First of all, I want to NOTE that this question does not concern re-recording. I appreciate your "perfect movies" for the wicked entertainment they provide, but my interest lies first and foremost in the pieces of art that is games themselves. Personally I even favor gameplay movies where the avatar narwowly escapes death, or, to save space here: A vid that gives off the atmosphere of the game. Keep this scenario in mind if you try to answer this question. I don't mind you going off-topic later on;)
On to my Question:
I'm wondering if and how there would be a way to make long recordings of gamesessions (be it classic NES or modern XBOX), conveniently. Since I'm far from a speedrunner and not interested in playing a game tool assisted, I would end up w/ a huge stack of DVDs ( I assume somehow recording it to DVD is currently the only way of filming state-of-the-art gaming), or I'd have to play older games ('coz anything above Playstation, including DOS and Windows, doesn't have key-press input-loggers attached to it, yet).
Any of you have ideas of, like when or how there will be a CONVENIENT way to record your personal gaming sessions, be it DOS NES or PS2, no matter if you enjoy a slow and explorative pace.
Is there going to be a really powerful compressive video codec first, or perhaps a program that logs command-inputs, smartly, for every game you can run on your PC/console? That's all I can dream-up, now... Any speculation or concrete information?
I'm not sure I fully understand the question posted.
But for DOS/PC games you can use Camtasia. Is's a screen recording program with alot of advance features.
I think you can use another program called SnagIT as well.
And in newer versions of WebCamXP you can capture from what ever source you like.
I think i'd prefer Camtasia though.
First up, sorry for the delay.
As for clarifying the question:
IMO FODA is half right. It:)/He/She grasped that the problem lies w/ technology. Whether that is ultimately correct is another question. I'd say that modern technology, solutions come your way sooner than you'd expect them to. We can take bets on that but... I'm only really interested in a way to film what I play.
As for SDA: I think I know the outcome. Basically means ridiculously large files if you want good quality. That's not what I'm after. I know fast motion is pure horror for a codec, but if there was some ingenious way to deal with this...
The way you make emulator movies, that is convenient. Only button-presses are recorded and you end up with a small file, even if you play for hours.
Ok, I hope that makes the question more clear.
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The easiest and arguably least expensive way still is to record to vhs as it takes exactly the same amount o time you take to play and costs, well, a portion of a VHS tape (and it can be re-recorded). It only uses a lot of room in time, and its not very good to skip through scenes...
I would imagine DV would be a good idea for newer systems that output interlaced signals, you can get fairly low-cost cameras that can accept analog video input and record to the small DV tapes (90 minutes max?). Depending on the camera/deck, you might have to buy a time-base corrector to record the output of any system that outputs noninterlaced video. If you're willing to spend a fairly good amount of money, you could get 'professional DV', which uses tapes that are the same size as the professional DVCPRO format, but can store something like four hours of video.
Alternately, with the same caveat about noninterlaced video, one could merely get one of those small external DVD-DL writers that have analog video inputs (although you'd get much better quality out of the DV method, there would also be more work in putting it on a DVD, if that's your goal).
The only problem with reusing a VHS tape a large number of times is that the magnetic coating can wear down, resulting in dropout (although you get dropout on new tapes too, specifically the first 5-10 minutes). The image quality shouldn't degrade too much other than for dropout (in other words, you won't lose any horizontal 'resolution' on an old tape as opposed to a new tape).
VHS would take up a lot of space in my house over time. + I'm not sure how safe they are because can't they be screwed up if they get in contact with a magnatic field of some sort? Don't we have many of those around nowadays?
DV sounds pretty good. Just 1 curious question: care to explain what interlaced means?
btw, Bag of Magic Food, I've noticed you always speak with cute simplicity:). It totally suits the character you chose, although I don't know him.
Interlacing is the difference between early consoles and regular TV. The earlier consoles (everything up until the Playstation era, IIRC, with the exception of the Genesis, where interlacing was only used on Sonic 2 2-player mode) would output 60 frames of 262.5 lines (in the case of NTSC), instead of 60 fields of the same, offset such that the odd lines are in-between the even ones, but still displayed at 60 fields per second. Some newer devices can't handle a non-interlaced signal (my Pyro A/V Link doesn't seem to want to lock to a non-interlaced signal), hence the mention of maybe needing a TBC (which will turn the non-interlaced frames into interlaced fields).
I need to confess that I was sidetracked. What I really wanted to know was this: When will movie recording (not re-recording) of brand-new games, as well as old games be as conveniently executable as it is right now with the old Nintendo and SNES. What method will be used, video-recording, button-press-logging or something-new, I don't care as long as it's reliable. I know this may sound like technology that is too far off in the future, but I just wanted to know if any of you here can already see how it could happen.
Thanks for input.
Local Hero, even though trying to understand your explanation completely is heavily taxing my imagination, I think that I get the drift about what is important. So thank you also.
I think for Console gaming your best bet would be to get a DVD recorder with a harddrive, as you'd then be able to delete mistakes and only burn to the DVD what is actually good. It's 40 gB size (Standard) should make for for around 30 hours of playtime.
As for the PC, it's an entirely different matter.
Since you can log key input using keyloggers, it would theoretically be possible to do so and "save" a run of the game using this method. In practice, however, this is prone to slowdowns, etc. from all the programs running on yor comp. A single stutter in the game would lead to the entire rest of the run desyncing and not making it's way through the game.
For instance: In a platformer, you have to make a jump just right to avoid backtracking. As you record, the jump clears just fine, but in playback a small hiccup by your comp sends you careening into death and leaves the rest of the movie unsynchronized.
The only real way to deal with this problem is to record the screen image instead of the keys - making a video. Its large size, constant slowing down of your game and long compression times are more than made up for by its reliability.
If the run you make on a game is nulled because of comp slowdown, I know who'd not be a happy adventurer :P
Hope this is helpful (If not, you've just wasted my time :P )
"We observe the behaviour of simple folk, and derive pleasure from their defects."
-Aristotle - Book of Humour
Yes MahaTmA, it was helpful; puts things into perspective. I know I need another miracle aka technological breakthrough out of left field. I know there is a lot of interest out there in the world for making digital movies smaller(digi-cams and their mpegs prohibit you from really getting a lot of video on your DVD, Game publishers could save $$ if the cutscenes for epic games could be put on 1 disc) and I bet something will come from the east, or somewhere. I will relinquish my search for now and play my snes and genesis happily.
But I do have one more question now. You know how it works w/ the keylogging in those emulators we use now, w/ the enemies AI (or even the games AI) basing it's behavior exactly on the movement you make, so that if you do the same thing exactly the same way the enemy will repeat his maneuver as well. What I am curious about is this: Do these gamemechanics still work the same way TodaY in games XBOX and Gamecube?
But I do have one more question now. You know how it works w/ the keylogging in those emulators we use now, w/ the enemies AI (or even the games AI) basing it's behavior exactly on the movement you make, so that if you do the same thing exactly the same way the enemy will repeat his maneuver as well. What I am curious about is this: Do these gamemechanics still work the same way TodaY in games XBOX and Gamecube?
Newer consoles are still just computing machines, so it still works the same way, besides some minor complications. Newer games probably have access to an internal clock (that keeps track of the time of day or something, which I think older consoles didn't do) that could easily have an affect on the gameplay of many games (such as by being used for seeding the randomization), so you'd have to control that somehow. And some/more of the input is now analog, which is a little more difficult to deal with than the digital input that most older game consoles generally had.
Anyway, if you're thinking of setting up an input-based recording/playback system for XBOX or Gamecube that works with the actual console (without emulating those systems), I think it's technically possible (with some internal tampering with the console and some sort of controller gadgetry), but it's probably faster and easier to wait until emulation of those systems is sufficiently advanced...
it's probably faster and easier to wait until emulation of those systems is sufficiently advanced...
I can totally agree w/ that.
But what you said brings another question to my mind. There was talk of it being possible to bring input logging to Dos and possibly Windows games. But these games (nearly always) need to be installed on your hard drive. Sometimes you can even customize your installation. W/ the way a game has to root itself into each individual user's computer, would it even be possible to share movies over the internet like we do w/ classic consoles and expect it to run. I mean game updating or patching is another issue.
I don't know much but that looks close to impossible to me(unless, of course you'd capture video).
I suppose you had such issues with Quake, Half life, Starcraft etc etc right?
people would need to:
1. Have the game installed.
2. Have the latest patch installed.
Can't think of any other types of options that it would require. For example you can use what ever graphical settings you wish as well as sound etc.
So those files aren't necessarily big or too much hazzle to deal with.
But what you said brings another question to my mind. There was talk of it being possible to bring input logging to Dos and possibly Windows games. But these games (nearly always) need to be installed on your hard drive. Sometimes you can even customize your installation. W/ the way a game has to root itself into each individual user's computer, would it even be possible to share movies over the internet like we do w/ classic consoles and expect it to run. I mean game updating or patching is another issue.
I don't know much but that looks close to impossible to me(unless, of course you'd capture video).
For DOS games, what about running them in a DOS emulator? Do there exist any DOS emulators that can record/playback input just like SNES/Sega/etc. emulators do?
