Making videos in Steam

[big giant circles]

I know somebody out there has done it. My question is, what's the best way to do it? I don't have a beast of a machine, so stuff like Fraps or Taksi are pretty much out of the question for me.

I'm wanting to get some good footage to maybe compile into a video for TFC (initially, maybe TF2 and Counterstrike later on). I've seen gameplay videos on youtube, but how do i get the demo to .avi or mpeg?

[PuRe-eViL]

You can't convert a demo to a video file directly (to my knowledge) because it's just recording player actions, so it isn't a video file.

Anyway.

What I use for gaming videos is an app called GameCam. It hooks into the game app and intercepts something or other from the video card. So it basically records to mpg/avi what you're seeing in the game. It isn't as good as Fraps in terms of quality, but your machine doesn't need to be uber to use it (although I get a lot of slowdown while recording and playing TF2).

Of course the better way to go about it would be to make the demo file, then play it back (in-game) and use Gamecam (or whatever you end up using) to capture the video while it plays.

And on re-reading your post I see this is for TFC xD Gamecam should be fine to do the recording. I've used it for recording footage while playing WoW (works fine, slight FPS decrease), and my attempts at using it in TF2 were just for testing it out (that and the FPS went to shit, pretty much).

[TehDonut]

K step one: boot up game...I'm assuming that you already have these demos recorded but to record demos you just go to console and type "record (demo name)"

so you have this demo you want to make into a movie...go to the console again and this time type "host_framerate 30"

30 fps is enough to make a good quality movie without generating a bunch of lag and stuff. But you can make it whatever fps you want it to be.

now type "startmovie (movie name)"

and then type "playdemo (demo name)"

when you're done or at the point where you want the clip/movie to stop type "endmovie"

look in your steamapps/(game) folder. there should be a buttload of tga files.

now this is where you have to use another program that converts all these tga files into an avi file...most people use virtualdub. I dont have a link where you can download it but im pretty sure its free if you google it.

anyway you should be able to do this on your computer however bad it may be.

[PuRe-eViL]

I like his way better xD

Although it doesn't seem like it records the sound. But then I guess you can record the sound separately, and just sync it up.

But overall, it's less fuss than how I've tried previously.

Donut is ftw.

[big giant circles]

cool. i don't need sound, it's going to be overdubbed with music anyway. yeah, i already have a few demos recorded--i didn't know steam could turn 'em into movies. very cool, thanks for the help dudes!

[TehDonut]

no problem...I <3 counter strike