Demo Playback and Fraps

[Henrik]

Nobody said anything about appending a movie in virtualdub either, if you want a quality endresult i'd still recommend adobe premiere over vegas in a flash of a second. I talked about just synching audio with a clip recorded with dumpframes in virtualdub, to edit with premiere and/or after effects afterwards. Thats just 2 minutes of work, and gives you better quality, more fluent movement and better editabillity. I have made several UT movies with smiley (eventhough he did 90% of the editingwork since he's a god with that, that doesnt leave me retarded about it) and we used both dumpframes as fraps, and just trust me on this, after 7 full length movies you kinda found out what works best. And again, it feels weird that you tell me its about the skill-level of the person using it, which is quite an insult to me, and i try to let that statement come out as un-cocky as possible. But i know my stuff, would guess you would too.

I don't see why that should be an insult to you, I am just saying I use my methods because I've found them to work, through trial and error - it's not just that it's easy. Really I have nothing against using dumpframes or syncing audio in the way you suggest but truthfully I have never had the need to resort to that method. I have used Adobe Premiere for years, I did editing for television with it. When I tried Vegas, there were many aspects about it I preferred over Premiere. Everything makes a difference.. the specific system you have, the way you work. Saying your way is the only "right" or "best" way for everyone is wrong, and calling someone lazy for finding a way different from the one you use easier is pretty short-sighted.

Anyway no matter whether you use Premiere or Vegas I still hold the opinion that syncing in Virtualdub is an unnecessary step. Just import the wav straight into your program of choice and you can sync it up visually.. which is probably easier since the start of the audio could be anywhere in relation to the video and then at least you have some cues to work with. And of course with Fraps, none of this would be necessary at all.. the only argument I think anyone can make against it is that it is heavily dependent on the system you run it on. Sometimes it might not work the way people expect out of the box so they will dismiss it as poor without trying to make adjustments to their system - which incidentally usually reveals weak points which are often fixable - for me, for instance, the first few times I tried it, it would drop frames by the boatload - maybe 1 out of every 10 caps would be smooth. So I tried capturing to a different drive. What a difference, now I rarely drop any frames. I watch the demo once, note the timeframe for the clip I want to cap, then run it again with Fraps, and within a few minutes I have a smooth video clip with audio perfectly synced, ready to edit into my piece.

[legacy-Sphinx]

and calling someone lazy for finding a way different from the one you use easier is pretty short-sighted.

maybe not you, but theres enough people that take fraps as "the easy way out" when they want to use ingame sounds, while you have to admit that -on the average- a good synched framedump will look and sound better than something captured with fraps

thats how i meant it

[legacy-Vsai]

As to the other side of the question that i think everyone has ignored, the demos play back at a lower framerate generally because they were recorded with a different tickrate than was used for the visual when you play.

you can turn it up, but it tends to make the game run a little rougher, so how far you go seems to depend on the computer/connection.

At least, thats my understanding of it after trivial looking

[Henrik]

demos don't *need* to be higher than 30 fps though, cause video is typically only played back at 30 fps (or less). The only problem would be maintaining that 30 fps while capturing, depending on your system. especially if you want to go higher than 640x480, and that's where you'd probably be better off using dumpframes.