Tips please :)

[donpost]

I'm looking to make a few short bf2 movies, and I wanted to get a few tips from the pro's first.

Specific questions I want answered are:

1) Which method is best for converting demos to avi? I was thinking of using FRAPS.

2) How much disk space will I need to make these demos?

[MI6Labs]

Re: Tips please :)

Fraps records in raw .AVI so expect for a one minute video, at 1024 x 768 to be around 1GB.

For converting i have no idea though.

[Keyelite]

Re: Tips please :)

Well, how much disc space do you have now? I reccomend atleast 50 gigs free, average. Demos dont take up disc space, its the fraps files that do.

I wouldnt record in 1024 x 768, id rather record in 800x600.. Experiment around with what works best with your software. I have 690 fraps files (800x600), and it goes to around 71.6 gigs (2 hours and 47 min). Im too lazy to do any conversions but that might help you out in a way.

[Sir. XaliaS]

Re: Tips please :)

If your computer is up for it, then by all means use fraps on 800x600 and make sure you get your frame rate at it's highest performance to quality ratio possible.
If you have AA on, I would turn it off because the editor can smooth out footage too.

However, if you use Battlelauncher it will cost you heavily in time, you don't worry about performance and you can safely put quality on the max settings for movie sleekness. I'd say you still need a decent computer for that though as my rendering process (running right now) is going at about 2 fps, which is really costing me more than I expected.
So I would balance the in-game settings for this too, it might make rendering a little faster. To give you an idea, I would do anything for 1 extra frame per sec right now!

I can't tell you how much space per minute It will take until it's finished so bare with me. It encodes in DivX as it renders so it will be smaller than what Fraps would put out, which is always nice for disk space