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Making Videos

Name:	Joseph R.
Date Posted:	Oct 05, 2008
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Blog post

In this post I document my attempts at video making. There are no doubt better ways so please feel free to set me straight. At the moment I don't have a TV tuner.

First I tried Fraps with the networked game. That lag combo unfortunately killed the framerate.
Still I wanted to salvage some of it. I used VirtualDub to compress the large uncompressed video that Fraps creates(usually between 300 and 600 Meg) to something I could upload to YouTube.
VirtualDub compressed the video significantly but it required some tweaking to get it working. The last video in the post shows the tweaking.

Here is the YouTube video:

Wasn't too happy with the quality so I uploaded the rest to Vimeo.

Here is one:

More here

In order to improve the framerate my next attempt used another recording program CamStudio. Also I limited the demo to a standalone version thus eliminating any network lag. Instead of YouTube the video was uploaded to Vimeo. CamStudio allowed me to add a voice over.

Here is a short introduction to 60 Tons.

Finally a video instruction for using VirtualDub.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	12/06/08 - Using Targeting with Guided missiles 10/05/08 - Making Videos 09/14/08 - Blogging and a Refactored Scoreboard 09/03/08 - More blogging and a new build of 60 Tons, build 0.45 02/26/06 - My Tank Game

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Rubes (Oct 05, 2008 at 16:33 GMT)

Thanks, I appreciate this type of blog. Making videos of your game is a strange, finicky beast and it's always good to see how other people are doing it.

Randy Hearn (Oct 05, 2008 at 19:32 GMT)

I simply use Fraps and Windows Movie Maker. Did a quick screen shot of the atlas demo and reduced from 1GB down to about 9MB using DVD quality settings. The second shot is from Graw2 online multi-player at 30fps, I very seldom notice a difference running fraps.

Well, for some reason the first video will not show up... if anyone know why let me know... Here is the URL anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c_pcYgqp3w

Atlas

[youtube=-c_pcYgqp3w width=640 height=480]

Graw2

Also in your game shots you can see the bounding box of the tank.. Any reason or did you turn in on for testing. Game looks interesting...
Edited on Oct 05, 2008 19:54 GMT

Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora (Oct 06, 2008 at 15:47 GMT)

fraps + virtualdub has been my method of video capture in the past as well, then Windows Movie Maker for some quick and easy chopping or Sony Vegas for more detailed work/effects and/or output to different formats since WMM only outputs WMV
Edited on Oct 06, 2008 15:47 GMT

Joseph R. (Oct 08, 2008 at 22:09 GMT)

Randy, Maybe it's a problem with the Markup Lite? It can't handle quotation marks in its url tag(documented). Maybe the dash is a problem?

That bounding box you see are the shields. I made a copy of the bounding box then split it into 2 halves, one for the front the other for the rear of the tank. You equip shields from the inventory. Since I"m not an artist I made the simplest shields I could. Eventually someone will model some better looking shields.
Also would like to vary the intensity(brightness?) of the shields as their strength changes.

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