Gaming Hacks

Record Game Footage to Video

Save your machinima masterpieces for posterity.

Machinima ( [Hack #63] ) once simply demos, created and played back entirely inside a game engine, such as the original Quake. An entire miniature Hollywood formed around using 3D games with no external editing of any kind. Things are different now. Machinima has grown up from its roots. Once a machinima creator has had his first taste of Adobe After Effects, it’s hard to lure him back to pure Quake editing. More importantly, many games don’t have the facilities to create machinima movies the old-fashioned way—even powerful, cool games such as Halo. Gamers had to extend their technology and learn how to capture normal video from games.

Want to make your own Warthog Jump? If you already know how to film your machinima ( [Hack #65] ), you need to record your footage. Keep reading.

From PC to Video

Films such as Red vs Blue are actually recordings of what the creators saw on their screens straight into some video format. You could do this by pointing a camera at the screen, adjusting the refresh rate of your monitor appropriately, and sitting there. Thankfully, there’s a better approach: TV-Out.

Nearly all video cards these days have some form of TV-Out capability. They’re mostly pretty good, too. ATI used to have the edge, and possibly still does, but as DVD playback has increased in importance, NVidia has improved their output quality markedly.

The solution is simple. Take your TV-Out, attach it to some form ...