This tutorial contains the following topics:
- Setting up COD4 for using the avidemo function
- Learn how to record ingame footage with highest quality by using the avidemo function
- Understand how avidemo works, what it does, and why you should not believe everything wikipedia tells you :)
- Bringing your footage into a Video editing Software (f.e Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere)
Before we start:
The steps here basically apply for ANY game based on the Quake 3 Engine. (So all CoD´s,q3,et,sof2). The cvars are the same (unless your running a totally modified game, since q3 source code is out there are a ton of standalone games using the q3 engine source code (f.e Nexuiz) Again , these steps apply to almost any game (regarding fps, compressing stuff etc).
Some vital info:
This tutorial will aim for 50 fps footage as this is definitely the way to go in my opinion.It just looks so much smoother than 30fps. Sony Vegas will be used as Editing software, but basically translates for any Editing software (Adobe Premiere, Ulead Video Studio etc.) Some of them even do the steps automatically that we need to do by hand in Sony Vegas.
´Nuff said, lets begin!
This first part of the tutorial is all about preperation and making recording as easy and comfortable as possible.
First of all we need to set up our cod4 config for recording.
I always place cfgs in the cod4 main folder of an extra copy of cod4. You could also simply use 2 different profiles and place your cfgs in there so one profile won´t get affected by the other. Thats really personal preference.
once you opened the config browse to the 'bind' section (i.e controls)
and bind a key to toggle avidemo on and off.
The Syntax looks like this:
bind key 'toggle cl_avidemo value1 value2 valuex'
What this does is: Bind a key you define to switch between value1, value2 etc. The clear advantage here is you can bind one key to multiple values of a dvar.
bind f10 'toggle cl_avidemo 0 200'
You guessed it, this binds f10 to switch the dvar cl_avidemo from 200 to 0 on pressing. You can use any F key (normal keys dont seem to work in demos).
Save the config and cl ose it.
Now it´s time to properly set up CoD4.
//Notice: If you use CoD4player, skip this step
and read on at 'SETTING UP VDUB'.
* Go to your Call of Duty folder and find 'iw3mp.exe'.
* Create a shortcut , send it to your desktop/quicklaunch bar or whereever you can access it fast.
* Rename the shortcut to smth like MOVIE so you can identify it.
What we are going to do now is simply modify the shortcut so the game will start in the mod we want it to. So right-click on the shortcut and choose properties. A new window with some tabs will open. Select the 'shortcut' tab and find a field called 'Target' It should say something like this by default: 'C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4\iw3mp.exe'. We will now tell the game to load the mod we want and also execute our movie cfg (assumed u placed it in main).
After we are done it should look somewhat like this: 'C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4\iw3mp.exe' +set fs_game mods/yourmodname +exec movie.cfg where 'yourmodname' stands for the modfolder you´re working with. It´s important here to place all parameters AFTER the ' (quotation marks) Otherwise it won´t work.
Or just delete the quotation marks from the target, also works:
C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4\iw3mp.exe +set fs_game mods/modname +exec movie.cfg
Alright we are basically set for recording , but we still need to set up VirtualDub but that will be a piece of cake :)
Lets take a look at VDUB. VDUB basically is a software to create video files, encode them and also to create a video file out of an Image sequence. This is exactly what we need.
But Vdub at default settings won´t be very useful to us so lets modify it a bit! Another problem is that Vdub reverts to its default settings after u closed it and that can be a pain in the butt. We are going to make a nice preset for our needs.
Start up vdub don´t load any files and go to Video -> Framerate. Change it to 200 for now by ticking the checkbox 'change framerate to (fps)'.
Click ok, click video again and click 'Compression'
We don´t want to render our footage uncompressed, simply because there is no need to, as we have lossless codecs that reduce filesize by about 60% and thats a lot and u won´t see any noticable difference (hence why they are called 'lossless' ;) !
Choose Huffyuv or Lagarith (if these don´t show up in the list, you will have to install them.)
Both Huffyuv and Laga
rith are great lossless codecs. However , Huffyuv is known to not function properly on some processors. (Had it on my old E6700). Most known Problems are images rendering only half, Funny colored images and black images. If this occurs, just use Lagarith. As I said, they are both fine.
Choose your codec , if you are on a dual/quad core cpu make sure you check 'Enable Multithreading support' on Lagarith as it will make processing around 75% faster. Why can´t game devs do that :P
This is all for the settings, but as stated earlier, Vdub will revert them to default once closed. So lets save this as a preset that loads everytime we start Vdub:
Click on File -> Save Processing Settings.
Give the file a name and save it in your Vdub Installation Folder as a .vcf file
Once this is done, close vdub and create a shortcut to it. Right-Click , select properties and add: /s 'yoursettings.vcf'
This tells the program to use the Settings you specified in the quotaion marks. This is how it should
look like in your target window:
'C:\Program Files\VirtualDub.exe' /s 'laga200.vcf'
Enough preparation, let´s move on to recording some footage!
Start the game with the shortcut you created earlier and of course make sure your demos are in the folder you´re starting the game with
Important: To get access to commands like enabling thirdperson, changing timescale (i.e Fast Forwarding) you have to load any map in developer mode to 'unlock' these dvars. You can to this by typing /devmap mp_crash in your console, or just add +devmap mp_crash to your shortcut. After the map has loaded disconnect by using the /disconnect command. The cvars are now unlocked.
NOTICE: Before you record, make sure your Aspect ratio is set to 'standard' EVEN if you are on a widescreen!!! Else you will have bad results later on (egg-scope etc.) You can check this by browsing to your cfg and look for 'r_aspectRatio' If not already set, change it to 'standard' so it looks like this: seta r_aspectRatio 'standard'
 
Left picture: r_aspectratio set to “standard” you can see a nice round circle. The picture on the right is not what we want!
Load your demo by typing /demo demoname in console
The demo will now start to play. You can fastforward using the timescale command. Remember: You can also toggle multiple timescale values to a key. Or just use my 'Speed.cfg' which lets u fastforward by using your Mousewheel.
If you don´t have a really decent pc, turn cpu/ram eating processes off. This is important as avidemo is very sensible with this matter. Having other processes working at the same time can result in black screenshots especially on not so good pcs.
Once you reached the point where you want your recording to start Press your avidemo toggle key (the one
you defined earlier). Press it only once. You will notice the footage will slow down and feel laggy. This shows you that avidemo started recording. Whats happening now is that the game takes screenshot in a rate that causes 200 screenshots to be 1 second of ingame footage. Important here: Avidemo will record ANYTHING , also stuff that is overlapping the game window. So if you´re on r_fullscreen 0 for example and a window pops up (xfire etc.) this will be visible later. So just turn anything off as this could result in black screenshots or as said above, stuff beeing on the video you don´t want. Also if you are on r_fullscreen 0 please be aware that the window has to be pretty much in the center of the screen i.e not overlapping out of the screen. Otherwise the game won´t record screenshots (Console will tell you ;)
When you feel you recorded enough, press the Avidemo toggle key again and your recording will stop. Quit the game and browse to your screenshots folder. The Screenshots will be located
in: mods/yourmodname(the one u defined in the shortcut)/screenshots as a lot of tga files. Congratulations, you just did your first avidemo!
Another hint: To record slowmotion, record with avidemo 500 or even 1000. This gives u even more samples and the possibility to slow down clips in vegas a lot without loosing smoothness/gettin frameskipping.
Another thing to talk about is promod forcing graphic settings. A fix for this can be found in the Q&A section at the very end of this tutorial.
Now its time to make a video file out of this. Start Vdub with the shortcut you created earlier so it loads the settings you defined. Drag the first screenshot of the sequence (shot0000.tga) onto the Vdub window or click on File -> open video file.
You will notice the program showing the first screenshot and a progress bar in the bottom. You can play back the file to check on errors if you want and don´t be concerned about the video playing back very slow. Your HDD tries to read 200 screenshots per seconds, this is a lot of data as 1 screenshot in the dimensions 1280x1024 has 3.75 mb. This makes over 600MB/Sec. An average harddrive can only read 120-140 MB/Sec which is the reason why it plays back so slowly. It simply can´t read it faster. (I wanted to bring this up in detail because a lot of people view their footage in vdub and seeing it slow and give up on moviemaking, I want to point out this is perfectly normal!)
In Vdub you can use the bottom keys to define areas to render (if you only want a part of the video you can select a range which saves hdd space and render time).
When ready, press F7 or File -> Save as avi. Select a destination to save the file (sidenote: I recommend saving avis under the same name as the demo, so you can identify them easily)
This creates a kind of huge file , don´t be nervous if it doesnt play back correctly. Again the same reason applies as for playing it back in vdub. Your hdd just cant read fast enough ;)
And bam we are done :) Well.. almost!
A last step would be to get this into your favorite video editing/compositing software. I will use Sony Vegas for this example.
First of all we need to properly set up sony vegas. And this is the point where it gets a bit tricky.We want the Video to be 16:9 but we´ve recorded in 4:3 (set earlier in the cfg) Lets say you´ve recorded at 1280x1024 Which is a 4:3 Aspect ratio and also u have set this in your config. But we want the output video to be 1280x720 which is an aspect ratio of 16:9. Lets do that :)
Click File -> New and start a new project.
Click File again -> Properties
These are the settings:
You can check 'Start all new Projects with these settings' to set them as default.
Now try adding your footage by either dragging the footage from windows explorer onto the timeline,
Using the Vegas Media Browser or click File -> Import -> Media.
When you take a look at your preview window you will see a little problem:
You have these black bars at the side.
The reason is that the preview Window is 16:9 but the footage 4:3. Lets fix this.
Go to the timeline and click the pan/crop button and drop down the preset menu. Select 16:9 Widescreen TV Aspect ratio
Click the cross to exit and take a look at your preset window now:
You can see the footage now fills out the whole preview window. Exactly what we want.
This method I´d only recommend using for cod4 though. Actually we are cutting some parts of the footage off which seems a bit stupid but cutting the parts off is exactly what we want as everything below it is not needed + it´s actually disturbing due to the limited amount of mods we have in CoD4 the HUD turns back on when the round is over and there´s a modmessage in the top right. This is exactly what we cut off by doing so. U could also do this in CoD2. It´s acutally personal preference really. There´s no right or wrong in this step (as long as you don´t mess it up completely).It´s just the way I found best for cod4.
I just suggest sticking to known formats when it comes to fps and resolution.
FOR ANY OTHER GAME I recommend using windowed mode and record in 1280x720 So you won´t lose any of your footage :)
And we are ready to render! Below are settings to render uncompressed footage:
Notice: Uncheck “Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)” or else the footage won´t display fullscreen.
Well u did it! It sure was a long tutorial and I´m kind of sorry for that but I´m a person who does not only want to explain the HOW but also the WHY.
Another reason why this has gotten so long is that I wrote this article as a part of my upcoming book 'No title yet' that is mainly about topics like these and also has some section with the vital stuff. But I didnt want to spare on that in this article as i wanted to explain as much as possible.
I think it´s the best way to learn.
The internet has tutorials on almost any topic, which is great but people often make the mistake that they only explain how to do something, not why (i.e click this then that then turn this off and set this to 50 etc.)
I would have wanted to talk a bit more about the cfg part but this tutorial is long enough already. It will probably be in a seperate tutorial. This should get you going when it comes to recording footage out of almost any game
However, if u´d like to spend a little more time check below, theres a little Q&A about a few vital things :)
I really hope this tutorial helped you getting started with making movies. Thanks for reading.
Q: 200 FPS? Are you crazy? I read that the human eye recognizes pictures as a fluid motion at a rate of 16-18 FPS.
A: A discussion I often see in forums. While this certainly applies to footage on television and cinemas it certainly does NOT for video games. Many people in forums tell you that you don´t need more than 15 fps in a game to play it without seeing lag. Ever tried setting your fps to 15 and play any game? I´m sure you will disagree with those people. You will even see a difference between 100 and 200.
Reason for this is simple: Television uses interlacing,so called half-frames while Games render Picture by Picture. (please refer to wikipedia , there´s an excellent explanation available. If I would explain it all here, this tutorial would be way too long I think!)
So while having 15 fps on a television seems to be fine , 15 in a game is far from that.
Q: Why do we record with 200 FPS? We set the FPS to 50 in Vegas later anyway!
A: Well this is exactly what we want. We record 200 frames per second (i.e samples) If we sample this down to 50 FPS we have 4 samples per frame Which is great as this is multisampling , So every frame in the Video actually consists of 4 instead of 1 image which results in a very smooth image. If you´d record with avidemo 400 it would be even better, you had 8 samples per second. Please not that higher values than 200 should only be used for slowmotions as it´s a waste of time and hdd space if you record every single scene with an avidemo higher than 200 Please check chapter 3 for further explaination on this
Q: Why should I not use Fraps for hq game footage:
A: Fraps is by no means a bad application for recording ingame footage. Actually its a great way to record footage of any game in a decent quality, including synced sound FAST.
The Reason why Fraps records footage so fast at a decent but not lossless quality is that it´s using a medium of a lossless codec (f.e huffyuv, lagarith) and a high compression codec (h263 aka xvid, h264 aka x264). This ensures that PCs can record footage at a fast framerate while maintaning a decent end result.
I won´t be covering Fraps (including advantages, disadvantages) any further here (But there will be a tutorial about getting the maximum quality out of Fraps soon though) as the main topic is about how to use avidemo correctly.
Fact is: Fraps is great. But not for our purposes.
Q: My graphic settings keep resetting from time to time while watching a demo. How to fix that?
A: This happens because most of the stuff in promod is hardcoded. If a player changed a setting during the match (mostly graphic settings via the promod quickmenu) this change will also be written into the demo. There´s no real fix yet but promod is also beeing improved so hopefully it will be fixed in the next Promod version. A fix is to force high quality settings by binding commands to F-Keys. Before you record the demo try figuring out at what places in the demo it happens. Just before it happens start bashing the buttons you bound to these commands. They are in my movie cfg (Can be found at tek-9.org/forum or heroikkK´s movie cfg. (F1,F2,F3). You have to pay attention to not bind to many commands to a single key as there is a string (I.e bind) length limit. Everything from that point will be ignored.
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I really swear that between the default tweaks (filmtweakenable 0) and for example miracle's there was 50 fps difference. weird huh
