Speed Demos Archive
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In use until September 2003
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StubbyPosted - 31 October 2002 6:37 PST
Does anyone know how to convert .dem files into .avi files?

- The axe swinging master -

lodisPosted - 31 October 2002 8:12 PST
I suppose you could mail the machinima guys about it. But the way it works for other games you have two different ways of doing it.

1) good games have commands for it (quake3, qw at least)...they basically make the engine take 24 or more (you can specify it) screenshots per second. These screenhots you can put together into an .avi with your favourite videoediting program.

now that doesn't work for quake1 unless you get someone to hack it for you.
that leads us to:
2) videocapture. You basically film what is going on (and no I don't mean you sitting in front of the screen with a videocamera). You know you can hook up your computer to your tv so you can watch movies on the tv? well you can always send that datastream to some other device and record it (digital video cam). and then you could just send it back to your computer where you could edit it with (again) your fave video editing program.
Some gfx-cards have a lot of stuff built in so it can (together with the correct programs) record without you sending it to some other device. This is generally easier...

Of course, this means you'd need some equipment..or at least a good graphics card and some programs (don't ask me which).

and the best way would be to use screenshots, those .avis tend to get a lot better than videocapture .avis.

on another note, check out dd2, def & dag extreme 2 (http://www.planetquake.com/dde)
it's a hefty 363 meg download but boy does it own...even though they make a few tricks I think we all look upon as pretty old standard stuff.

Morfans2Posted - 31 October 2002 9:36 PST
So if you get quake to take a screenshot every (say) 0.1 of a second you could build that into an .avi or mpeg could you?

What would be a good number of screenshots per second?

Morfans2Posted - 31 October 2002 9:43 PST
Bergie: so if, hypothetically, I could provide you with several thousand standard quake .pcx screenshots you could build that into a film, could you?

Or if not, is there someone out there that could?

(Sorry to hijack your thread, Stubbz :-))

De_VerorberaarPosted - 31 October 2002 10:14 PST
off course you can all you need to do is print those several thousands screen shots
then take the pile of paper and then flip them real fast true you fingers...tada!

i always used to make silly cartoons like that on highschool
funniest was to get a nice thick book and draw ten images then pass the book to a friend and only show him the last drawing then he does ten pages and so on...

lodisPosted - 1 November 2002 2:41 PST
morfy: I'd recommend at least 24 screens/sec, but the more you use the better. What I want to know is how you will get quake to take 24 or more screens per sec :)
don't forget to have a lot of hd space in any case :)
mwhPosted - 1 November 2002 2:52 PST
Well, it's probably not all *that* hard to hack the source to take a screenshot every frame. Then set host_framerate to 1/24 and play the demo.

...

Actually, it looks like quake can only take 100 screenshots before it runs out of file names, so more hacking would be required. Possible, though.

Morfans2Posted - 1 November 2002 8:36 PST
It should be quite simple to insert a "stufftext screenshot" every 0.05 of a second into a demo. Overcoming the naming problem might be a little more difficult.

Denn: Doesn't sonsquake allow you to do this?

mwhPosted - 4 November 2002 8:58 PST
Morfy: it's probably only a few hours of hacking to make a patched xquake with a "tapedemo" command that dumps out a .pcx for each frame of a demo.

Do you want me to try that? You'd need to have a linux box handy to run the binaries I produce, or be able to build a windows version.

PS: Happy Birthday!


Edited by - mwh on 11/4/2002 9:12:25 AM

Morfans2Posted - 4 November 2002 9:55 PST
I've heard rumours that someone's already done it, so don't go wasting your time just yet. Thanks for the thought, though. :-)

(And thanks for the birthday greeting. Man I'm SO old!)

DennPosted - 16 November 2002 6:59 PST
use sQ and command:
demo_shots
Screanshots per second during playback. Screanshots are written to \screenshots in the current mod's folder, named quake*****.pcx