5. How to do demolist capturing

[ent]

Hi

This feature will make your capturing process a piece of cake. You save very much time and re-capturing stuff will also be awesomely easy.

This tutorial:
1. More details about project files
2. Creating project files and a demolist
3. Demolist capturing


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More details about project files
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Need to tell you about project files a bit more. Almost everything you change will be saved in them by default. That means: mme_blurFrames, mme_blurOverlap, mov_captureFPS, mov_captureName (screenies will be named like that) and so many more things. You can go into a project file and look how the settings are stored. It it a kind of html format and you can change everything in notepad. There's that cvar in it called mov_captureCvars. It saves which other cvars shall be saved in the current project file. If you change it, add some things, it will be saved as well. For example you might want to have mme_skykey saved in it for some keyed capturing.


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Creating project files and a demolist
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The aim of a demolist capturing is that you don't have to capture each demo yourself. You can capture everything, may it be first person, chase or normal camera or all 3 of them in one demo.
A demolist runs demos and project files you specify. Now you think: Wha, who wants to cap all of his demos? Do I have to cut them before again? - No. You save the capture range in the project files.
To do so, load a demo. Then either load a project file you already have or just don't, doesn't matter. Press 3 to switch to Timeline edit mode which contains capture settings. With shift + mouse go to the point in time where you want the capture to start. Then just hit T and it will give out that you marked the current time as capture start. Then go to where you want your capture to stop, hit G. Both points are marked now. They will be stored in the project file you save. Those both have to be set so the demolist knows where to capture. If one of them is not set, it will not capture. The view you're in will be saved in the project file to, so be sure to be in the right one when saving.

I suggest capture settings to be done after you did a camera or else. Now when you want to save you can already start setting up a demolist. A demolist must be in the mme folder and can be in either .cfg or .txt format. You can save the current project file under a name and add the demo and the project file to the demolist at the same time. You can type "\save follow firstperson.txt". The second parameter is the name of the demolist file you want to add that to. Just look in your mme folder after to see what changed if you don't get what I mean yet.

A demolist looks like this:
demo1 prj1
demo2 prj2
demo3 prj3
...and so on

You have to do one project file for every capture you want to do. It is not possible to save two capture settings in one project file. If you want to capture a camera and the follow view, you need two project files.
Kay, you set capture start and capture end in every project file and a demolist is created, let's go on to..


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Demolist capturing
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There are two main ways to capture. Ingame and offscreen capturing. I recommend to do demolist capturing just like I do, I start it with a batch file.

My current batch file looks like this:

@echo off
Start jamme.x86.exe +set fs_game "mme" +set mme_renderWidth "0" +set mme_renderHeight "0" +set r_multisample "8" +set r_multisampleNvidia "1" +set r_anisotropy "16" +set r_picmip "0" +demolist "firstperson.txt"
Exit

You should know many of those commands. I explain the ones you don't know yet: mme has custom settings for anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering now. If you didn't already set them in your gfx card settings, you can set them seperately here. r_multiSample is anti-aliasing, r_multisampleNvidia enables/disables anti-aliasing (multisampling) for Nvidia cards, they seem to have some problems with it. r_anisotropy is the level of anisotropic filtering you want to have during a capture.
Demolist is the command to run a demolist file from the mme folder. You can also run that in the JA menu manually by typing "\demolist firstperson.txt".

You can avoid capturing in fullscreen by setting both mme_renderWidth and mme_renderHeight: It's the size that JA will be run at, but you won't see it. When starting the batch with those both set, a small 320x240 JA window will be shown but it stays gray during the cap. The thing you will see is the JA console which prints out server messages and also tells you when the capturing of all demos is done. This is called offscreen capturing. Using it, you can capture all day long while doing other things on your computer.

Hint: Right now it's still needed that you have mme_renderWidth, mme_renderHeight AND r_multisample set to more than 0 to have offscreen capturing. I need to talk with Canabis about that. Just so you don't wonder why it doesn't work.


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Quick Setup
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1. Load a demo
2. Press 4 to enter capture settings editing mode
3. Go to the point in time where you want your capture to start
4. Hit T
5. Go to the point in time where you want your capture to end
6. Hit G
7. Save your project file for that cap with "\save <prjname> <demolistname>"
8. Set the right settings in the batch file
9. Run the batch file
10. Wait until the capture is done, be happy


Thanks for listening and good luck.
John

 

Credits: John "auri" from q3mme crew; original: link.