Headshot Yoshi

Someone asked me this in the BCFL match, so here you go. If you record a demo during a match (I think the command is "startdemo name" where name can be whatever you want), you can record it after without using a 3rd party screen recorder. Heres how:

• Take note that the video records in whatever resolution you have your game set to when playing the demo. So I like to change my video settings up to give myself the smallest resolution (to make the UI easier to see when I post the video up) and if you have a slower computer you can turn up some of the graphics settings since it will not impact on the framerate of the video output.
• Play your demo by typing "demoui" in console and loading it up.
  Go to before the part you want to record (you can edit it later), hide the demoui, go into console and type in "startmovie filename avi" (filename is whatever you want the file to be called, without an extention).
• A popup will appear asking codec, pick one and then you get out of the menu (it may lag when you do this, don't worry). Your sound will cut out but thats normal. Then when the demo has played past the part you want, type in "endmovie" in console and it'll be in your steam tf2 folder.
• You can use video editing software to do whatever you want to your clips. Add music, make a montage, whatever you want. Something like Windows Movie Maker in XP is good enough for this.
• Post it on the TG forums so we can enjoy it.

MagnaCentipede

Choose a quality codec. All the codecs that come with your computer are crap. You can probably go straight to something like XviD, but if you want quality, go find HuffYUV. (I haven't used but have heard of Lagarith, which is a descendent of HuffYUV...) Once installed you will need to configure it to suggest RGB mode, since HL2.exe will be outputting RGB data from your screen to the codec. HuffYUV will chew a lot of disk space but it gives you top-quality for post-processing.

I use VirtualDub for editing the videos. It rocks. Windows anything is Satan and can die in crap.

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ROCKS

Ok,
I did all this and have the file but all my players say its and invalid codec or file type. What did I do wrong?

Headshot Yoshi

Try another codec or player? Honestly I don't know, I've never personally had any problems.

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ROCKS

what codec do you use. I now found that the second try it asks you which to use. Actually, I just ran Gspot and it told me the files are empty. I looked at their properties and they are 0 bytes large. I guess Ill keep playing around with it.

MagnaCentipede

Did you go over the filesize limit? YUV lossless chews a lot of space, and apparently they were dumbdumbs and used a signed 32-bitter to keep track of the file size, so it rolls over and fails quite quickly. Make a short YUV recording and see if it comes out. Also, you may need to convert into something like XviD before loading it in an inferior media player.

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ROCKS

That is exactly what happened. I have made them too large and will have to tape them in chunks, then stitch them together. Dont think I can add attachments on these forums. How do I add them here for people to see?

MagnaCentipede

You can put them on a generic hosting service like YouTube. Of course, you want to make YT-friendly videos as far as resolution goes, or you'll upload a huge file that will be 90% thrown out in the recompress.

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daithi1

Vimeo.com is good quality, Youtube high quality is pretty decent too if not a bit slow at times. I don't know if there is anything special you need for youtube high quality though.

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Headshot Yoshi

Vimeo is probably the best out there right now.

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