well i dod some movies aswell,
they are on
http://red.orchestra.pl/page.php?id=87 ad are much shorter cause they just have to show options in game, not the full actions.
method
0. get the best hardware you can afford of , multi cpu machine sugegsted (like dula core or core 2 duo, or amd equivalents), same refers to the gfx and ram. you also need huge room on hdd (100gb minimum for longer movies)
1.
- fraps, i used quite old version that does not have a limit of 30 seconds when recording, but it does some things slower - also i was doing it on Athlon XP 2000+ with GF6600GT and i really sufffered low framerate - so no wonder i could not get some shots at all
- gamecam, another recording program, uses .wmv format, that may be hard to convert
2. set recording to full quality, in fraps actually it should record with 60x480 max (at leas i guess it is a limitation of that version i used), or use a 2:1 ratio so the frame will be 4x smaller than the original video (2x X and 2x Y = 4x)
bigger frame is deprecated unless you do HDTV
3. in game setting max details is not suggested - many details will be lost in decreasing video to 640x480 and later to the compression, so using some medium is enough - that will give some room for grabbing video on the fly
4. bind to some key the record key - i use scroll lock - quite useful, cause it is very ralery used in programs, and aditionally it turns on the led on keyboard.
5. in game turn recording in moments that will be interesting - like you know there is a shooting around the corner,s get prepared.
avoid some default actions like respawn and runnign to the opponen - saves cpu and most of all - hdd space
6. when recording long sequences it is advised to stop and immediately start recording in some stagnation moments (like you are hiding and reloading or typing in console) - editing short movies parts is easier, than working on huge material
7. after recording, the first thing you should do is to fast recompress the movies - instead of using huge files, compress them for high quaility divx/xvid by setting high bitrate on single pass - so you will get the minimum quality drop, but you will gain extra disk space.
8. work on those recompressed materials to merge them to a nicer videos with your desired tool
9. AVOID below:
- interlaced videos - useless eats HUGE amount of bitrate
- creating movies with black frames, or rouding -
- too long fade in/fade out
- red subtitles - their quality will be horrbile due to nature fo the compression algorithms
best is only pure video with sharp intermissions - it saves A LOT of bitrate for the movie, making it higher quality.
10. when finalising work, make it 2pass or multipass video - the average bitrate for 640x480 shudl be around 1400kbps for quite good quality and small file.
11. If you need a smaller files
- scale down the frame, but making it too small will cause to loose some interesting details - like you will not see on movie small (far away) players you kill
- decrease framerate, for example instead of 30fps set it to 25 or 23 - you will notice that if you use the same bitrate the quality will be better, even if the movie is in the same size.
- change the frame to a letter - by cutting down the top and the bottom, if you don't care about some details like kill messages.
12. you can also use advanced codecs to get much smaller files with the same quality , like .mp4 or h.264 - but notice that it will require users to use thos codecs.
13. compress audio to mp3 - join stereo 128kb 44kHz should be enough, for compatilbility the best is constant bitrate (CBR)
14. make 2 versions of the movie - high quality with big size, and a very small one for just as preview - some pepople will be encouraged for sure to download a big version after watching the smaller one.
more at
www.doom9.org
