Confused newbie

I'd like to create a video or two, or who knows... a few movies in SL .... but I am completely knew to this concept. I know there exists an option in SL to record video with a certain codec. But I've been reading some threads here and people mention editing and encoding. I've no idea what any of that means. Why does one need to edit or encode a video? Can someone point me in the right direction please?

If you're on Windows, you need FRAPS, http://www.fraps.com, to capture video. If MacOS, I don't know.

When you capture video, press control-alt-1 to hide the interface and get a clean capture.

You may need a free program called VirtualDub to re-encode FRAPS video into a more standard avi format, which opens up more compatibility with the video for video editing software.

You need a program like Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vega for more professional-class video editing. Neither are free.

Finally, when you are done with all your video, I have found that doing a final render using Quicktime Pro as h.264 drastically reduces your file size while preserving excellent visual quality.

But...why not just use the in-world capturing ability to capture a video? Why is Fraps so important?

And....would you know where Avisynth comes into all this?

Because the built-in video capture sucks. It was thrown in with less than an hour's worth of work by the LL software designers a LONG time ago. It was extremely easy for them to add, because it just took advantage of some built-in Windows software. They have made absolutely no updates to it since. FRAPS and a couple of other 3rd party utilities will actually capture high-quality video that you cannot do with the built-in video capture.

I can see why PC users are quick to diss the built in capture, you guys have FRAPS which works great.

It is true that the Viewer's built in capture is not exactly feature packed, but it does work OK, at least for me. For everything I have ever filmed in Second Life (which is actually fair bit) I have been 'forced' to use the built in capture. I personally very much hope that LL do not decide to drop this feature. My reason... I'm a mac user:

I heard Philip L. in an intervew once saying that most people use 3rd party capture software and was praising FRAPS, but what about us Mac users?

The equivalent to using FRAPS on a Mac is prolly either iShowYou or SnapzPro (although both not free, iShowYou is affordable). SnapzPro has an annoying bug (self reported by the company) whereby you can not hide the mouse pointer in the resulting film when using some apps (inc. SL viewer) - so manual mouse-look shots are out. While running iShowYou + the SL viewer on my mac results in unsmooth capture.

LL if you are listening and are thinking of dropping the built in capture ("cause everyone uses FRAPS", spare a thought for us Mac users please.

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But even if these 3rd party apps worked OK, I have come to realise that the viewer is simply not very Mac friendly.

I used to just accept it and thugh it was just the way it is with SL for everyone, but I have subsequently seen SL on a PC - it works so much better / smoother, even on a much lower spec PC than my Mac. It also handles turning up the preferences and features (like shiny, ripple water, etc) so much better.

I'm sure this is mostly a 'Mac / running Viewer' issue (although for the record I do have a new MacBookPro). Believe me, I must have tried tried every combination of internal SL preference/settings, external video encodings, and 3rd party screen capture apps when trying to get as good a filming result as I could. The thing is, you dont really notice it so much for every day browsing, but when you are really trying to capture a smooth shot to film, then you notice all the big frame jumps and other problems that appear to come with the Mac version (and not so much with the PC version). I usually ended up taking at least 10 versions of each shot untill I got something that was acceptably captured on my Mac.

In fact, the best film capture results I ever managed to achieve from SL was when I ran the PC version of the Viewer on Windows, on my Mac with FRAPS, and Bootcamp. But, then you are left with a huge pain / time consuming process when trying to convert the files back to somthing the Mac can read to edit.

Anyne else having the same issues?

I use Fraps (about $40) to capture, Widows Movie Maker to edit. WMM is free on all PCs, and adequate for what I do. I have 30 videos on YouTube, so you can see what I do. My videos are listed (with links) on my website at:
http://www.thinkerer.org/Studios/StuIntro.htm

Instructions on how to capture, edit, and make an audio track are given on 6 webpages starting here:
http://www.thinkerer.org/Studios/StuCamEd.htm

I have heard of so many probems in getting video from a Mac, that I would not bother. I would do what Robbie described: run Windows on it with something like bootcamp. But I would not try to edit on the Mac. I would stay in PC mode and edit with WMM or wilth some low cost editing program.

I have tested several low cost editing programs but not seen any the money. I see good reports about Power Director 6 and intend to try it. (Free trial download.) Robbie-- it may run on a Mac.
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_4_ENU.html
TM

My own preference is to use HyperCAM3. It has the flexibility that I need and most importantly, I can save in uncompressed format (AVI) and let my editing software do its job, before applying mulitple codex to the finished product depending on how and where it is going to be shown.

The ingame method will only save the whole screen and therefore a lot of wasted mb's of hard disc space. I use a bank of SATA II hard discs, totalling 1000gb of space, to capture raw footage. After editing I transfer that file onto a bank of IDE hard discs for codex conversions and onto the internet. I find ebaying for SATA II hard discs, is a cheaper and less time consuming way of storing the raw footage for upto a month, than burning lots of DVD+RW's.

There are enhancements in HyperCAM3 that allow me to either not show the cursor or to emphasise it using star glows when clicked, this is useful for showing demonstrations of HUD's and menus ingame. Another useful feature, is the 'hold down asigned key combination' and use the mouse to move the movie capture regional window, for perfect alignment.
You can get a 'try before buy' version HERE although it does leave a 'watermark' on the movie until you pay for it (39.95usd) download only.

The method of stacking codex, is to maintain backward compatibility with QT, even though it's free to upgrade, many still have older versions installed that do not support codex such as H.264, we also use this method to target our movies to the correct media ports of PC's, and at a data bit rate of less than 100kbps, to reduce the overheads to the client/PC, this is matched with our servers OS and hardware to provide clear and sharp 'almost instant start' movies to our clients and their customers.