Out of Game EASY In game Hard

So I have been doing a ton of testing lately and what I am noticing is that if you want to create content and do machina that is going to be out of the game, it's a piece of cake to get a nice resolution and audio. Well maybe not a piece of cake, but there are a ton of solutions (including FRAPS) that work quite nicely.

What I have been looking at doing is creating something that is taken from in game and then compiling it with audio and putting it right back into the game at a decent resolution. i want to be able to see the numbers on the object editing boxes CLEARLY.

I have a meeting with AWS on this also, but I know in the end they have found something that works well for them and of course can't give up the insider knowledge or everyone would be doing it.

The questions I have are as follows:

- What resolution are you guys recording at ??? ( I have tried dropping my computer screen resolution and it doesn't seem to help much ).

- What screen size are you recording at ??? (640X480 is fine, but I wish I had just a little bit more screen space because I bring up my object editing window).

I have tried to record at 640X480 and then drop it down to 320X240, it seems to work ok on resolution, but I am wondering if there is anything better to try ? H264 is working fine for me also.

- I am pushing at 300 KBPS and it's working fine for me, but I bet it won't work well for everyone. So I plan on doing tests at lower data transfer rates to see the results. I am using a QT streaming server and that has helpped with the buffer rates a TON !! And this is definitely a must have.

I'm able to do full camera pan and tilt movement without choppiness in game, although it won't matter much for what I want to accomplish.

Just wondering if anyone else has any advice they could send my way. I currently am using camtasia, FRAPS for recording, and I have access to just about anything I would want (including avid adrenalyn if I really wanted to use it), but adobe premier and camtasia meet my needs. I've done a lot of machina in other games, so I"m a pretty experienced user. just trying to figure out what works best for SL.

- Rudy

Personally, I grab footage at around 1200x1024 @25fps. I use AVI format for captures, it creates large files but then I use a SATA II raid set for fast storage. That way I can play with high resolution footage for cropping and panning.

If SL is playing up, I use the 'select region' function of HyperCam to set a smaller window for capture to maintain the fps but again using uncompressed AVI format.

Checking your monitor settings using DisplayMate will mean that the vast majority of viewers will see the same contrast and colour balance that you do when rendering your movie, given the many different settings available and capabilities of systems out there.

If you render at say 360x240 or 480x360 with a round pixel size, then it will scale up better when played in SL.

This works for me.