The second part of this epic trilogy will be going live on the blog in about an hour or so, it’s being processed by Youtube as we speak.
What’s going on here, is I’m trying to nail down how I’d do these again in the future. So each one is getting processed differently.
I recorded all in-game footage using FRAPS, of course, with the sound channel turned off.
The problem with my doing this, one of the biggest reasons I stopped doing them… my computer lags badly when I’m recording. I click buttons two, three times before things happen. It makes it feel like I’m tanking in a lake of molasses. It’s very hard to be nimble and reponsive when you can’t count on things activating properly when you tell them to. I probably need to tone down my spell effects settings. :(
On all videos, I took the footage from FRAPs, loaded it into the free software utility Virtual Dub, used the settings Video => Compression => Divx Encoder => [Configuration] 720P at 3000 bit rate, and then chose then File => Save as AVI. This let me take a single 3.9 GIG file from FRAPS, and convert it into about 136 MEG… without, to my eyes, losing very much quality at all.
For the first movie, I then took the Divx encoded AVI files and loaded them into Windows Movie Maker, recorded a Narrative audio stream directly using WMM tools, and created the video using the settings Video For Local Playback (2.1 Mbps). Those settings are supposed to create a WMV file that is 640 x 480, with a bit rate of 2.1 Mbps, 30 frames and a 4:3 aspect ratio. That is the file that got uploaded to Youtube, and that you already watched.
The second video that will be going up soon had also been converted into DivX AVI with Virtual Dub. For this one, I loaded it into Pinnacle Studio 10.8, recorded the Narrative stream directly in Studio, and then saved it as MPEG-4, Full Size (Best Quality), which is supposed to be 640 x 480, 3800 Mbps, 29.97 frames. That is what Youtube is chewing on right now.
I’m going to be very interested to see what, if any, changes in quality there will be after Youtube processes the video, espeically in the High Definition version of the displayed video, since it took a LOT longer to process and render in Studio 10. Seriously, that was miserable.
Ah well. Once I get the process down, I can see doing more of these, so long as I can figure out how to fix this lag issue during recordings.
I hope you enjoy them! It’s nice to change things up around here once in a while. :)
Oh, and I did have quite a lot of videos back in the day… I think FileFront ate them. Still have them on my hard drive, though. Maybe I should try to find a way to get them posted somewhere again, for nostalgia’s sake.
Entirely up to you, but consider turning off your AV or any other tool (Carbonite backup??) that “always” runs while capturing the videos. Might improve your response. When I raid, I disable all unnecessary addons and disable Carbonite (the backup software). Once I have wow and vent loaded, I disable my AV. It certainly improves my latency a bit.
Does changing your graphics settings help as well? Even when viewed in HQ mode, we can’t tell the difference between high detail textures and low…
Is there any chance that you could keep the second movie as original size? I realise the first super compressed one helps some people be able to watch…but the quality difference between the 2 first movies probably was not worth the added effort.
I was not able to see any “features” of your UI at 640×480.
Thanks
If you have a second hard drive, recording to a drive were WoW is not installed supposedly speeds things up a lot. I heard even External USB Drives are better than recording to your primary drive.
I enjoyed the videos though. It is always cool to see how other Feral Druid handle different pulls. For instance, on the first boss, I usually just take him up the ramp in the middle rather than up the stairs on the left. Usually, our DPS gets him down fast enough that the 1/2 circle is plenty of time but I can totally see where the stairs would afford you more leeway.
One thing you might try to point out in future videos like this is when you are using abilities like Barkskin, Survival Instincts, Trinkets, etc. I had a hard time telling if/when you were using them. I know on the second boss, when you lost a healer, I probably would have been tactically using Survival Instincts + Frenzied Regeneration. SI+FR is so good at turning wipes into wins.
Loving the vids BBB, just a quick comment. I’ve recently starting recording our guild raids and had alot of trouble recording in high quality with Fraps. As an alternative I found a nice site that supplies a free client and hosts the videos, i couldnt believe the quality of vids I was getting with no lag. The recorded files are raw AVI so need some post processing before upload if they’re longer than a couple of mins.
The site I use is http://www.wegame.com.
If you want to check out the quality of the vids, our guild vids can be found here: http://www.wegame.com/pandam/videos (Don’t expect to much, we’re a very casual guild :P )
Hope this is of some help
Also what are you recording at? If it’s higher than 640×480 then adjust it. Also decrease the fps recorded. Your system (seemingly) just doesn’t have enough horsepower to handle full video recording and playing the game (which is like the majority of systems). So…like you said, turn down spell detail, but main thing is lower the resolution on the video. Maybe drop the color depth.
The vids are great!
As a bear i hate VH, i wont tank it on heroic because i hate loosing the groups that go 2 separate ways..
Could we have an AN run vid next? That would be great, unless gossamer drops for you. I still haven’t had that drop 8(