Movie Making

I'd love to take moves of some of the places in SL.

Is there anything for macs to perform screen video capture? Preferably free or inexpensive?

I run Vista on my computer and know it came with a moviemaker program that you can splice clips/movies together, not sure if a Mac has something like that. I also use Hyper Cam which I downloaded off the web. It's free and offers a decent storage size for videos. Not sure if its compatible with Mac but atleast it gives ya a direction to look in.

No, it doesn't come with anything like that. Pity, as it would have been nice.

However, I've found something called iShowU, and it looks like it can do what I want. Only $20 too, so it's within my meagre budget. Yippee!

I really like iShowU - it offers a lot of flexibility and control for the money, including a big range of formats that you know will work with imovie.

It does look like the best in terms of control versus price. I tried the demo, and was impressed.

It comes free with OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and does screen recording, including sound.

Berio is a free Mac capture program.

Sadly, it isn't my computer, so I can't upgrade the system Still, $20 isn't much to pay.

Not come across that one. Off to see if I can find it. Thanks.

I use Snapz pro for mac to make my videos. it can capture a specific part of the screen and record the sound also

But doesn't that cost $69? I'm not certain, but I think iShowU can do both of those tasks too.

While the Quicktime X screen recording in Snow Leopard is decent, its not fully featured. The best screen recording software I've ever tried out is Screenium... the demo version only lets you record for 30 seconds, if you want to do more, you have to pay for the full version.

yes iShowU records sound, allows complete screen capture region selection, has a nice thumbnail feature, pre-setting resolutions and formats, etc. I did the free trial version for awhile first, as I remember it works like the paid version but has a watermark until you buy the license.
I have the higher version of iShowU, which includes processor-load management which can be very nice when you record lots of movement. I never use watermarks of my own but it does that too, a bunch of other stuff I don't remember

After trying the demo version a few times, I bought iShowU. It is really good, especially when considered in terms of cost. More than adequate for my needs.

Thanks, people.

I uses Snapz Pro X, excellent product, and then edit in iMovie.
An example is at http://gallery.me.com/victorwood under Second Life Video

Beautiful movie!

hello,
I also use IshowU, which is really fine, but you may have noticed some hang up, from time to time, if you have only a hard disk.
It's because iShowU use a temporary place to store the capture, and your hard disk work a lot also, to store the cache from second life .
So, use a Ram disk !!!
a ram disk is a disk who use your fast memory. It is killed at a reboot, but it's is 50 times faster than your harddisk, and the good thing is that it don't write on your hard disk (except when reaching the full capacity of the ram disk, because Mac Os X always use virtual memory, which is a pain in the a.s in this case.)
There is 2 or 3 soft who allow you to make ram disk, I use Make RAM Disk 1.0 on Tiger, and set it for a 500 Mo ram disk. it depends on your available Ram,and how long your sequence will be. (I have a 2 Gb ram)
try that, and you will have 25 fps smooth capture...
on a low end Intel Mbp, it's also a good idea to clean the SL cache, then make the run you want to shoot first, or walk around the location of the shooting, to have a brand new cache with all textures loades, so your network speed will not affect the capture.
capture with Apple intermediate codec, it's fast, heavy in size but fast
A ram disk is faster than any hard disk available now on the market, your capture deserve it
happy movie

I did notice it was making temporary files, but so far haven't had any problems with that. Maybe that's because I've only made short films?




I did try that at first, but have been having problems converting the Apple Intermediate codec to formats which are acceptable for YouTube. I've tried MPEG Streamclip and Hand break for that, but too often the resultant file just doesn't work

Have you had problems along those lines? Or do you not need to convert your films?

I edit the captured files in Imovie, then export it to divx, usually, but I don't upload them to youtube.
well, if you have no problem with capture, maybe your computer and hard disk is faster than mine

Tell me, can iMovie import the Apple intermediate? If it does, then I might give that a try. May I ask, what do you do after converting them to divx? Do you burn them to DVD? If yes, what's the quality like?



I use a friend's computer for movie capture, and yes, it is pretty fast. Wish I had one of my own!

Excellent tips IObeyU, I really like IShowU but my 2 yr old mb pro is lagging a lot. I will try the RAM disk and the preparation tips too. thanks!