ScreenRecording into a movie file.

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:02 am

Hey, it would be cool to be able to record what happens on the screen. Just like there is a screen capture it would be nice to see a plugin(if not a feature) that records the screen, something like fraps. The write a screenshot 33 times a second is good if you're planing on using it with a video app later, but for replay 10 seconds after recording its useless. I wonder how Wallaber managed it in stuntplayground??

I tried the MovieMaker class (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... moviemaker) . But it doesn't work with ogre nowadays for some reason, i tried fixing it but im not that skillfull with ogre yet and with no runtime or compiler errors im clueless. I tried getting help here (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... moviemaker). It would be even better if the movie recorder records into the theora format because the plugin to watch it is already available. I hope you guys consider this feature, as it would make ogre rock even more.

ps. if this feature already exists, im sorry for being such a noob.

Post by **nfz** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:17 am

I think he used Fraps

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:27 pm

How? Is there a way to access the fraps source code. Is there a section for developpers? Because its its own program?

CommandLine?

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:21 am

k since its not possible because realtime movie recording is really slow, how would i be able to dump alot of screenshots without it skipping frames? Say something like 30 shots a second?

Post by **xavier** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:49 am

Did you actually buy it? The demo won't do over 15 fps. You also need a machine to do it; don't expect a P3 with a GeForce2 to be able to record 30fps and your game at the same time.

I can do it just fine at 30fps on my machine: P4 3.0, 1GB, 6800GT

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:54 am

Sorry if i was confusing, when i said that its not possible because realtime movie recording is really slow, I meant that I have discussed it with other people and they all convinced that recording to a movie file is impractical and would kill my app and no I didn't buy fraps. So I was wondering how I can dump alot of screenshots without it skipping or screwing up? Im unsure but how would i be able to render one frame at a time thus enabling me to take a screenshot per frame? I hope this clears it abit up??

Post by **xavier** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:12 am

Well you really can't. The time to transfer the screen buffer back to main memory and then dump it out to disk is far longer than you have at 30fps, if you expect your game actually to run.

Vectrex · Post by **Vectrex** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:26 am

you could offline export a replay of the session to an avi.

todderod · Post by **todderod** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:31 am

grizzley90 wrote: I wonder how Wallaber managed it in stuntplayground??

Extremly simple and dodn't have to be any more complicated than what he did. In brief he puts a marker on the scene-nodes he wish to record, and samples them in 20Hz, storing their position and orientation in a huge array (everything is relative, compared to a movie its extreeeeemly small) (wheels and fast moving objects were sampled at 60Hz), then to replay you just move and interpolate all the scenenodes again according to the stored array of positions and orientations.

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 1:57 pm

OK, at the moment it doesn't matter if my game runs or not. Its more like a movie???

So How would i be able to go on? I realized that wallaber scripts it while I was talking with someone.

Vectrex.. how?

PS: I can't do this in my modeller for a few reasons.

raicuandi · Post by **raicuandi** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:57 pm

What do you want? To record your game to show it to others, or to make a FEATURE in your game to be able to play-back the time?

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:28 pm

record and show it to others, i don't mind any format. how can i do this?

Grox · Post by **Grox** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:52 am

1st. You can use FRAPS or HYPERCAM (much more flexible) to record just from window.
So you can run the game in resolution like 640*480 or 800*600 (those your computer can record) and capture the video.
Use a computer with a fast HDD and CPU, and sure PCI Express is much faster than AGP when you try to get data back from videocard.
HDD - 160 GB or bigger (cause it has high speed)
CPU - AMD - 2GHz or P4 - 3GHz
RAM - 512 MB or more (depends on your game)
Videocard - a fast PCI Express solution, able to produce twice as many FPS than you actualy need
When we grabbed video from a demo scene we used a computer with P4 - 3GHz, 512MB, 250GB, and another one with AMD 2GHz, 256MB, 80GB.
Both were good enough but the scene was not too complex.

Using this method you can easily grab video from any source.

2nd. Record positions while playing (if it's your game) and then generate post-play video. This method is described above.

BlasterN · Post by **BlasterN** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:02 pm

I work in the past in this freature, and i finished and lost it, sorry.
But I made this.

in all FrameStart I adjust evt.timeSinceLastFrame=1/(wanted fps)
in one frameEnd i made a capture of the screen.

Then I use Adobe Premiere or VirtualDub to make the video from the images.

Post by **Kencho** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:26 pm

Camtasia does this quite well

at least for me

Panter · Post by **Panter** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 8:28 pm

grizzley90 wrote:How? Is there a way to access the fraps source code. Is there a section for developpers? Because its its own program? CommandLine?

You might also look at taksi: http://taksi.sourceforge.net/

As it is hosted at sourceforge, the source is available

grizzley90 · Post by **grizzley90** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:19 am

thanks guys i didnt expect this thread to come back alive. Im looking into taksi to see how I can use it in my own app, as it has a really general license. Anyone interested in making a plugin for ogre ? taksi uses opengl and dx9. Having just looked at the source code, i believe there is alot of stuff to remove so we can use it with ogre, its seams the project died too last upload was Nov.18,2004 ? Anyone interested in developing a plugin?

Post by **jacmoe** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:55 am

BSD license, woohoo!

Panter · Post by **Panter** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:36 pm

grizzley90 wrote:thanks guys i didnt expect this thread to come back alive. Im looking into taksi to see how I can use it in my own app, as it has a really general license. Anyone interested in making a plugin for ogre ? taksi uses opengl and dx9. Having just looked at the source code, i believe there is alot of stuff to remove so we can use it with ogre, its seams the project died too last upload was Nov.18,2004 ? Anyone interested in developing a plugin?

I have no idea if the project has died, but it seems so.
Would a plugin be useful or needed?
All you need to do is run taksi and run ogre?
Or you want to incorporate taksi source such that it hooks
the dll when only loading the ogre application?

But it rather 'sucks' using a project that has stopped developping...

xabila · Post by **xabila** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 9:15 pm

xvidcap is also very nice (http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net)
if someone want a binary, for Fedora core 3 and 4 to try it...
it makes MPEG[2-4], xvid etc...

MenaceSan · Post by **MenaceSan** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:15 pm

Taksi is NOT dead! I've been updating Taksi quite a bit lately. The list of new GUI and usability changes is pretty long now.
As for using parts of Taksi in Ogre, the beauty of open source is open source projects with similar licenses can cannibalize each other all they want.
Though I don’t really see the point. Taksi should work just fine with most Ogre based apps as it is now. I’m mot absolutely sure about that. I'll have to actually try it to be totally sure.

Panter · Post by **Panter** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:17 pm

MenaceSan wrote:Taksi is NOT dead! I've been updating Taksi quite a bit lately. The list of new GUI and usability changes is pretty long now.
As for using parts of Taksi in Ogre, the beauty of open source is open source projects with similar licenses can cannibalize each other all they want.
Though I don’t really see the point. Taksi should work just fine with most Ogre based apps as it is now. I’m mot absolutely sure about that. I'll have to actually try it to be totally sure.

It works just fine out of the box, as stated in my post above I don't see the use either...

Vectrex · Post by **Vectrex** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:27 pm

be cool to have sdk access to be able to enbed it inside something like a game. For example to write out a perfect replay with all processing on regardless of the original computers power. The racing sim rFactor does this.

bain · Post by **bain** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 2:50 pm

We are busy working on the docs for our implementation.

It's basically tthe same as saving the replay data of your game In our game it's simple. we store mouse timeline, mouse position, mouse clicks (it's an adventure game) and save the whole game to a replay file (minus the incorrect clicks) that creates the interaction in the game. this file then gets used by an "movie creator" for our gam that renders the game movie to avi.

might be different for you due to different game types.

Vectrex · Post by **Vectrex** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 4:19 pm

ah sounds great, yeah my plan was to get a data version of a replay with different camera etc that the user can save as data so to be very small. But exporting offline frame by frame to an avi inside the game would be a very cool feature.
Any chance you guys will release info/source?

Some pointers on what's involved would be cool if you aren't

Ogre Forums

ScreenRecording into a movie file.

ScreenRecording into a movie file.

Re: ScreenRecording into a movie file.

News of Taksi's death has been greatly exaggerated!

Re: News of Taksi's death has been greatly exaggerated!

making movie of your game.