdemo filename

He wants to make a playable video in .avi or .mpg and I've given him the instructions to do that already.

 

[Dwaggy]

Hmmk, thanks.. I dont have Adobe premiere though, but i'm sure i'll find a program that can arrange the files in a movie file

 

[ItchyFish]

Yeh it does smell.

iF.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

I can't get GameCam to work either, I hope they give out instructions soon for that, because in all other games it's awesome! Steam really messes it up unfortunately

BTW you better have a big hard drive if you want to do Chris_D's method

 

[bgesley426]

You'll get more fps if you fraps the file do a different harddrive. And if you're using harddrives with fast rpms.

 

[Murray_H]

Hmmk, thanks.. I dont have Adobe premiere though, but i'm sure i'll find a program that can arrange the files in a movie file

If you can get RAD video tools, you can find all the .tga files, highlight them all in the window of the program (you'll understand when you see it), click the button underneath the window called 'list files', it'll say something about a sequence and click yes. Then another window will come up - i had problems here but i worked out what it was. My RAD tools did the list of files that i wanted, but also created another thing in the window that was unwanted e.g.

whatever-your-tga-files-are-called?????tga*1-100
whatever-they-are-called (something like this)

If that happens (not all the time), delete all the entries that don't look like the top entry in my example. Then click save as and it will create a .lst file. Find the file, hightlight it in the program window and click the 'Convert a file' button. Choose a location to save it as (Browse button), force the framerate to 30, click convert. A window will come up with whatever type of video compression you want - MPEG-4 V2 compression with a data rate of 6000 Kb/s gives an output of this quality.

This is a more step-by-step guide of SubKamran's guide in a how to make CS:S movie thread, but i had some problems (not his fault) so i've tried to cover as much as possible