Crazyfool_OA
Member
+12|7386|Gloucester - UK
I'm sure most of you have probably twigged this allready, but thought I'd post it up for those that havent.

Unless you have a pretty high spec computer, you'll probably find that if you try to use FRAPS to record a BF2 game with your normal graphics settings, you end up running at about 10 fps which makes for crap looking video. So you lower your settings right down, and you now get 20 fps, but the graphics look shit, so you STILL have crap looking video...
Now, all you need do is simple really, you just need to use battlerecorder (info on using battlerecorder can be found here). Record all your action with battlerecorder, either by creating your own server and recording or by using a server that supports it. Start up FRAPS once you have your battlerecorder file, and play it back, BUT AT 25% SPEED!!!! Fraps will still record at a crappy 10 FPS, but it's recording the action at 1/4 of the real speed. Once its done recording all you need do is put the FRAPS video file through some editing software, and make it play at 4x speed, add your sound, compress it etc... And there you go, you now have a video that looks like the game was running at 40 fps, with all your lovely high graphics settings still in tact!

Just thought I'd throw that out there for all you budding video makers
EvilMonkeySlayer
Member
+82|7275
There's a problem with your plan there.

What about first person view? A lot of players (myself included) when recording a demo want it to be in first person view.

It's a nice idea and all, I had it myself a bit ago in the hope that I didn't have to record an entire round (using fraps) if I wanted some chunk of it.

Sorry to be a downer.
BUDFORCE
Moderator Emeritus
+76|7395|London UK

There is another problem aswell.

The files fraps create, even if you set fraps to record at the lowest quality, (half size at 25fps) are very large.

Now, if your recording at 1/4 of the speed, your file created by fraps is going to be 4 times the size that it normally would be.

Which causes 2 problems, firstly your gonna end up needing alot of HDD. When I was making my video, I ended up using most of my 40 GB raptor HDD just for 20 minutes of footage. So Imagine I had slowed it down to 1/4 speed, your going to end up using ALOT of space.

I worked it out, its something like 1GB per minute of un-compressed film. So using you technique it will be 4GB per minute.

The second problem this will create is when you come to compress it into a practical video file, its takes long enough normally, if your trying to compress 4 times the data, its gonna be totally mental.


Im not saying it wouldnt work, but I did my 20 minute BF2 video on a REALLY fast machine, and it still took AGES at normal speed. So I would say if your trying to make a video of anymore then a few minutes using your technique, well....


But good luck anyway.
Crazyfool_OA
Member
+12|7386|Gloucester - UK
Yeah it uses a ton of space, but then I got a 200G partition just for that sort of crap so it doesnt really bother me, big HD's are cheap as chips these days anyway. Plus of course you're talking about fraps files at 25fps... the whole point in doing this is because your comp is too pants to record at anything like 25fps, so really you're talking more along the lines of 10-15fps, which is about half the size. My comp isn't the fastest in the world, it's only a 2.8G athlon with 1.5G of RAM, yet it took me probly less than 5 minutes to compress a 3 minute video from 6 minutes of slowed down footage (I did it at 1/2 speed just to see if it worked), which isn't that long if you ask me.
I havent really played with battlerecorder until I did this, so didn't realise it doesn't let you show in 1st person mode, so thats a fair comment.

I put the test vid up HERE if anyone wants to take a look. It's nothing special, just a normal jet piss about to test it out. original footage was recorded at 10fps (and was < 800MB for the 6 minutes) so technically this should look like a 20fps video.

beats having to fork out a grand for a new comp just to record video that doesn't look all crappy if you ask me

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