Guide to recording, encoding and uploading DDO videos

[Khellendros13]

i use xfire as well. I can't even FIND an option to convert to mp4... I simply used vdubmod (well, veedub actuall, since i'm win7 64) to compress the .avi straight out of xfire and all was well.

Hmm after the video is recorded in Xfire, it asks to upload, and if you do that it then does the encoding first, to .mp4

I might have to just uninstall it all then install again and see.

[BOgre]

Ah, I see. I don't upload to the xfire site. I cancel that step. It then just has a .avi file in the video folder. I use veedub to compress and encode as per the instructions in the OP and upload that to youtube.

[Shade]

haven't tried Fraps, so can't comment on that, but should mention that Xfire only supports dx9 (for DDO anyways). If Xfire isn't launching the 'ingame messenger' or is unable to record, make sure to switch DDO to run in DirectX 9 mode.

Great guide. thanks!

EDIT: uploaded to Youtube a first test using Xfire and veedub in 1080p. Super clear, perfect. 2 minute vid took 20 mins to upload. I've a slow connection, so resized in veedub to 780p. again, really great. text is a LITTLE softer around the edges, but still nice and clear, no pixellation. smooth video, quick upload to the site (11 mins), streamed fine. Again, thanks for the guide. No reason for blurry youtube DDO vids from anyone ever again!@!!

the DX9 limitation is likely a good thing. DDO runs horribly in DX10/11, or windows 7 in general while recording, so youd have very poor performance unless your machine was incredibly high end, like top end current gen it seems, as im only 1 gen behind and have issues on 7.

RE: Slow upload:
You will probably get a higher quality by going a lowerbitrate then resolution. Youtube uses a real low bitrate like 4-5mbps, while i recommend 8.. But you can drop it to 4, dropping the filesize in half, and thus upload time too, without too much loss in quality.

Could also drop the framerate (if you recorded at 60fps), tho that can sometimes lead to audio sync issues.

[Shade]

Hmm after the video is recorded in Xfire, it asks to upload, and if you do that it then does the encoding first, to .mp4

I might have to just uninstall it all then install again and see.

Yea dont let it encode or upload. It will give far inferior quality then vdub.

Just let it record, then find the raw .avi. Not sure what folder they will be by default.

Ill have to install xfire and update the guide with more specific instructions, havent played with it in years, but when i did it worked well, just a bit slower then fraps.

[Khellendros13]

Yea dont let it encode or upload. It will give far inferior quality then vdub.

Just let it record, then find the raw .avi. Not sure what folder they will be by default.

Ill have to install xfire and update the guide with more specific instructions, havent played with it in years, but when i did it worked well, just a bit slower then fraps.

Yea I think I got it to work and output .mkv , this is the quality I get resizing from 1680x1050 to 1280x800 then uploading to youtube

http://www.youtube.com/user/ariithka?feature=mhee

I am uploading the last 15mins of that Sins run now, and will see if it's better direct from RAW to 1280x800 then to youtube tonight. About 40 mins till the upload is done.

[Xionanx]

If your using Window 7, I HIGHLY recommend using the following to upload your youtube video's.

Use PLAYCLAW to record, its cheap (has an excellent free demo) and records in higher quality using less resources then FRAPS. In my opinion it is currently the best video game recording solution available.

Then, use WINDOWS LIVE MOVIE MAKER, available for FREE from Microsoft. It will automatically convert and upload your movie to YouTube, no muss no fuss. It is literally the simplest solution available and the quality is outstanding.

Here is an example video I uploaded using just the two tools above:
http://youtu.be/_94ZtKzEQFg

It couldn't be any simpler to make and then upload a quality video now. I spent quite a lot of time messing around with FRAPS, TAXI, TMPENC, DOOM9.org, downloading codecs, etc... I cant justify putting anyone else through that, I really cant.

If you cant install either of those for some reason, then I guess you'll be forced to do it the hard way.

[BOgre]

just watched that. I gotta say, although the graphx quality is pretty good (not stellar) the text quality is aweful. Moreover, windows movie maker is terrible slow, and crashes more often than not. I've used it to turn home movies into dvd's, simply cuz it's preloaded on the machine, but that's about it.

I literally had ZERO problems with xfire and veedub. simply followed shade's op, and made crystal clear vid. free, easy, fast, and great quality. my opinion of course...

note: i've never tried playclaw, but judging by all the negative feedback on their forum page, I think I'll be skipping it.

[Xionanx]

just watched that. I gotta say, although the graphx quality is pretty good (not stellar) the text quality is aweful. Moreover, windows movie maker is terrible slow, and crashes more often than not. I've used it to turn home movies into dvd's, simply cuz it's preloaded on the machine, but that's about it.

I literally had ZERO problems with xfire and veedub. simply followed shade's op, and made crystal clear vid. free, easy, fast, and great quality. my opinion of course...

note: i've never tried playclaw, but judging by all the negative feedback on their forum page, I think I'll be skipping it.

You DID bump it up to 1080p didn't you? Because if you did and your saying the text was awful then you need to get your eyes checked out, as the text is exactly as readable as the other sample vid's posted.

Windows LIVE Movie Maker is not "Slower" then virtual dub, in fact in encoding the same piece of video I'd say its the same speed if not faster. The main draw for using it however is the lack of knowledge needed, ie, there is none. You simply select your video, click the "upload to youtube button" and it will convert, encode, and upload all while you go do something else. No need to install X different codecs, no need to run your video through X different programs manually, it just works.

If your comparing it to the old "Movie Maker" (poor naming choice on MS part), then yes, the OLD movie maker was garbage and I wouldn't recommend it to people I hate. I'm thinking you may be remembering the old one, not the NEW one that's part of the Windows LIVE system.

As far as PlayClaw goes, I cant speak as to whats being said on their forums, however if we were to judge a product by the idiots who post on the forums, then why are any of us playing DDO?

PlayClaw is awesome, I have tried MANY different video capture programs over the years, and here's what I know about PlayClaw. I can run it on MULTIPLE cores and play my games with MAX settings in DX9/10 and record with little slowdown at all. If my current video card supported DX11 I could probably say the same about DX11 as well. Compatibility is phenomenal, I haven't once found a game I can not record using it.

Why don't you try it, its FREE to try, before you knock it.

Shade has a great guide here, but frankly technology and software moves forward. The info he's compiled is the way I USED to do video's, and it works no doubt, but I cant justify continuing to do them that way when there is a much simpler way of doing it now that results in similar quality.

I suppose someone could do a "Quality test" to prove one way is better then the other, but I don't think its necessary. The method I'm suggesting is useless on XP and Linux (to my knowledge) so it's more of an "If you can do it, do this instead" suggestion.

[BOgre]

Well, I'm judging solely on quality here, and the fact that xfire/veedub worked easily and without issue or fps hit. Here's a comparo of my vid and yours, just focusing on text. both @ 1080p, zoomed in to highlight artifacting and clarity. xfire/veedub on the left, playclaw/moviemaker on the right:



And as for moviemaker, i'm using the latest one on my win7 machine, it's still pretty buggy.

edit: correction. forgot that my vid was actually compressed to 720p. so we're looking at 720p vs 1080p in this picture, and even at the lower rez, my side is still obviously clearer.

here's the vid itself if anyone cares.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l84nibOWz78

[Shade]

Shade has a great guide here, but frankly technology and software moves forward. The info he's compiled is the way I USED to do video's, and it works no doubt, but I cant justify continuing to do them that way when there is a much simpler way of doing it now that results in similar quality.

It's good to hear microsofts stuff isn't utter **** as it used to be, and yea your video is "good" quality.

But as B.Ogre pointed out, it's not the best. See a bit of artifacting, and some bad color banding. Pretty sure this is because M$ FORCES you to use there codec (They alwayys did in the past, correct me if they changed that) - WMV, then youtube converts it to the far superior x264 (they use the exact same codec as I recommend for a reason), which reduces quality.

And yea its good to keep up to date.. But Veedub and x264 are are far MORE up to date then live maker and wmv. Yea vdubmod is no longer in developement, but the official version is you can see vdub64 and the latest x264 as I linked if you want the absolute best quality and speed and latest tech support.

Also highly depends on your machine on how slow/fast things will be. vdub64 supports full multicore compression at 64bit, while I don't think any x64 version of Windows movie make live is available, so if you want the latest and greatest technology.. It's certainly not movie maker. So on a very high end multi core youd likely get better speed with vdub64.

But yea like I said, your video does look good, so thanks for the tips.

Also a quick search brings up this major issue with your tip too:

Note

Windows Live Movie Maker and the slide show feature of Windows Live Photo Gallery aren't supported on Windows XP.

eh.. XP runs DDO so much better, so yea.. Win 7 only.

[Xionanx]

Yep, thats why I said if your on Win7 and can do it. As far as XP running DDO better, I cant really attest to that as I gave up on XP years ago, I used Vista for DDO and never had OS related issues, and now I use Win7 and dont have any OS related issues, and I'm looking forward to Win8 even though I think its too soon for a new OS edition from MS, but ehh... its how they make money.

Still, just so were comparing Apple's to Apple's I decided to make 2 video's from the same raw, one using MovieMaker and the other the settings Shade suggests for VDUB.

Original Source is 1920x1080 DDO RAW uncompressed video recorded using PlayClaw. The original file size for the 30's of video is 3,669,327 KB, or roughly 3.66 GB. Windows Live Movie Maker reduced that file down to 25,935 KB in roughly 1 Min 30 Seconds. This is using the default "You Tube" publish link built right into Movie Maker, no other settings were used/changed. Virtual Dub using x264 at 8000 VBR Bitrate quality reduced it down to 29,290 KB, also in 1 Min 33 Seconds. This is using the x264 64Bit codec shade posted in the first post as well as the 64bit version of virtual dub and following shades suggested settings.

Both were uploaded to You Tube, and here's the results:
Windows Live Movie Maker Clip
Virtual Dub Clip

Honestly, I cant tell any significant quality difference between the two. But be sure to watch the spots I circle with the cursor, because the problems that I have run into with poorer compression programs and recorders in the past is loss of "fine" texture (on the options box in the area I circle) and artifacts on small text, so pause and check both videos for that on the "10" font size.

Again tho, I'm not saying one way is better then the other, I'm just saying that if you have access to Win7 its "simpler" to just use Movie Maker as its brain dead easy. Which brings me to a "how to" guide on how to upload video's with Windows Live Movie Maker.

Windows 7 (Possible Vista)

Download and install your favorite video capture Program:
Play Claw - Is the program I prefer and recommend. Has an unlimited trail with ads on your video's.
FRAPS - The original game video tool, still gets the job done. Has a 30 second time and quality limited trail.
xFire - Free

Download and install Windows Live Movie Maker: Microsoft has loads of information and support for this product, so if you have any issue's getting it downloaded and installed feel free to contact them.

Thats it for getting everything set up, so go ahead and record a video. Once you have a video recorded that you want to upload follow these simple steps:

Launch Windows Live Movie Maker, you will be presented with a screen that looks like this.

Simply click anywhere in the area that says "Click here to browse for Video's and Photo's". When you do will be presented with a menu to select your file.

You can see here I have selected the DDO comparison video raw I posted above. So go ahead and select your video, you will be presented with the following screen.

You can now see the video preview on the left, as well as a clip editing panel on the right. Feel free to edit the length of your video, add more video's in sequence, captions, or even some of those silly "effects" like sliding panes and text. For the purposes of this how to though, we'll assume your ready to upload. So just click on the big "You Tube" icon in the upper right, you will be presented with the following options.

As you can see there are several presets available to you, as well as the predicted final file size for those presets. I highly recommend you choose the 1920x1080 preset I have, however if your source video is of a lower definition then that, choose the preset that matches that resolution the closest. Once you have selected the preset you are given yet another screen.

Here you enter your YouTube login information for your account. If you dont have an account simply go create one and come back to this step to enter your credentials. This brings you to the next step.

On this screen you enter the time, description, and other relevant information about the video your uploading. Go ahead and fill it out and click "Publish". Thats it, now all you do is wait for it to encode.

and then wait for it to upload
.
You are done, now you just find the link to your video and start spamming it around so everyone can see what amazing thing you did. It really couldn't be any simpler.

[BOgre]

my bias 'wants' me to say the vdub side is clearer, but honestly i can't be sure. I think both sides look less clear than my xfire video, but that could also be because my native res is laptop1366x768... Or it could be playclaw vs xfire...

Anyhow, the difference IS pretty minor, so bottom line, thanks for the tips +1

[Xionanx]

my bias 'wants' me to say the vdub side is clearer, but honestly i can't be sure. I think both sides look less clear than my xfire video, but that could also be because my native res is laptop1366x768... Or it could be playclaw vs xfire...

Anyhow, the difference IS pretty minor, so bottom line, thanks for the tips +1

Well, it shouldn't be PlayClaw in that particular video set, since I used the RAW video option to record that clip, meaning there is no difference between what the RAW video shows and what the game screen shows. Of course recording using RAW is extremely resource intensive, as should be obvious with 30 seconds of video taking 3.66 GB's . So then it comes down to lots of minor twiddly things like the in game settings, I was playing on "Ultra High" with AA set to 8x so its entirely possible that the AA was "Smoothing" the edges of the text on screen which caused some slight artifacting around the letters.

Which is why I wanted to post the video in the first place. In the screenshots you compared earlier I was playing the game with custom settings and was using the lowest quality record option for playclaw (High Compression/Low Quality/Small File) as I was just posting a video to demonstrate the DeSync bug, and not really a "Quality" video.

I guess I could download XFIRE and FRAPS then record a similar 2 video comparison for each, but I really don't think there will be a significant enough quality difference between them. Performance while recording on the other hand is why I use PlayClaw, as it takes full advantage of my multicore PC. Since DDO to the best of my knowledge is NOT a multithreaded process, ie. its only using one core, I can then assign PlayClaw to use the other 7 processor cores and see no in game slowdown at all while I play DDO and record, all the while using High Compression to record. I know I cant do that with FRAPS which is why I dont use it.

I think a lot of people get used to doing things a particular way and using a particular program that they stop looking for better ways and better programs. Me, I'm never satisfied. FRAPS has become so ingrained into the gamer mindset now that people just automatically recommend it to record, even though there are now better alternatives. Its benefiting from its legacy of being the first and only real tool for years. I also feel TMPenc/VDuB/etc are also in that same boat now as well, because at one point in time it was the ONLY way to get a quality video conversion done.

You Tube and other video sharing sites have created a market for these kind of tools so they are only going to get better and more integrated into software. I fully expect in a few more years games will come with built in recording options standard (RIFT and APB already do), and you will see a LOT people posting video's up then. Expect major companies to want to be a part of the growing social video sharing trend, and to do that they will invest millions into making video recording and editing tools better then they are now.

[Shade]

Both were uploaded to You Tube, and here's the results:
Windows Live Movie Maker Clip
Virtual Dub Clip

Nice test..

The vdub one looks extremely better and clearer to me. Main thing is the sharpness - all is very nice and sharp, nearly perfect in the vdub one.. The movie maker one has a very evident and heavy smoothing effect going on.

Also you did kind of a very easy to compress video, being you never move around and just play with menus. Better test would be moving around. A still image is very easy to encode without qulaity loss. a high motion video is not.

Anyways, looks night and day to me, cant recommend movie maker. Maybe im partial, but I think most people can easily tell the difference from your clps,and those will be magnified in more intense vids.

re: Speed - did you try the x64 version? Some reports show its ~10-15% faster on a high end quad core or better.

[Xionanx]

Nice test..

The vdub one looks extremely better and clearer to me. Main thing is the sharpness - all is very nice and sharp, nearly perfect in the vdub one.. The movie maker one has a very evident and heavy smoothing effect going on.

Also you did kind of a very easy to compress video, being you never move around and just play with menus. Better test would be moving around. A still image is very easy to encode without qulaity loss. a high motion video is not.

Anyways, looks night and day to me, cant recommend movie maker. Maybe im partial, but I think most people can easily tell the difference from your clps,and those will be magnified in more intense vids.

re: Speed - did you try the x64 version? Some reports show its ~10-15% faster on a high end quad core or better.

Yep, used x264vfw64_20_1195bm_19501-working, which is the x64 version to the best of my knowledge. IMO the compression size and speed are roughly the same, but I guess I could do some longer video tests of me moving around and doing stuff to see if that effects the file size any. Yeah, there is some smoothing going on in the Movie Maker version, but its only apparent to a trained/observant eye, yet the text remains just as legible.

I'll see about tossing together some more comparison vids, as I'm bored anyway and this for the moment distracting.

[Deathdefy]

I'm evidently an idiot - can someone please tell me how to make X-Fire detect DDO?

It can't seem to find by auto-scanning and I'm sufficiently noob that I can't work out how to tell it manually.

[BOgre]

usually the only time xfire doesn't detect ddo is if it's running in dx10 or 11. xfire only works with ddo in dx9. kind of a shame really, but if you're planning on recording, toning down the gfx load by going to dx9 is probly a good idea anyways. the dx9 setting is in your options panel, can't recall where exactly, but it's pretty obvious. just click the dropdown menu and selet 9, then restart the client and as long as xfire is already running, you should be good to go.

[Deathdefy]

Much obliged B.Ogre. Thanks.

[BOgre]

My pleasure. hope that turns out to be what the prob was. If not, I'll be happy to help you track it down.

[Zyklon]

I have moved on to another game and this guide is still great, EXCEPT remove the links for the codecs. Nothing but Ads and junk from that file server.