recording play on dm?

[gabriel]

not sure if something like this has been posted before, but i did a quick search and didnt find anything so here goes:
how would one go about recording themselves playing HL2DM?
is there a way to do it on the pc so that you can have a video file to send to people or burn on a dvd?
the reason i ask is because my friends always show me their montages of that crappy halo 2 game and i want to make some of me playing DM to show to them.

 

[diluted]

The quick and easy way is to use FRAPS, but unfortunately the unregistered version only lets you record 30 second videos, and it kills your framerates while you're playing.

The better way is to use the demo and movie making stuff built into HL2/HL2DM/CSS. For this you're going to need VirtualDub and at least a few gigs of free space on your hard drive (5+ would be best).

Step 1: Record a demo of you playing. So start up a game, go into the console and type "record demoname" in the console (demoname can be whatever you want). When you're finished recording your game-play, open console and type stop.

Step 2: Export your demo into hundreds (or thousands) of TGA files, and a WAV file. First you'll need 2 binds. Put this into an autoexec.cfg or just type them in the console. I use F7 and F8, you can use whatever keys you want:
bind f7 "host_framerate 30;wait;startmovie temp"
bind f8 "endmovie"
Now type playdemo demoname in the console. This will play your demo. As soon as it loads, press F7 to begin exporting the WAV/TGA files. Press F8 when you are finished (it will take a while, it goes frame by frame).

Step 3: Convert the TGA files and WAV file into an AVI movie. To do this you'll need to use VirtualDub. Go to File, Open, Image Sequence, then find the first TGA file in your hl2dm folder and open it. Now open the audio, by going to Audio, WAV Audio, and finding the temp.wav file in your hl2dm folder. Now you can save it as an AVI, but first turn on some sort of compression (divx would be good) in the Video, Compression menu. Also you might want to resize your video, you can do this by going to Video, Filters, and applying a Resize filter. Save it by going to File, Save as AVI.

Oh yeah, you might want to turn your resolution down to 800x600 (or 640x480) while you are exporting the demo into TGA files, because you probably don't want a 1024x768 video anyway (or maybe you do). Hope this all made sense.

 

[daverince]

That's incredible, how the heck did you know that? And how kind are you to write all that out?!

Even if I did know all that, I'd never be nice enough to tell someone.

Cripes.

 

[netrex]

Lots of people know that actually Moviemaking is very common

 

[daverince]

It sounds easier to point to digital camera at the screen if you ask me. I've played around with FRAPS before, but 30 seconds doesn't do justice to the amount of pain I give people during DM.

 

[netrex]

Don't use Fraps for HL2DM. It sucks. Use startmovie instead as it gives you as smooth a movie as you can get and you can have the framerate you want controlled by host_framerate. And in Source it also exports audio to a .wav file which makes it very easy to get full quality sound and picture for movies.

Here is the binds I use for normal export at various framerates:

bind "ins" "host_framerate 30;wait;startmovie 30" // exports 30FPS (realtime)
bind "home" "host_framerate 90;wait;startmovie 90" // exports 90FPS (1/3rd of realtime)
bind "pgup" "host_framerate 180;wait;startmovie 180" // exports 180FPS (1/6th of realtime)
bind "pgdn" "endmovie;host_framerate 0;demotimescale 1" // stops export

To get the sound to fit on slow motion I put it together at 30FPS and I change the pitch the sound in Sound Forge as much as needed to make it fit and then merge them in VirtualDub.

Here are two short vids I've made with HL2DM footage if you want too see both slow and normal motion in action:

• Combine Ball vs. Gravity Gun
• Hoverboarding by ComradeBadger

 

[gabriel]

ok ill try to do some of this stuff you're talking about. sounds confusing but if i need help ill post here some more. thanks!

 

[gabriel]

took me a long time to try out but i finally messed around with this video stuff. i just wanted to let the people who helped out know that i successfully created a hl2dm avi video. thanks for your help everyone! if you have any more tips for me please let me know!

 

[netrex]

Don't slow down normalmotion clips to get slowmotion, it just gets choppy. Unless that is the effect you want of course =) Rather export at a higher framerate =) Then you'll get smooth and nice footage =)

Please post you final product when it's done so all of us can see it FileFront.com has great free hosting where you can sort files in your own folders and upload as much as you like and you can put up a banner which is shown on all the pages for your files

 

[gabriel]

ok, i put together a little something finally, but it's 60 mb in mpeg2 format. i dont know how i can get it any smaller without ruining its already pretty bad quality. any suggestions?

info about the file:

mpeg2
2 min.
780 x 420
60 mb!!!!

how do i make it a significantly smaller file?

 

[gabriel]

i reduced the size to 60% and put the quality down really far but it is still 30 mb and it looks like crap. how do people get such good quality but low file size? my original avi is over 400 mb!! this is so frustrating.

 

[gabriel]

am i just retarded or something?

(i just posted this so that the thread is bumped again, so someone can help!)

 

[netrex]

Don't use MPEG2, MPEG4 is better. Meaning, try XviD or DivX. XviD is preferable though as it looks better, encodes smaller files and it's free.

Get the latest here: Nic's XviD Binaries & Paraphernalia

Try the default setup first. Select 1 pass encoding and try adjusting the quality setting. 1 is full and the higher number the lower the quality.

 

[gabriel]

okay sorry for being such a pain, but i'm still really confused. i got the xvid thing and did the configure encoder thing and all that, but how do i actually do the compression of my avi? previously, i've just been making videos smaller by opening them in sony vegas 5, and rendering them as a different format. i'm guessing that that must be my problem right there. so how do i compress my file using this xvid thing?

 

[gabriel]

oh and btw.. i think i messed up my avi by messing around with the wierd four cc changer. i selected my file with it and changed the two settings to xvid thinking it would magically do something and now i can't open it anymore.. sad. how can i fix this?

 

[netrex]

You shouldn't overwrite anything when encoding, just save as new file and check it first.

Anyways, to encode in VirtualDub with XviD (or any other codec), you press Ctrl + P or via menu you go to Video > Compression.... There you select the codec then you press Configure. When you have set the settings you want in the codec, you OK and OK so the codec options and the compression options are gone. Now you can press F7 to save the avi where you want it. Then it will start encoding it for you with the settings you have selected

 

[gabriel]

ook. im going to try doing this in a little while.
i think i might have to record a completly new video though because i think i messed up my original one. i screwed with it's 'FourCC' or something and now it doesn't play anything when i open it. do you know how to fix what i did? or will i just have to start all over? or do you know what i'm talking about?

 

[netrex]

If you have already encoded it I'm not sure, but I think you need to reencode from the your source material again. The default settings are pretty good for normal use in XviD, so all you really need to do to get a good looking result is adjust the qualitysetting to suit your needs. And don't worry too much about 2-pass encoding unless you're trying to make the most out of a certain filesize. Like if you're rencoding a movie and want it to fit on a certain disc-size.

 

[gabriel]

ook i know exactly what to do now. it just sucks cus im gonna have to start all over. it will take me a long time but eventually ill get a really kick ass video on here. thanks for the help!

 

[netrex]

Hehe no problem Let us know when it's done so we can have a look Let me know if you need hosting and I'll point you in the right direction =)

 

[DeAdBoLt]

ok... i tried using the demo recording technique... and then playing it back and exporting it to .tga files... only problem: the .wav file is ALWAYS 44 kb in size... and has absolutely no sound on it!!! can someone help me???

 

[netrex]

Weird. I haven't experienced that before. Try setting the sound to stereo if you haven't that already. If you have, try changing it to something else, then change it back.

 

[DeAdBoLt]

COOL... it worked... thx a lot!!!!!!!!!!

 

[DeAdBoLt]

ok... now a new problem: sound works fine... i put it in virtual dub and compress it to XviD... then, when i want to edit it with windows movie maker... i add some slow motion and stuff... but i can only save a .wmv file of the movie... and the max size i can make it is 4 Mb... so the quality dramatically drops... any tips?????

 

[netrex]

Hmm. Don't encode it to XviD before you edit your movie. I know it will be big, but the end result will look better if you use uncompressed (or compressed with a lossless codec like Huffyuv) material.

For slow motion. Don't slow down the 30FPS (or whatever FPS you are using for your movie), but rather export the footage with more frames (like host_framerate 60 is half the speed and 90 is a third of the original speed etc..). To get the sound to fit when you export with a higher framerate, just open it in MS Sound Recorder (it's in your Accessories folder by default) and slow down the speed. It slows down speed only by 100% each time, so have that in mind when you select the framerate to export footage with. Oh, when you compile the screenshots for a slow motion clip, be sure to use the same framerate as you used for your normal motion clips. If you use the same as you exported with, it won't be slow motion, just normal motion with a higher framerate.

I have never used Windows Movie Maker my self, so I don't know really :/ I've seen people released movies much bigger than 4MiB which were made in it, so it's odd. But I don't think it will save as anything else than WMV though as that's MS' own codec.

 

[DeAdBoLt]

you're saying i shouldn't compress it to XviD before... but can i use Virtual Dub to compress a WMV file to XviD once it's edited???

and how can u add music to your video if u only use Virtual Dub???

 

[BeaverMon]

A question. Doesn't HL2 have it's own Demo Recorder? If so, what's the hot key to enable it?
Would be perfect for my CS:S Bot Battles.

 

[netrex]

you're saying i shouldn't compress it to XviD before... but can i use Virtual Dub to compress a WMV file to XviD once it's edited???

and how can u add music to your video if u only use Virtual Dub???

VirtualDub only handles .avi file, not wmv. If it's encoded to wmv, don't encode it to something else, that will just take a way more details. And I don't think you can add sound to the sound that is already there in VD. But if there is no sound, then you can just open the video in VD and click Audio > WAV audio... and add it that way. But don't use WAV as it's uncompressed and will make your vid a lot bigger. You can encode it in VD, but the quality you get is not very good. Get VirtualDubMod instead which handles MP3 and add it in there.

A question. Doesn't HL2 have it's own Demo Recorder? If so, what's the hot key to enable it?
Would be perfect for my CS:S Bot Battles.

Hm. The game can record demos. Just type in record demoname and replace demoname with what you want the demo to be called.

But it has a demo player. Either type in demoui in console or hit Shift + F2 to activate it. Then just browse to your demo and play it back.