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[How-To] Record a gameplay in HD

 Post subject: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 22 Mar 2012, 16:18 
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Okay kids, you want to record a video of PR or your favorite game? No problem, all you need to do is to follow this step-by-step tutorial. I am not going to explain every shit, like what's a codec. If you don't get what i am writing here, it means you must be brain damaged or my english sucks to much to be understandable. You can choose what's the problem.

So let's start. What do we need to record a game? First of all your game to record (obviously) and then a good video recording tool. And by good I DON'T mean FRAPS, since FRAPS is one of the worst VRT (video recording tool) i ever heard of. I recommend Dxtory. Also you need a codec called Lagarith Lossless Codec. It's a free codec which works lossless and incredible fast.

To sum it up:

So, get that stuff, install it and then we could start. But we need to talk about some theories first. The main performance drop while recording happens due the writing of the file to the HDD. The RAM of your PC isn't that important at all. Neither it's the GPU or CPU. If you want to have the lowest possible performance drop get a good SSD. Dxtory offers us a special function to write on 2 or more drives simultaneously which will boost the performance a lot. But I will talk about it later. Anyways, you could get 500 SSDs but it wouldn't help a lot if you got a bad CPU or GPU.

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Since we talked about the basic let's get started (yes, really!). At this point i am refering to Dxtory 2.0.111. It could change in further version or other programms. Start Dxtory as admin! All programms that need to hook into other processes needs to be started as an admin! If you done so, it should look like this:

Image

Notice: While i took that screenshot PR was running, that means it hooked into the process. It will create a profile for BF2, so you can choose other settings for other games. Also take a look at the marked text. You can gather several informations. Your resolution (mine 1680x1050), your DirectX Version of the game (DX9, since BF2 only supports DX9) and other may usefull informations like Processor id (PID) and so on.


Also, Dxtory will only record your game. It won't record other overlays, like the x-fire browser or mumble overlay. That mean you can watch porn on xfire without the need to cut it out for a publication on youtube.

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The Overlay Tab
I am now going to explain every index-tab by it's own. So let's start with the first one:

Image


This index-tab show us the ingame overlay Dxtory use to give you some information about the recording status. You can enable it, since Punkbuster won't kick you for it. Personally I don't use it. If you want to change some of these settings you have to uncheck the "Use Default Setting". If you don't do it, it will just ignore what ever you have changed. You have to do it for every index-tab where you changed a setting! It's pretty obvouisly what all the settings are about. Just to explain it: 1) Your ingame Framerate 2) the Framerate your video will be written in.

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The Folder Tab

In the folder tab you can choose the location where your file will be saved. if you got more as one hdd add them too, since it will boost the performance. It should look like this:
Image


Ok, you can see that i selected a HDD and one SSD (where my OS is located, to be faster and that). You should avoid long paths, they CAN (doesn't need to) increase the access time of your drive and decrease the performance. So always choose a folder close to the root folder.
Run a benchmark test (the yellow-marked clock on the left side) to see your drive speed. The higher your resolution the more writing speed you need. With the codec i mentioned earlier and my settings 1 min of ingame film in a resolution of 1680x1050 is about 1 gb = 1024 Mb => 17,066 mb/s. ALSO, your game also access your HDD and other programms too. So don't think 17,066 mb/s (or 17.066 mb/s for the americans among us) would be enough. You don't need more as one HDD, it always is recommened to have. There will be an extra step if you got more as one.

Yes, my name is Nils and yes the longer path is actually faster than the root in my example but as I said it could be and the benchmark isn't that acurate and depends on the loadout of your hard drive.


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The HotKey Tab
Not much to say about it. It's self-explantory. Choose what ever Hotkey you want to. I am using F12 to start/stop a recording and set all the others to be empty, since i am not using the screenshot feature of this programm.


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The Movie Tab
This will need to be explained the most. I am going to start with the codec and go through all the different options. So your tab should look like this:

Image


Ok, step by step:

  • 1. Choose the Lagarith Lossless Codec. It allows you to record your movies lossless, if your system is that slow or the files are to large for you, inform yourself about other codecs which supports compression. There are a ton of other nice codecs. Since i am not paid to write this i am not going to list them for you.
  • 2. Click on that button, a new window should pop up.
  • 3. Check these boxes and choose "YV12" as mode since it give me the best result. Try your own settings. You get additional informations if you hover over the text for some seconds.
  • 4. Click done and swap to the frame rate. I am using 30 frames, if your PC can't handle that, try 25. I DO NOT recommend <25 frames, since your eye "records" with 24 frames and it will look laggy.
  • 5. Choose File Output since you want to save your movie in a file.
  • 6. Ok, now we split the users in 2 categorizes. If you got only 1 HDD to record on, choose AVI. It will save your movie as an .avi file in your selected folder. But if you added more as one HDD select RawCap.

    What does RawCap do? It will save the video themself in several files located in your selected folder. This improves the performance BUT you have to build the movie itselft later. This will be explained in the last step. You don't need to choose RawCap but I recommend it due perfomance boost.

_____________________________________________________


Image


  • 7. Activate this if you want to define a special recording area. If you just want to record the whole screen set it on deactivated.
  • 8. Uncheck "Include Mouse Coursor" or the Mouse Coursor will be shown in the video... Check "Synchronize Video FPS" if you want to VSynch your ingame FPS with the selected recording FPS. You don't need to do it.
  • 9. Scaling. This is also a really important performance setting. If you set the Scale to be 100% it will record the video in your resolution (mine would be 1680x1050), set 75% to reduce and increase your performance and decrease the file size. You can also set a costum width and height if you click on the big button which says "size".

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The Audio Tab
The great thing of Dxtory beside the awesome performance is that it allows you to set more as one audio stream to record. It should look like that:

Image


You can add up to 8 audio streams if you want. You should have at least 2 set up, one for your audio output (that's what you hear.) and one for your audio input (that's the shit you speak (specially the shit i speak.).) Use PCM and set it to 48.000 Hz and 16 bit, Stereo. (that's 48,000 for our american newfriends). YOU HAVE TO use 48k Hz and 16 bit or the audio can be out of sync. I have no clue why it does that.

For your audio input you also have the ability to set a volume. I choosed 20%. Just make some text recording and find your best setting for it. The other values stay the same: 48.000 Hz and 16 bit.

MAKE SURE you selected "record Sound" on ALL streams. It's the error source no. 1 if people don't hear one of the two audio streams in the video later.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Screenshot Tab
Okay, if you plan to use the screenshot features that's the place where you can define shit. It got a feature to record every x seconds a screenshot. Give it a try. I am not going to explain thing from it. The most is self-explainory.


____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Advanced Setting Tab
In this tab you should be able to set some extra features, some even improves the performance.

Image


  • 1. This option starts the record when you hook into the game. Can be stopped when you press your hotkey. You don't need that option to be activated. Just for the really lazy persons who want to press one button less.
  • 2. Just leave me alone! Don't need to be selected only when a problem occurs.
  • 3. I personally have no clue what that thing does. The information when you hover over it doesn't make any sense. Just let it unchecked.
  • 4. Dxtory is permantly hooked into the game, that means it will record even if you are ALT+TAB out of it. May cause problems with BF2, because ALT+TAB is one of the worst things in BF2. I wouldn't dare to activate this and then ALT+TAB out of it!
  • 5. Only necessary if you got more as 2. GPUs.
  • 6. Usefull if you got a weak GPU and good a good CPUs. Since modern pcs have >4 cores and BF2 doesn't need much CPU you should activate this option and set the "Processing Threads" to 2 less then your actual amount of cores. (I got a hexacore AMD so i chose 4 threads.)
  • 7. These two boxes shouldn't be selected. They decrease the fileframe-drop but increase your ingame video frame drop. Since the Framerate in PR is sometimes really bad it makes sense to not choose this.
  • 8. It's a VSync. Will limit your ingame frames to said amount. But i will talk about VSync at the end of this tutorial.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The last 2 tabs
The last 2 tabs just contain some global features and informations. I am too lazy to explain them, so take a look into it by yourself.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Build the AVI (only if you had chosen RawCap)
The last step for the RawCap user. How to build your final video file:
Image


  • 1. Click on that pink icon or start the program "RawCap Conv 2.0.94" located in the startmenu where dxtory is also located.
  • 2. Normally the programm should find all rawcap files, if it doesn't add them manually.
  • 3. Click on "Build selected" or "Build all". After it finished you should be asked if you want to delete the raw cap files.

congratz sir, you recored a video! Have fun.


____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Important additional informations:

  • DO NOT USE VSync in terms of a ingame function (which is not included in BF2) or an external programm like "D3DOverrider". If you want to have VSync enabled choose the option featured by Dxtory.
  • I don't recommend to ALT+TAB while recording. It could crash your game.
  • Tell me any grammatical mistake you find in the text. It will help me to improve my english.
  • That's all folk.

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 23 Mar 2012, 04:06 
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Dang brother. That was super informative and super awesome. Thank you, might give recording gameplay a go XD

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 23 Mar 2012, 09:48 
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Excellent guide Weed-Killer,

I must admit I'm a fraps user myself :oops:

If I have time I might give this a whirl.

On a skim read I only noticed one error in your English - a simple to instead of too. I.e. 'It is too late to go to the pub' :p

Cheers, Murkey.

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 23 Mar 2012, 13:38 
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Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it. Maybe we can stick that topic, so it won't get lost?

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 23 Mar 2012, 15:11 
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Joined: 13 Apr 2011, 20:15
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Tried that stuff ages ago, only problem I had - punkbuster was kicking me out of the server way too often. Finally the have fixed it.


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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 23 Mar 2012, 17:16 
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Joined: 27 Apr 2011, 13:09
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awesome tutorial m8
helped me a lot, thx


greetz
gw3ck

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 24 Mar 2012, 01:24 
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Joined: 14 Nov 2011, 17:43
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Fraps goes to the trash can, this thing is waaaay better, and thank you for helping me out with this program.

Don't get anymore the anoying lag that i use to get with fraps...


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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 24 Mar 2012, 23:43 
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We all know PR essentially relies on multiple comms. Local mumble, squad mumble, perhaps TS, and also all the SL comms. Now, some programs offer a push-to-talk so you don't hear your breathing and shit. That is all fine and dandy but you can only use it for one of the comms, the rest goes out the window and are not recorded. The other option is to have the mic record all the time, and you risk getting unwanted noises in there as well. Stupid, huh?

Would anyone here be interested in a script that allows you to only record your voice when you push any of the push-to-talks you use for any comms? It is quite neat actually. What it basically does is to mute your mic all the time and only enable it when you push one of the push-to-talks you use. That means the option to record all the time only records when you use the push-to-talks!

No comms in TS/Mumble are stopped either, since the mic activates at the same time you push your buttons. If you are interested I'll post a tutorial for it here.

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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 25 Mar 2012, 17:13 
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or simply use vegas to get rid of background noise since it records mic on unique layer.


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 Post subject: Re: [How-To] Record a gameplay in HD
PostPosted: 25 Mar 2012, 17:59 
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[quote="Silly_Karo"]or simply use vegas to get rid of background noise since it records mic on unique layer.


Huh? This program does or others do? I haven't tried this program but I know Fraps has all sounds on one layer when it records. At least as far as I am aware.
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