How To - Guide ?

SeantheMan

Hi all,

This being the Recording /Editing forum, I'm suprised to see the lack of a basic tutorial.

Would anyone be up for making one or even posting general tips into a sticky ?

I was looking at maybe recording 1 or 2 things on PC ingame, but not sure where to start (use ingame recorder / fraps etc) and what program to use to convert / edit etc

Most of the details seem to be with regards to xbox360/ps3 recorders which use external devices... maybe a guide to cover all 3 if at all possible for noobs and beginners like myself.

Doctor DooM

SeantheMan wrote: »

Hi all,

This being the Recording /Editing forum, I'm suprised to see the lack of a basic tutorial.

Would anyone be up for making one or even posting general tips into a sticky ?

I was looking at maybe recording 1 or 2 things on PC ingame, but not sure where to start (use ingame recorder / fraps etc) and what program to use to convert / edit etc

Most of the details seem to be with regards to xbox360/ps3 recorders which use external devices... maybe a guide to cover all 3 if at all possible for noobs and beginners like myself.

Tallons sticky thread above is an excellent basic guide (perhaps it should be remaned though, obviously!)

Sabre0001

Has been renamed.

Tallon's thread is a good go-to guide. Any other questions, fire ahead! You could set up a "Help Seantheman" thread (or this could be renamed naturally ).

FRAPS is good if your computer can handle it and if you can set it up correctly. Some games are great because they store game footage and replays which you can then use. Converting can be tricky - so many different file extensions!

Doctor DooM

Sabre0001 wrote: »

Has been renamed.

Tallon's thread is a good go-to guide. Any other questions, fire ahead! You could set up a "Help Seantheman" thread (or this could be renamed naturally ).

FRAPS is good if your computer can handle it and if you can set it up correctly. Some games are great because they store game footage and replays which you can then use. Converting can be tricky - so many different file extensions!

You da man

I find mpeg streamclip tends to do everything I need, conversion wise. I swear by that program and no one else ever seems to use it

SeantheMan

Thanks lads, I'll give it a look over

Do the files generally need to be compressed , as I expect a 10 min vid capture on high resolution would be quite large...or am I wrong ?

I find mpeg streamclip tends to do everything I need, conversion

Is that from converting from filetype to filetype ?
What's the general desired output , .avi , .mpg ?

TheChrisD

SeantheMan wrote: »

Do the files generally need to be compressed , as I expect a 10 min vid capture on high resolution would be quite large...or am I wrong ?

Well, to give you an example, at 1080p, FRAPS will eat up about 2GB a minute, while my current DXtory settings (medium quality, 50MB/s to two hard drives, 60fps) takes 5GB a minute :P

SeantheMan

TheChrisD wrote: »

Well, to give you an example, at 1080p, FRAPS will eat up about 2GB a minute, while my current DXtory settings (medium quality, 50MB/s to two hard drives, 60fps) takes 5GB a minute :P

2gig a minute ?
So 5 mins @ 10 gig.
What is a respectable filesize to compress that to without huge loss of quality ?

Doctor DooM

SeantheMan wrote: »

Thanks lads, I'll give it a look over

Do the files generally need to be compressed , as I expect a 10 min vid capture on high resolution would be quite large...or am I wrong ?



Is that from converting from filetype to filetype ?
What's the general desired output , .avi , .mpg ?

I don't bother compressing the files at all, I directly upload my hauppages output, but then I don't generally need to do any editing at all.

But both your questions really have the same answer- it depends what you're doing with them.

I've uploaded files of several GB to youtube and in several different formats and they were all fine, and to me that's all that counts.

TheChrisD

Yea, filesizes from capture cards and the like will be smaller since they're already compressed. Footage recorded from PC will generally be bigger since there's less compression done to it at the time because compression is CPU intensive.

FRAPS sizes aren't exact, it's an estimate since it splits recordings up into 4GB files (because it doesn't use AVI 2.0), and they can vary from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. Other recording programs like Xfire, Dxtory and the like can record to a single AVI file.

Assuming your YT account is enabled for longer video uploads, you should be able to upload files of up to 20GB in size via the advanced uploader. A case in point, this Left 4 Dead 2 game is 46 minutes, and comes out just over 5GB when rendered with Sony Vegas to the Internet 1080p 30fps MP4 preset. The raw FRAPS overall size, I can't remember, so I'll estimate at about 100-130GB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9peHKq_X-o

SeantheMan

Did you use FRAPS to capture your L4D2 video or was that via SourceRecorder ? , and why did you use 1 over the other if you don't mind me asking

TheChrisD

I used FRAPS for that particular one.

There are a few things about Source Recorder when I tried it a while back in TF2 that put me off doing it again: It can lose some of the actions in the game, It's rendering can be very long and lethargic, and editing it can be even more so since the way I did it ended up with a million images. Overall, the time that had to be spent doing so wasn't worth it compared to just hitting a single function key on my keyboard and living with the FPS drop that FRAPS gives to games.


However, that's not to say that Dxtory isn't worth it, albeit the fact that my current setup for it requires a long conversion time before I can proceed to editing. At least Dxtory doesn't cause a major FPS drop in-game when you record uncompressed with it. I'm not sure if FRAPS has less of an impact if it records uncompressed, but I've never tried it since I was always worried about the disks space usage at the time.


Ultimately, what you choose to go with depends on the specs of your system. FRAPS is a CPU hog, Dxtory is a hard drive hog - particularly when it comes to write speed. I haven't used Xfire's video recording function in years so I can't comment on that anymore.

Tallon

I'd be 100% up for doing or helping with tutorials!