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Recording a COD Demo
Recording demos with MOHAA wasn’t exactly straight forward, the developers left the record command out of the game, so we had to come up with a new way to do it. A lot of people tried different methods, and we now have a few different ways in which we can record demos.
In COD however that’s different, the developers have left demo recording commands in the game, making it a much easier process to create demos. This tutorial will tell you how to record them ingame, and then the different options you have to convert them to avi for editing.
Recording In Game
To record your demo ingame, bring the console down and type
/record filename
For example /record demo1 that will create a file in your main/demos folder called demo1.
To stop recording ingame, bring the console down and type
/stoprecord
That’s the easy bit done!
Watching The Demo
To watch the demo, launch COD and when on the main menu bring down the console and type
/demo filename
For example if you called it demo1, type /demo demo1
Converting to AVI
We have 3 options for this. One is to use an ingame command that outputs every frame as a screenshot, another way is to record with fraps and the final way is to use tvout.
Option 1 – Ingame command
This option will give you the best quality, but it does also require a fair amount of work. Playback your demo, and type /cl_avidemo 30 in the console, your screen will go fairly jerky and your FPS will hit the floor. What it is doing is taking a screenshot 30 times a second.
Once you have your desired footage, you will have a LOT of screenshots in your screenshots folder. What you need to do is convert these from TGA to Jpeg. Theres 3 good programs that I tried this with and work very good.
One is a program called reaconverter pro available from http://www.reasoft.com/products/reaconverter/
2jpeg, this is a command line based program and is very quick. You can get this from http://batch.fcodersoft.com/2jpeg/
The last one, that I use is paint shop pro 7. from www.jasc.com
All of these programs are pretty simple to use, so I shouldn’t need to bother writing how to batch convert the files to jpeg.
So now we have hundereds of jpeg files, we need to put them all together to make an avi file. My personal choice of program for this is a program called JPGVideo, you can get this from http://www.ndrw.co.uk/download/share...avi/jpgavi.zip
This is very simple to use also, simply launch the program and click configure. At the top choose the directory where all your jpeg images are, and underneath that the output for the avi file. Set the frames per second slider to 30 then hit Ok.
On the next screen click run, it will then ask you which codec you want to use, at this point you can leave it uncompressed or compress it with your favouritre codec (divx personally)
Once that process is done, you now have the .avi file which you can edit in premier or any other editing program.
Option 2 – TvOut
This uses the same method as how most MOHAA demos are made now, watch back the demo and record via TvOut. Many of you know how to do this already, but for those who don’t please read the tutorial written by mike here http://www.smapump.freeserve.co.uk/demos.htm
Option 3 – Fraps
The most hated method in MOHAA, software based video capture. However the advantage of doing this in COD is that the low fps you get from recording wont effect your gameplay as your watching a video of yourself. This option takes a lot of HDD space and gives nice quality, however its not my personal choice.
You can find information on fraps at www.fraps.com
Conclusion
Option 1 – Ingame commands: SUPERB Quality, you need a fair amount of HDD space though and it is a little time consuming.
Option 2 – TvOut: High quality, easy to do once you have it setup
Option 3 – Fraps: High quality, takes a lot of HDD space, but it doesn’t provide a smooth demo
Personally I use option 1, the quality it provides more than makes up for the extra bit of time you put into making it, you can also compress straight to divx without messing about.
This guide maybe hosted on any site as long as it has not being changed in anyway. It was written by Turkey on the 3rd of novemeber 2003.
Recording demos with MOHAA wasn’t exactly straight forward, the developers left the record command out of the game, so we had to come up with a new way to do it. A lot of people tried different methods, and we now have a few different ways in which we can record demos.
In COD however that’s different, the developers have left demo recording commands in the game, making it a much easier process to create demos. This tutorial will tell you how to record them ingame, and then the different options you have to convert them to avi for editing.
Recording In Game
To record your demo ingame, bring the console down and type
/record filename
For example /record demo1 that will create a file in your main/demos folder called demo1.
To stop recording ingame, bring the console down and type
/stoprecord
That’s the easy bit done!
Watching The Demo
To watch the demo, launch COD and when on the main menu bring down the console and type
/demo filename
For example if you called it demo1, type /demo demo1
Converting to AVI
We have 3 options for this. One is to use an ingame command that outputs every frame as a screenshot, another way is to record with fraps and the final way is to use tvout.
Option 1 – Ingame command
This option will give you the best quality, but it does also require a fair amount of work. Playback your demo, and type /cl_avidemo 30 in the console, your screen will go fairly jerky and your FPS will hit the floor. What it is doing is taking a screenshot 30 times a second.
Once you have your desired footage, you will have a LOT of screenshots in your screenshots folder. What you need to do is convert these from TGA to Jpeg. Theres 3 good programs that I tried this with and work very good.
One is a program called reaconverter pro available from http://www.reasoft.com/products/reaconverter/
2jpeg, this is a command line based program and is very quick. You can get this from http://batch.fcodersoft.com/2jpeg/
The last one, that I use is paint shop pro 7. from www.jasc.com
All of these programs are pretty simple to use, so I shouldn’t need to bother writing how to batch convert the files to jpeg.
So now we have hundereds of jpeg files, we need to put them all together to make an avi file. My personal choice of program for this is a program called JPGVideo, you can get this from http://www.ndrw.co.uk/download/share...avi/jpgavi.zip
This is very simple to use also, simply launch the program and click configure. At the top choose the directory where all your jpeg images are, and underneath that the output for the avi file. Set the frames per second slider to 30 then hit Ok.
On the next screen click run, it will then ask you which codec you want to use, at this point you can leave it uncompressed or compress it with your favouritre codec (divx personally)
Once that process is done, you now have the .avi file which you can edit in premier or any other editing program.
Option 2 – TvOut
This uses the same method as how most MOHAA demos are made now, watch back the demo and record via TvOut. Many of you know how to do this already, but for those who don’t please read the tutorial written by mike here http://www.smapump.freeserve.co.uk/demos.htm
Option 3 – Fraps
The most hated method in MOHAA, software based video capture. However the advantage of doing this in COD is that the low fps you get from recording wont effect your gameplay as your watching a video of yourself. This option takes a lot of HDD space and gives nice quality, however its not my personal choice.
You can find information on fraps at www.fraps.com
Conclusion
Option 1 – Ingame commands: SUPERB Quality, you need a fair amount of HDD space though and it is a little time consuming.
Option 2 – TvOut: High quality, easy to do once you have it setup
Option 3 – Fraps: High quality, takes a lot of HDD space, but it doesn’t provide a smooth demo
Personally I use option 1, the quality it provides more than makes up for the extra bit of time you put into making it, you can also compress straight to divx without messing about.
This guide maybe hosted on any site as long as it has not being changed in anyway. It was written by Turkey on the 3rd of novemeber 2003.
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