Vid Captures

[rjw 48]

I know some member have done Video Captures of OFF aircraft in flight. Can anyone advise me of the following:

 

Is it a built in feature?

Do I require any special hardware?

Just exactly how is it done.

 

Best Regards to all;

[Flyby PC 23]

Fraps. - http://www.fraps.com/download.php

 

Easy to use, but excellent.

 

 

Have it running before you fire up CFS3 or OFF, (but remember which button is 'record'), and your screen image is recorded.

 

The free version only gives 30 seconds of recording, with a Fraps watermark throughout, but if you get into it, it's worth getting the registered version.

Edited October 9, 2009 by Flyby PC

[rjw 48]

Thanks Flyby PC for the tip.

 

I'll try it.

 

 

Fraps. - http://www.fraps.com/download.php

 

Easy to use, but excellent.

 

 

Have it running before you fire up CFS3 or OFF, (but remember which button is 'record'), and your screen image is recorded.

 

The free version only gives 30 seconds of recording, with a Fraps watermark throughout, but if you get into it, it's worth getting the registered version.

[Rickitycrate 10]

Fraps is what I use for my screenies, FYI.

 

So it's idiot proof.

Edited October 9, 2009 by Rickitycrate

[Flyby PC 23]

Keep an eye on what you record too RJW.

 

Fraps records in real time, so doesn't have time to compress the data it records. This means the .avi clips you record are pretty big files, and it doesn't take long to fill up your hard drive.

[Flyby PC 23]

Sorry RJW, didn't have a lot of time before...

 

Fraps is great for recording media, but the problem is theres nothing in CFS3 to assist you getting images. Il2 records your flight, so you can concentrate on the mission, and manage your video record afterwards. No such luck with CFS3. The word on that is CFS3 was unfinished when it was released, and the recording facilities are in there somewhere, but were disabled because they weren't finished. The bottom line is, you can only record what you see on the screen. This makes it a much bigger challenge to get good recordings of the action. For best results, you're better setting up shots, rather than waiting for them to happen in mission play. I've seen myself fly a mission once to record 'in cockpit' views, and fly it again (more than once) to concentrate on external shots. Mix it all together, and it can look pretty good.

 

Once you've got your raw clips, in all their massiveness, you can either load them up with Windows Movie Maker, crop and edit as you like, add text and music if you like, and save it in a compressed format that doesn't fill up your hard drive. Unless you have unlimited space, it's often best to ditch the raw data. It's seriously huge, multi gigs.

 

I add in another stage before I jump into Windows Movie Maker. If you download Virtualdub, (freeware), and associated filters, you can play about with your images, adding filters and formatting, and then finalise the amended raw footage into Movie Maker. Movie maker has some editing filters of it's own, but in my opinion Vitualdub's are better. Tip here is to edit the file in AVI format. Yes it's big, but you get better results if you keep the full format as long as possible, because you lose quality when you save it on a lesser format.

 

So, it is a lot harder work than Il2, but once you get going, you can put together some some stuff that looks pretty good, and is all the more impressive because it is so tricky to capture.

 

If you get stuck, or need advice at all, just ask away and we'll see if we can help out.