BF Recorder

[Drayu]

Hey all,

I know some of you have started to play with this function, as I have myself. Let me being by saying it is NOT an easy thing to use, but there are some great pro's to go with the negatives about it!

Let me give a run down of my pro's and con's and then offer up some advice for you all.

Pro's
1. Little to no lag when running on client side during recording and playback (not sure about server side as I have only ran on my computer with two people in it)
2. Replays entire session of recording gameplay
3. Lets you control camera angles and speed of replay for cool effects
4. Renders camera angles and speed of replay for you when you are done

Con's
1. No rewind function (not possible either, see http://totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60144)
2. Very difficult to understand at first and to use
3. When you render the sounds are not rendered, you have to use an external program to capture those
4. Can not break up a recording session into smaller parts, you have to watch the entire playback (even if it is two hours long!)
5. During playback you can not get a first person view
6. Can not change camera angles and speeds without doing all the actions over again
7. Can take a long time to render

Advice
1. Set up the scenes you want ahead of time in a story board fashion.
2. Keep recording sessions to a minimum!!! (I would suggest no more than a minute) Do a few 20secs sessions so you can play with the playback functions afterwards without getting frustrated with the length of time
3. Use Fraps during playback to capture scenes directly to and AVI format
4. When rendering using the BF Recorder, render to AVI not divx or any other format (this will be helpful when you have to edit the movie in a movie making program b/c you won't have quality loss)
5. Use a movie making program to produce final product. Links below.

BF Recorder Links
http://www.battlelauncher.com/index.php?pg=features
http://forum.eagames.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=934
http://www.bfgeeks.com/?page=tekst&id=2405
http://www.bfcentral.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=139

Movie Editor Links
1. Pinnacle 9 (with all the add-ons, don't use Pinnacle 10 as it is very buggy still!) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1650507,00.asp
Well, I take back what I said, it seems as if their is a patch to fix the problems with Version 10, here is the link to it:http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/Studio+MediaSuite+version+10_5
2. Adobe Premiere Elements or Pro 2.0 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1873409,00.asp http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124396,00.asp
3. http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1738,4835,00.asp
4. http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,123119,00.asp
5. I use Sony Vegas and Nova Video Explosion Deluxe

Some Additional Movie Making Links
1. http://www.videohelp.com/
2. http://www.machinima.com/
3. http://www.creativecow.net/articles/vegasvideo.html
4. http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/wwuglistcategory.cgi

[DoctorToxn]

This is news to me. You can run the recorder client side without the server being setup for BF Recorder?

[Drayu]

This is news to me. You can run the recorder client side without the server being setup for BF Recorder?

No, you can't. But you can run your own BF Recorder server off of your computer and have people connect to you. Sorry for the confusion.

[MonkeyWorks]

why would I want to watch myself getting my ass kicked again? :D
No really prob a nice function but I have no use for it right now :)

[[W33T] SugarBuzz]

battlerecorder is way fun :D


you can get some killer screen shots with it.

The slow motion playbacks are very matrix-ey :yaya:

Rubberducky is a 64 player server with good pings (for west coasters at least) running battlerecorder. Too bad the player base isn't as sweet as WiH.

The only problem is that for many of us the 1.2 patch has broken playback of battlerecorder files and we get a Crash To Desktop after only 1 minute of playback :(

patch 1.21 is supposed to address this battlerecorder crash problem.

btw - the sounds render fine for me when playing back at normal speed "number key 2" - it's the various slow-mo and fast-forward speeds where sound doesn't render.
*edit* ah, I understand now - when rendering to avi from battlerecorder no sounds render. yes this is a con */edit*

[Drayu]

updated 1st post with some additional links for all you movie makers out there.

[SnaKe]

Great info Drayu!!! :thumbsup:

[Drayu]

Just an edit for you all.

Above I stated that Pinnacle 9 was the way to go over Pinnacle 10 because of the bugs and crashes. Well, in tomorrow's paper, BestBuy will be selling Pinnacle Studio MediaSuite 10 for $99 with a $30 Rebate and additional $30 upgrade rebate. SO...I did some researching and it seems that Pinnacle has INDEED patched version 10 and it seems to be working better. I say that if you have Version 9 or earlier already that you should upgrade while they offer this introductory price!

Here are the links:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7385091&type=product&id=1122654295994

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/Studio+MediaSuite+version+10_5


The only thing I don't like about Pinnacle is that they release add-on packages with "Hollywood" effects and such for addition $99....that is steep IMO for an add-on!
http://buy.pinnaclesys.com/dr/v2/ec_main.entry25?page=StudioAddons&client=Pinnacle&sid=51106

[Drayu]

I just updated the first post again with a site I don't know how I missed!!!

http://www.battlelauncher.com/index.php?pg=features