[TUTORIAL] In Game Video

[Sandy]

Growler Gun Cam

This is an educational thread on how to successfully operate what I find is a very low resource intensive video recording program.

Step 1: Download and Install Growler Gun Cam and its update/necessary codec

Growler Setup File

Growler Update

Xvid codec

Step 2: Change your setup:













Step 3: Recording and Compressing

Record your match play using the trigger you had setup previously, you should see a green square in the top left of your screen while Growler is recording.

Step 4: Export video
a) Select the proper video from the growler gun cam list, Export Video>Append Selected File>As AVI
b) Open Windows Movie Maker, Import Video>Program Files>Growler Gun Cam>AVI>Select the proper video you would like to render
c) Highlight all the clips movie maker has divided your video into>Finish Movie>save to computer

Step 5: Uploading video

Youtube
Filefront

If you haven't already, create a username.

When uploading the file be sure to specify private viewing only if its for a dispute.
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If you have any questions about using Growler Gun Cam feel free to send me a PM.

SPECIAL THANKS TO ABSMOKE

[Redeye]

I am not sure why some people have issues getting fraps to work. I recorded myself getting it to work. The quality ended up being pretty bad with the desktop screen recorder i found. So you wont be able to see the options. Oh well. You get the idea anyhow.
http://files.filefront.com/FrapsVidw.../fileinfo.html

FRAPS files are huge, several gigs. Drop the .avi FRAPS created into movie maker (or your video editing software of preference) then just render it. It will cut the file size more than half.





ReD

[Sandy]

This is an educational thread on how to properly install and use Hypercam.

Step 1: Download HyperCam

Step 2: Adjust Settings
Switch the width and height to your screen resolution in pixels
Do Not adjust frame settings.

Step 3: Record
Use F2 for Start/Stop Record and F4 for Screen Shots

Step 4: Upload

You will find recorded clips in your "My Documents" folder

Filefront
Youtube

Sign up if you havent already, save the link of the uploaded video

[iDeceiver]

Gday

Ive been scanning the forums for the last few days and ive come to notice that a large amount of WOGL competitors are having trouble with recording their matches, just like me. Many people SEEM to be flaming the admins/WOGL officials for relying on mandatory IGV until X-Ray is released, which is unfortunate. Everyone associated with the WOGL(in my experience) is working their arse off to ensure that the playing field is level and that all players are satisfied with the league and its operations, and will return in later seasons.

Just before Combat Arms was patched last week, I began experimenting with various FREE forms of In-Game recording, because most people either dont have the will to buy a registered copy of FRAPS, or dont have a computer capable of running it alongside the game. I tried Growler Guncam, Hypercam, FastCapPro etc. and still could not resolve the issue of continuous lag in game whilst recording, let alone producing videos that could meet the WOGL standard.

I stumbled over a program called ZD Soft Game Recorder which worked much better than the other IGV recorders, but like all trial versions, had restrictions. ZD Soft allows you to adjust resolution, fps (like the others) and other settings that can be changed for quality or computer performance. This software also provided you with the option of recording STRAIGHT to .wmv format rather than creating a .avi file that uses up half your HD (a 1 minute clip can be less than 10mb depending on settings). I'm not sure if the program has been disabled after the patching, or if it is possible to hook it to CA without being picked up as a third party violation, but it works for me and i hope it works for alot of the other legit players who were hoping on getting a few matches in during the pre-season without dodging the IGV rule.

I plan on sending the WOGL admins a copy of some of the footage ive recorded with it later today, just to make sure that they approve of quality and it will hopefully become a usuable IGV program.

ANYONE LOOKING TO EXPERIMENT WITH THIS PROGRAM PLEASE LEAVE ME A PRIVATE MESSAGE AND I WILL BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO SEND YOU A LINK .

Cheers,
BnB

[InkofDeath]

Whether you have an HD 4870x2 or a GTX 280, FRAPS will totally kill your system. Hopefully by having such high end hardware you'll be able to deduce why FRAPS sucks the life out of your machine. If not, here's a guide, or more or less information regarding FRAPS.

Information About FRAPS

- It's an old program
- It was designed when 3D graphics were running on the Nvidia 7000 series, or less, and had such graphics intended (Combat Arms is just a bit over this range, but it doesn't matter that much)
- It can only record up to 1280x720 resolution (actually less, but games don't support that resolution)
- It wasn't designed with 8x AA or 16x AF in mind - stick to 4x and 8x
- It's a resource hog for more than just the graphics card

Information Regarding The Resources

*Here's the secret, that everyone who gets bad FPS with FRAPS is missing*

Following Are The Hardware Used By Fraps To Record:

- Hard Drive
- CPU (one core)
- RAM
- Graphics Card

*This is in order of hardware stress*

Explanation On The Above

So you might be wondering why the graphics card is at the bottom, along with RAM as well, and the CPU is in second to the Hard Drive. It's actually quite logical, the hard drives of today are bottlenecks to recording software.

I'm just guessing but I'll assume most users have one primary hard drive of about 100gb to 300gb, give or take 50gb's. I'll also assume these Hard Drives were made not bought, at least 3-5 years ago.

What does this mean for you? It means your hard drive will have extremely slow RPM's compared to todays average consumer hard drivers being made. This means lower write speeds and lower read speeds.

I'll also predict that if it takes you over 7 minutes to boot up Vista or Xp, you're experiencing difficulty with recording with FRAPS. Once again this is because the hard drive is the slowest piece of hardware compared to everything else in your system.

Walkthrough Of A Basic Recording Process

1. Start Recording
2. CPU crunches those numbers from the RAM in a jiffy
3. While game is playing; it is storing temporary game data on your primary hard drive
4. The recording software is copying everything from the graphics card onto the primary hard drive
5. The game is trying to recall game data while you're recording
6. Whatever other programs you got running in the background are also usingthe primary hard drive
7. Stop Recording due to horrible FPS, or major drop in FPS

The Part About Getting Good FPS

Most games cannot utilize quad core quite yet, but even then they can't utilize three cores as well either. True quad-core CPU's are setting the standards however now and games will eventually learn to use the quad-core CPU, along with the GPGPU. However for now, you either have a dual core, or a quad core. Heaven forbid you have a Pentium 4, OC'd even.

How to Prep Your CPU

This isn't really needed, but for those of you with horrible HDD's with bad RPM's, this is more likely to have affect:

1. If you have quad core:
- Task Manager
- Select the game process with right click
- Select 'Set Affinity'
- Deselect One Of The Cores
2. Open the recording software
- Follow steps 1 to 3 of Step 1
- Now deselect all cores bu the one core you unselected in step 4 of step 1

If you have dual core, don't even bother with this, you'll slow down your system. This is oriented to those who have actually plunged into quad core realm.

How To Prep Your Game Settings

1. Set the resolution at or below 1280x720
2. Reduce AA and AFF to 4x and 8x.
3. You can use whatever aspect ratio you like depending on the graphics card you have

Requirements For RAM

Vista:
3GB's

Xp:
1.5gb's, but hopefully you got 2GB's

Requirements For Hard Drive

If you don't have two separate hard drives and your RPM is below 5500, then you'll need two hard drives. If you have anything over 6000 RPM's, you'll be fine with one hard drive, just follow the above steps. If you have a SSD, then god bless your soul.

For those with two Hard Drives:

1. Save the game recordings to the secondary or slave drive.
2. Make sure your primary drive is where the game data is being stored.
3. Don't run anything off of the secondary drive, only have the recording writing on it. Nothing reading or writing.

If you don't have two hard drives and are below 5500 RPM's, you fail, so go buy a 60gb hard drive compatible with your motherboard and system for less than $30. Please note with using FRAPs 30 frames per second recordings will be 3.9 GB's per 5 minutes of gameplay. So basically one day of recording or one intense game of SnD will quickly fill that 60GB's. I filled my 1TB drive in one day of recording Left 4 Dead and Combat Arms. Once you codec the raw files from FRAPS though they'll go down to 500mb or less for a 10mintue video.

In FRAPS you can select where you save your clips, so select the hard drive that is the secondary one.

How to Get High Definition On YouTube

1. Save the file in WMM or Vegas with an aspect ratio of 16:9.
2. Upload, then wait for processing. Please make sure that if you recorded at 4:3 or such aspect ratio the high definition may be stretched or not even stretch out, but will be a HD square, lol! Combat Arms gets picky with this, but generally if you record at 1280x720, and have 16:9 in the codec you'll be good.

*Want prove of this happening?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5FQ3ciLprg
I saved as the wrong codec with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and that vid now looks like crap, but is high definition!

*Please note the above isn't foolproof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DESugIWeMmI
I was at 16:9 and 1280x720 in-game and same for codec, but YouTube converts the videos to FLV, so it may not work.

--Disclaimer--

Do not tell me you get fine FPS with just one hard drive. I really don't care, since your Hard Drive is apparently able to handle read/write speeds while recording, which I could have figured out anyways, duh!

Don't ask me for how to get the full version of FPS, YouTube is fine for that.

Don't say I screwed your computer up cause you're an idiot at using computers/software/hardware/previous mac user.

-----

Good luck and hope to see some recordings, will be glad to answer questions that aren't related to the disclaimer! If you have tips as well, please post!

[k00lm4n]

Hi! Today, I will show you how to compress your video files so you can upload them to youtube or what ever video hosting websites without wasting to much bandwidth!

1. You will need Xvid codecs. You can download the executable file here.

2. You will have to download VirtualDub here. You'll download a zip file. Extract it in any folder (I suggest you to create a VirtualDub folder on your desktop and then extract the zip file in it).

3. Open the folder and click the executable file:



4. File > Open video file :



5. Choose the video file you want to compress and click Open:



6. If your video contains sound, don't do anything. However, if your video does not contain sound, go to Audio > No Audio, this will prevent VirtualDub from unnecessarily render sound aswell:



7. Video > Compression:



8. Choose Xvid MPEG-4 codec from the list and click "Configure":



9. Move the cursor to what ever fits your need. To the left, the best quality but a bigger file (500mb for a 4 gigs file). To the right, the worst quality but a smaller file. I suggest you to put it at 9.92 like mine (small file and fits WOGL rules):



10. You are ready to render the video! File > Save as AVI:



11. Choose a place where to put the rendered video, name it then click on "Save":



12. Let VirtualDub compress your video and enjoy the result:



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If you upload the video on YouTube, High Quality will be available.

If you have questions or problems using my tutorial, post in that thread and I'll gladly answer you!

-k00lm4n

[Sandy]

very good resource, good alternative to WMM

thanks koolman!

sticky soon

[melao]

I prefer the x264 codec. The quality is almost the same and the file size is like half than MPEG.

[k00lm4n]

Cut

Your video might last more than 10 minutes (you can't upload them to YouTube). You can cut in two your video using VirtualDub! You can compress THEN cut the video in two by following step 1 to 9 on "How to Compress" and then use this tutorial from step 2.

1. Open your video file (File > Open Video File .

2. Press on the left arrow to define the beggining of the first half:



3. Move the big cursor to where you want the video to be cut in two:



4. Press the right arrow to highlight the first part of your video:



5. Go in Video > Direct Stream Copy and Audio > Direct Stream Copy:




6. You are almost done with the first part of your video! File > Save as AVI:



7. Choose a place where to put the first part of you video, name it then click on "Save". I suggest you to put "Part 1" after the name of your video so you can recognize your 2 parts:



8. Let it render then close the windows BUT the main one.

9. Don't move the cursor and press the left arrow and the end of the previous part is now marked as the beggining of your second part:



10. Move the big cursor to the end of the video and press the right arrow to highlight the second part of your video.



11. Be sure that Video > Direct Steam Copy and that Audio > Direct Stream Copy.

12. Now you can save the second part of your video! File > Save as AVI:



13. Do the same thing as the first part. Name it (put "Part 2" at the end) then save it!




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If you upload the video on YouTube, High Quality will be available.

If you have questions or problems using my tutorial, post in that thread and I'll gladly answer you!

-k00lm4n

[MisterChef3]

nice tutorial koolman, really does help.