Convert OA demos to avi

[RandS]

Hi all .
I have only one question for you.Can I convert OA demo to avi format?
Pls I dont want recording witgh fraps.Becouse I have slow PC - 128 MB RAM , slow graphic card ,2 GB Free HDD (18GB full HDD).Pls.

[kick52]

I'm pretty sure you have to do /video while playing the demo and then /stopvideo
The avi (which will be BIG) will be in the OpenArena app support folder. (No idea where this is on Windoze)

[Taiyo.uk]

Since you don't have a massively powerful machine you'll need to reduce the timescale (else there won't be enough CPU to run the demo and encode the video simultaneously). Try /timescale 0.1 before recording the video. This will run the demo at 1/10 normal speed.

[qubodup]

I'm in doubt that the functionality is in the openarena engine, but perhaps the nexuiz way works? http://www.alientrap.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2974

[pikaunforgiven]

i doubt it as well, as nexiuz is technically based on quake1, not quake 3.
as for the OP's question, i dont really see that low end of a system recording effectively even with timescaling. there is simply not enough ram and video card headroom to also deal with the encoding at the same time, not to mention lack of hard drive space making it nearly impossible to encode an uncompressed avi with sound (compression would eat away even more performance if done during the initial encoding). would probably be better off just sending the demo to someone else who has a decent computer to do it for you.

[kick52]

Since you don't have a massively powerful machine you'll need to reduce the timescale (else there won't be enough CPU to run the demo and encode the video simultaneously). Try /timescale 0.1 before recording the video. This will run the demo at 1/10 normal speed.

No you won't. It will slow down to record it frame by frame, it's not a buggy old 70s tape deck.
If you do timescale and then video capture the video capture will be the same timescale
You don't need to change the timescale.
(yes I've recorded demos before on an old machine, trust me, you don't need to.

[fromhell]

Also 2ghz doesn't cost a fortune nowadays if you prefer 20fpsish video recording, and neither does a dual core (about any dual core machine will extremely benefit the video capturing process if you like hi resolutions and framerates). Don't forget it's 2008 and having either of these isn't an impossibility.

Using timescale will screw up the audio. I like the audio.

Though one of the #1 tips of video recording is defrag your gosh darn hard drive to heck and back!!! This will make a massive difference if you haven't done it recently. Video recording takes lots of writing to the hard drive and making it write in blocks scattered all over the drive will slow down your video recording considerably. DO this first before claiming the need for a 'super computer'.

[skankychicken]

Though one of the #1 tips of video recording is defrag your gosh darn hard drive to heck and back!!! Th

If you don't do that, you might as well forget about it... or finally make the move to something nearer to year 2002 which is probably close to what ive got

And your drive is 7200 rpm ( or whatever the number is) right?

[kit89]

Or use an Operating system that defrags on the go.

I believe the BBC did some testing on which hard drive file system was the best for streaming & storing data on a hard drive quickly.  Though I cant remember which one it was.. I think XFS, though don't quote me on it.

[pikaunforgiven]

no point having an OS that defrags on the fly, just wastes cpu cycles while gaming. i cant really think of any that actually do this other than maybe osx or vista (i havent really used both a lot so i wouldnt know) and i know linux sure doesnt, at least with ext3. for windows you can get a few auto-defrag utilities (iobit smartdefrag being one of the free ones) but there is no real point keeping them on full time if you are a gamer.

for windows users, fat32 is faster than ntfs for data streaming and storage, but with modern 7200rpm PATA drives the difference is negligible, even less of a difference if you have a SATA drive. might notice a difference with 5400rpm laptop drives and older desktop drives though. with linux most people use ext3 (due to being the default for most distros), which ive heard is a pretty good balance of reliability and speed for data streaming and such.

anyway... defrag overnight and see what happens. probably will at least need more ram to avoid excessive disk thrashing though. btw, given how low the system's specs are, i highly doubt its a 7200rpm drive, so disk defragmentation will help a ton and so will getting rid of stuff on the drive to give more room for the operating system to breathe and for the video to save.

[skankychicken]

Yah.. defrag on the fly is kinda moving off topic

No - you cannot convert demos to avi, under any circumstances.

All you can do is capture what you see and what you see is what you get.

So. The big question is. Can you minimise the window and use the background menu while the game is small screen?

[zuma]

what happened to \avidemo ?

[CFQ]

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