Movie?

OK... I'll admit it.. I must be less savvy than I think I am at times.

Over under the File menu pulldown, there is an entry Start/Stop Movie to Disk....

Never seems to work for me... Is this a functional thing or a non-working stub?

If it is functional... any suggestions about what I could be doing wrong? Easiest answer would be to walk me through it if anyone cares to take a shot at a step-by-step instruction guide....

FWIW, I have never made a pc-based movie... so consider me ignorant in this area and treat me like your five year old ---- which shouldn't be too hard for some people to get their minds around(insulting ///taking to me like I am a five year old that is).

Thanks ahead of time.

I had the same issue for a long time. After I upgraded to Windows Media Player 9, I think it began working. It may have loaded the needed codecs at that time, I am not sure. My problem is that once I got it to work, the videos were choppy and took up huge amounts of space (literally gigs).

Since then I have just stopped trying and switched to taking snapshots to disk (which is free) and putting them together with Microsoft's Photo Story 3. I describe the process in this thread.

Links to the videos are in my sig.

I know this won't help you make a real video, but maybe it will help.

Thanks Alan... I am currently at the most recent version of Win Media Player... so that probably isn't my issue.

But I read the other thread you described... interesting... but as you suggested, that is not what I was trying.

Have a good one.

Hi,
The movie-to-disc function seem a bit buggy at times, or is sensitive to settings on various computers. It usually works on my comp, but if it doesnt I go into preferences and tick the "Recognize graphics hardware on next restart" <-cant remember the excact wording on that one.

My best guess is it has issues with various capture drivers (WDM), since the movie-disc-function doesnt work at all on a friends computer (with a ATI graphic card), but again, im guessing.

However, using an external program has been the optimal choice for me. We have just shot a movie in SL, and for this project we choose to use Fraps (fraps.com), a "Real-Time Video Capture" application, im sure there are many others though.
The benefit by using Fraps is I can start and stop filming by pressing an F key, instead of going into the menu all the time.

SR

I like Fraps too - and you can try it out for free. Works perfectly : )

I, too, tried Fraps. That is SOOO nice. I'ma gunna hafta geta me a copy. uh.

Fraps is so great. It maintains the actual frame speed in the AVI, and records synchronized sound. This is a big improvement over SL's built-in frame grabber, which tends to produce output in either "silent film" or "bullet time" speeds, depending on how many objects etc. are near you when you film. In fact, one of LL's newsletters spoke favorably of Fraps, and that's what convinced me to buy it.

So essentially, it's a "non-working feaure" that is in the Menu... Okay.. that's what I thought.

I am too cheap to pay money for something to make a movie with... but I wanted to be sure I was not overlooking a potentially useful ----working---- feature.

Thanks for the responses.

I haven't tried this, or know that it works but...

A lot of graphics card have S-VHS output and mine claims it outputs at 1024x768. You could run that into a digital video recorder (camcorder) and firewire it back in. Yeah, you'd be limited to NTSC/PAL resolution, but if it's good enough for Janet Jackson...

it works. i've used it.
people have posted movies to this forum that were made using this option.

(it's great to make movies of upskirts and av slapping. which i sell on the internet for $$$ )

Huns, can I ask how you compressed your vehicle movie? Fraps takes several Mb's/sec....

I use Fraps a lot. The best free compressor I've used with movies created with Fraps is VirtualDub.

http://www.virtualdub.org/

Yes, I have tried VirtualDub.... but what compressor, and other settings?

You may also get better results if you install the DIVX5 Codec from www.divx.com

With its real time compression, it will often save at a much high fps rate than without an compression.

Regards,

-Flip

Ah, sorry.

I use XviD. Open source. Free. Based on Divx but better performance in my experience.

http://www.xvid.org