Capturing video content, improve performance

[Sereiya]

Hello there,

I was inactive for quite a while (3 years or so) because of personal problems, so it's quite possible I'm completely out of date.

I'm looking for the best method to capture scenes to make a new video (my last one is quite old, I bet I can do it better now!). I actually use nVidia Shadowplay and Mirillis Action! to capture footage, but Shadowplay doesn't work with Spring. Action is quite good, but I remember there was a built-in capture function in Spring using CTRL + F10 or something like this. Then a small window pops up to set some encoding stuff. Is this function still there, anywhere?

Also, is there a LUA for camera waypoints or smoothing camera? CTRL - F4 / F5 is quite okay, but I miss a waypoint function for my purposes (and my coding skills are a bit rusty to do it by myself).

3 Years ago, it was a have-to-do to deactivate the multithreading optimization in the nvidia system settings to improve the frame rate. Is this still up to date? Also there where an extra executable to start spring multithreaded, I guess it's already built-in in spring.exe. How do I activate it? (My loadscreen doesn't mention something like multiple threads)
Every tip to improve and smooth the framerates are welcome (using a GTX 780, want to capture with full graphic settings in 1080p with 60 frames for some cool slowmotion effects)

That's it - I apologize for all the grammar mistakes I made.

greetings,
Sereiya

[smoth]

I use fraps, Forboding does streaming online.

[knorke]

built-in capture function:
Seems not bound to ctrl-f10 anymore but still exists.
The command is: /createvideo

settings:
http://springrts.com/wiki/Springsettings.cfg

Yes, spring multithreaded is now "built in" and always active.
It does not give any special notice in load screen.

Recording with lower game speed = more frames.
Interesstig setting: http://springrts.com/wiki/Springsetting ... itchAdjust

a LUA for camera waypoints:
http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/source/ ... corder.lua

[Sereiya]

That sounds perfect, especially The Pitch Adjustement and LUA widget will do great work. Thanks!

[CarRepairer]

a LUA for camera waypoints:
http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/source/ ... corder.lua

This widget will work fine in games that use epicmenu (ZK, Evo, The Cursed). Otherwise a small modification will be needed to trigger the recording and playback functions (lines 120 and 124). Would need to create a couple of actionhandler actions and then either type /luaui startrecording or bind a key to it.

[Floris]

Thats a nice old video! What are you planning on making?
If you dont have a determined answer yet.... In a few months the BA remake will be done, but it's going to need promotional video. Maybe the job for you, in cooperation with the devs.


I suggest to use OBS. It can just recently encode using not the just only the CPU, be also with the inten igp or nvidia gpu.

CPU: x264,
INTEL GPU: Quick Sync,
NVIDIA: NVENC (same encoder as shadowplay uses, but shadowplay also has direct access to the screenbuffer aswell)

The CPU encoder is best, but also cost most. The other ones dont cost your much, because they are hardware encoders inside the gpu.

Also, just use a high bitrate and modest encoding quality to be able to capture at 60fps smoothly without much loss.

Happy fiddling!

[Sereiya]

Thats a nice old video! What are you planning on making?

I thought about making a video about BA Reloaded, but since the last dev release I tried was quiet slow I was unsure about it. Anyway, it would be quiet foolish to use the current BA version, wouldn't it?

I think I'll visit #badev for that issue.

[Floris]

Yea making video for current BA is kinda silly. Although, making a video for BAR might be too. It always takes longer than anticipated.

The re-modelling is near completion. YEY
(But still lots of work lesft to do: animations, particle fx, shaders, GUI, and finetuning) All might differ too much to do a comprehensive video atm. But if you're fully aware... go ahead!

[Beherith]

Thats a nice old video! What are you planning on making?

I thought about making a video about BA Reloaded, but since the last dev release I tried was quiet slow I was unsure about it. Anyway, it would be quiet foolish to use the current BA version, wouldn't it?

I think I'll visit #badev for that issue.

Please elaborate on how you found it much slower, I'm genuinely interested.

Also worthy of noting is that spring has a feature where on /createvideo it will make a single draw frame per sim frame, so you can have smooth videos. I doubt this works well with online play, but it should be a viable and accurate alternative when the frame rate would be too low to capture proper video.

[Sereiya]

The re-modelling is near completion. YEY
(But still lots of work lesft to do: animations, particle fx, shaders, GUI, and finetuning) All might differ too much to do a comprehensive video atm. But if you're fully aware... go ahead!

Perhaps it would be better to do a little teaser first and full-length trailer later (Maybe Beherith can say something to that)? I just started the current version from the test server to do a summary.

Please elaborate on how you found it much slower, I'm genuinely interested.

I admit, the last time I tried it was half a year ago or so. The current version runs pretty fine, it just hangs sometime and needs time at the beginning to run smooth. But I have similar problems with lags in other games, so I guess it's my hard drive. I'll work with my SSD for the recording.

[abma]

fyi: all all current stable releases have a bug which makes spring very slow when showing a replay:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31503 (a hotfix version for 96.0 is available)

setting LogFlush = 0 in config could also slightly help with these hangs.

[zer_ver]

I had recent success with CamStudio Recorder and their lossless codec, capturing 720p content with only minor stutter. The downside is that youtube really destroys the picture quality for this type of high-action content. It is hard to believe it was originally uploaded as a 400MB lossless AVI.

I guess the optimal solution would be to have a hardware recording device directly hooked up to the monitor port.

If a moderator removes a link from your post, do not add it back in.

--FLOZi

[Nemo]

If you're on windows, http://obsproject.com/ worked great for me when making commented replays of S44 games -- it can stream live to various video services, or record to a local disk.

[Forboding Angel]

Obs is fairly crap. I highly suggest FFSplit: http://www.ffsplit.com/

[AntiAllez]

i like that obs crap ;P

is there a way to reduce artifacts? with higher bitrate, different filter and 720p scale it looks even better, any other tips?

[Forboding Angel]

Higher bitrate usually. 2500 should do the trick pretty nicely.

[Sereiya]

Maybe this is helpful. (A video recorded with Action! and high settings. Literally no artifacts)

Code: Select all

General
Complete name                            : I:\spring 03-04-2014 01-33-36.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile                           : OpenDML
File size                                : 8.20 GiB
Duration                                 : 4mn 58s
Overall bit rate                         : 236 Mbps

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : FICV
Codec ID                                 : FICV
Duration                                 : 4mn 58s
Bit rate                                 : 236 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 60.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 1.897
Stream size                              : 8.20 GiB (100%)

(You shouldn't use FICV codec. It's crap)

[AntiAllez]

i tried it with different settings which can be adjusted with obs. nothing really helped until higher bitrate. my last satisfactory try was with 15k (kb/s) on 720p, the result was ~50mb for a 1 minute video. seems, such high resolution isnt suitable for me with my low bandwidth.

[Sereiya]

I'm looking for some replays of BA:R. There was a site where autohosts uploaded replays to (also linked in #main), is it still online?
Also, I need some map suggestions for a contrived 32 vs. 32 Match. I want to show how MASSIVE multiplayer online RTS should be.

[Silentwings]

replays.springrts.com (but BAR is in development, so the few replays that exist of it are mostly 1v1 or testing games).