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Making Game Videos the easy way...


Schot

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Rough draft for now. I'll spruce it up with more detail but for now I'd like to post the general idea. I've been posting my videos lately and maybe some of you are curious about how I'm making mine. Here we go! In point form. ^^

 

 

  • Download and Install Xfire
  • Make a Game Video
  • Open your game video in Movie Maker (comes free with XP/Vista/Windows 7)
  • Drag you video onto the timeline
  • Play it to see how it looks
  • When satisfied click File-->Publish Movie
  • -->This Computer
  • -->Name your video
  • -->Best quality...
  • Done!

 

Now if you're wanting to upload videos to Youtube then the best resolutions are 1280x720 and 640x480. In regards to SacredWiki videos we'll be doing 640x480 sized videos to upload to Youtube. The embed code on the wiki will then further size it down to 200x175 without loosing any quality. To be able to record videos at that size what you could do is set Sacred 2 to windowed mode at a resolution of 1280x960. Then set Xfire to record at half size which will end up giving you an output video size of 640x480. The great thing about using Movie Maker is that it's possible to watermark videos using a few tweaks here and there. Rather than go into detail as to how you do that I'll just provide a Movie Maker project that will put everything into place. All that's left to do in this project is to remove the video in it and put your own in. I've placed a video within this project so that you'll have something to test with if you like.

 

  • Download My Movie Maker WaterMarking Project
  • PlaceADDonTFX.zip in your "C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared" folder
  • Right click it and choose Extract to ADDonTFX
  • Open the new folder ADDonTFX
  • Double Click the file watermark.MSWMM to open the project in movie Maker
  • Change the video inside the project to your own video file

 

Note: If you're having trouble finding the option to publish your video at 640x480, check Tools-->Options-->Advanced-->Video Properties and choose Video Format: NTSC and Aspect Ratio: 4:3

 

One last thing to do with Sacred 2 is that I put my watermark in place of the games compass. In order to do the same you'll need to turn the compass off using your optionsCustom.txt file by adding this line:

render.compass = 0

 

Enjoy!

 

 

P.s.

Sorry, I know it's a bit tossed together. Ask'em if yah got'em!

 

 

  • Like! 1
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You do realize I'll be asking LOTS of questions once I start on the Combat Art Animations right? :sweating:

 

Looks fairly simply...might give it a shot over the weekend and see if even I can do it

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Haha, I expect it. :)

 

It's surprisingly simple actually. Took me forever to get all the pieces working together but now that I have I can see making these videos will be amazingly fast. To give an idea it takes about 5 seconds to compress a video. I'm only recording max 10 secs of video so the compression goes quickly. The challenge is in the camara work. Which reminds me... one last trick I'm doing for the bosses is that I'm setting my Max zoom very low. Almost nullifies the inconvenience of the boss cam. :)

 

Options-->Gameplay:

 

ycxtx.jpg

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Haha, I expect it. :)

 

It's surprisingly simple actually. Took me forever to get all the pieces working together but now that I have I can see making these videos will be amazingly fast. To give an idea it takes about 5 seconds to compress a video. I'm only recording max 10 secs of video so the compression goes quickly. The challenge is in the camara work. Which reminds me... one last trick I'm doing for the bosses is that I'm setting my Max zoom very low. Almost nullifies the inconvenience of the boss cam. :)

 

 

Oh suuuuuuuuuuuuuure......now you tell me lol :)

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your liking Xfire over Fraps then. What is the difference in your opinion?

 

Funny you ask because for years I swore by Fraps. It was the greatest thing available before Xfire got popular on the scene and even long after Xfire had asserted itself I clung to Fraps for a time. Alas... Fraps is old news. The thing is that Fraps was never "easy" even long after I had been using it I would still run into problems of poor quality and overall crapy compressions. And Fraps doesn't do it all like Xfire. But the reason I think I'm finding such pleasure in using Xfire is that I think it may be more Microsoft friendly than Fraps. Well... The compression algorithms that is. It's been a while since I've tried Fraps in Movie Maker and if I recall correctly Fraps can't/couldn't be loaded into Movie Maker. Aaaand if I were to throw one more reason on the pile I'd say that Xfire is much more successful than Fraps. Fraps is a hobby app. Xfire is serious gaming bizz and I'd be willing to bet that Xfire will outlive Fraps. Xfire an reliable and most efficient tool to be sure. Major difference between the two?

 

Xfire

Finding the "Go" button is as difficult as it gets.

 

Fraps

Sifting through at least 20 different tutorials in order to get a half decent compression of Fraps via Virtual Dub is as easy as it gets.

 

 

Haha, I expect it. :)

 

It's surprisingly simple actually. Took me forever to get all the pieces working together but now that I have I can see making these videos will be amazingly fast. To give an idea it takes about 5 seconds to compress a video. I'm only recording max 10 secs of video so the compression goes quickly. The challenge is in the camara work. Which reminds me... one last trick I'm doing for the bosses is that I'm setting my Max zoom very low. Almost nullifies the inconvenience of the boss cam. :)

 

 

Oh suuuuuuuuuuuuuure......now you tell me lol :)

 

lol, I thought you might key in on that. Ok ok. In my defense I only discovered that since I started making the boss vids a couple days ago. I swear! :) It's pretty sweet though. Have you tried yet? haha.

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If you only knew how long it took me to get halfway decent shot of Terus :)

 

Looks like I'll be doing a Quest Boss run...need to re-do some pics..least it'll be easy this time....nice find Schot :)

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your liking Xfire over Fraps then. What is the difference in your opinion?

 

Funny you ask because for years I swore by Fraps. It was the greatest thing available before Xfire got popular on the scene and even long after Xfire had asserted itself I clung to Fraps for a time. Alas... Fraps is old news. The thing is that Fraps was never "easy" even long after I had been using it I would still run into problems of poor quality and overall crapy compressions. And Fraps doesn't do it all like Xfire. But the reason I think I'm finding such pleasure in using Xfire is that I think it may be more Microsoft friendly than Fraps. Well... The compression algorithms that is. It's been a while since I've tried Fraps in Movie Maker and if I recall correctly Fraps can't/couldn't be loaded into Movie Maker. Aaaand if I were to throw one more reason on the pile I'd say that Xfire is much more successful than Fraps. Fraps is a hobby app. Xfire is serious gaming bizz and I'd be willing to bet that Xfire will outlive Fraps. Xfire an reliable and most efficient tool to be sure. Major difference between the two?

 

Xfire

Finding the "Go" button is as difficult as it gets.

 

Fraps

Sifting through at least 20 different tutorials in order to get a half decent compression of Fraps via Virtual Dub is as easy as it gets.

 

 

Well thanks, you knocked my down on the intelligence scale to near rock bottom. I downloaded Xfire, registered, and have now just spent an hour trying to figure out how to take a screenshot or vid. And I can't figure it out, sorry I have to say Fraps was way easier. 3 tabs one is movies, one is screen shots. pick your hotkey, pick your destination folder, done. movies and pics in 2 minutes. with Xfire I got nothing.

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your liking Xfire over Fraps then. What is the difference in your opinion?

Xfire

Finding the "Go" button is as difficult as it gets.

 

Well thanks, you knocked my down on the intelligence scale to near rock bottom. I downloaded Xfire, registered, and have now just spent an hour trying to figure out how to take a screenshot or vid. And I can't figure it out, sorry I have to say Fraps was way easier. 3 tabs one is movies, one is screen shots. pick your hotkey, pick your destination folder, done. movies and pics in 2 minutes. with Xfire I got nothing.

 

lol, sorry loco. That was unfair of me. Truth is that there's a reason why I chose the "go" button as the bar that sets it's difficulty. Because IT WAS really difficult to find. :) Ok, pictures on the way! Once you know where it all is though it's really great.

 

 

Now that's a simple way :) Nice find :)

 

 

Thanx Anti. ^^

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Finally got it to work after manually add sacred2.exe to the games list and a PC restart. took way to long to figure that little bit out. I like the pics and vids. I thought Xfire had a FPS meter somewhere? no?

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I think I tried Camtasia once before though I think it was a trial only thing. Do you have to pay for Camtasia? That's the major big plus with Xfire. It's free! :devil:

 

P.s.

Some images for the guide:

th_Xfireoptionsingame.jpg -- th_Xfireoptionsvideo.jpg -- th_xfireoptions.jpg

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I think I tried Camtasia once before though I think it was a trial only thing. Do you have to pay for Camtasia? That's the major big plus with Xfire. It's free! :devil:

 

P.s.

Some images for the guide:

th_Xfireoptionsingame.jpg -- th_Xfireoptionsvideo.jpg -- th_xfireoptions.jpg

 

In the past I have used all 3 big ones (fraps, camtasia and xfire) Out of those 3 I find camtasia to be the best mainly beacause you don't end up with 10gig+ video files on your HD as it takes you to the editor as soon as you press stop recording, and also it is so much easier to use and has built-in youtube setting. Downside is that it isn't free.

 

Also with camtasia you can record from any sound source, whether thats the games music or your own voice with a mic. And you can tell it to record any part of the screen using the selection box, or to 'snap' to a specific application

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Ah that built in Youtube feature sounds cool. A shame it isn't free though.

 

 

P.s.

Made a slight adjustment to your post. Suggesting to pirate software is a nono here. :devil:

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 months later...

My can of WhoopAss is broke, I can't seem to get the video to work. I have xfire, and I have it working with Sacred. In-Game the functions work and all, made a video of the guardians last night. Took just over 4 minutes to take them and the egg out with my dragon Mage. I stopped the recording and then tried to follow your instructions and I got nothing but a black screen when trying to view the video. Help me open my can please.

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It will take me some time to make a tutorial w/ screenshots on how I do videos. But in short I record with xfire but don't do the automatic upload (the encoding quality sux). I go into xfire to my source videos list and tell it to upload from there. it does a much nicer job off creating the .mp4. by doing it this way it does send them to xfire.com but also creates a file on my HD that I can upload the to youtube.

 

for best results run your videos at a low resolution window like 720P max. and videos over 2 minutes will be huge, huge files to upload. so I try to stay short as possible.

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  • 6 months later...

Heh I've always used fraps for recordings ;P

Anyone got a video of the quest to see the concert in chapter 1 Sacred 2 : Fallen Angel? non on youtube ;[

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  • 6 years later...

For they so blessed with a powerful NVIDIA GPU and the proper system one may make the use of the NVIDIA GeForce Experience and record game footage or to make HQ or 4K screenshots. Below I have posted a number of such videos of Boss Fights. And in the General Discussions Forum there are recent "Funny & Interesting Screen Shots."

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