Half-life movie tutorial by [pikku]varvas of PikkuPojat

General

With the introduction of Half Life 1.1.0.9 the startmovie command changed a lot, making it much easier to create movie-files from half-life demos. Since no tutorials for the new version seemed to be anywhere on the web, I decided to make one of my own. Feedback and suggestions are more than welcome at varvas@pikkupojat.org

Step 1, recording a demo

To create a movie, you need a demo.  Just press your record button (Def. F8) and press your record button once more when you have recorded your demo.

Step 2, playing the demo and making the bmp files

To import the demo into a movie-editor you first need to convert it to bmp-format files. This requires a lot of disk space (game resolution and demo length are key factors here), so make sure you have plenty on the drive where half-life is installed. To make things much easier I strongly recommend downloading and using the GeekPlay demoplayer available at http://www.geekboys.org/geekplay/ After installing geekplay and configuring it (instructions: http://www.geekboys.org/geekplay/install.php) maneuver into the directory where the demofile is stored and double-click on it. This will open up geekplay with the demo selected and its properties visible. It is strongly recommended that you first convert the demo resolution to 640 x 480 or lower with the convert resolution-button, since anything bigger will need more time to create, and the resulting moviefile will be larger. After converting click Play to view the demo. To start recording the movie you have to press you "record" button(Def. f8), but make sure that you have switht over to recoding movie and not recording demos, you can swith between these 2 by using commandmenu or pressing the "Swith between recording demo/movie" Button def. F9. The movie now starts recording, and you might see your framerate drop dramatically as you view the demo. This is completely normal. Notice that the movie records only when the console is lift out of the view. While the console is visible, the movie is not being recorded. This is handy so you can also easily cut off unwanted scenes early on, by pulling down the console. After you want to completely end recording the movie, pressing your "record" button (Def. f8). You may now quit half-life. Your half-life folder should now have lots of files named something like csdumpX.mclip00001.bmp ... csdumpX.mclip00659.bmp These are bitmap images that will form single frames for your movie. They take a lot of space too, as I warned earlier.

Step 3, creating the movie-file

Next you need to load the bmp-files into your favourite movie-editor and make a movie-file. I very much recommend the VideoMach software for this. It is a very easy to use program that will be perfect for our assembling. To start, load up the bmp files by clicking File -> Open. Next select all your bmp-files (click the first one, shift-click the last one), then click Open. The bmp-files are now loaded, and all you need to do is configure the settings. Do this by clicking on the blue disk-image above the bottom-middle window. Check Video Only, pick the path for your final video file in the Video File box (something.avi recommended). Click on the Video tab on the top of the window, uncheck the Automatic checkbox under Frame rate (fps) part, and also uncheck the Keep original duration checkbox. Set the framerate to the same framerate you used with the startmovie command (preferably 30). Finally click on the Format options button and pick a codec for your video. I recommend picking the DivX Pro 5.0 codec. Lastly click on the Configure button the set the codec options, of which most important is the Encoding Bitrate slider, which determines the quality and size of your video. The further right you slide the bar, the better quality your video will be, but it will also grow in size dramatically.something between 700 and 5000 kbps should be good for anyone. Click OK, click OK, click OK and you are ready to create the movie. To start assembling the movie, finally click on the blue arrow right next to the blue disk image. Creating the movie will take a while depending on its length, resolution and your computers speed. Be patient. After the process is finished the movie will automatically play, and is saved in the folder you specified earlier.

Last words

To create longer movies with sound and music, I recommend using some other, more advanced video-editing software. VideoMach is perfect for coverting the short democlips to videoformat, but might not be enough for combining all of them into a good long movie. Using any such programs takes a little bit more practice than what was taught above, yet is not really that hard if you have some patience to go through more tutorials. I can recommend Adobe Premiere, yet there are also some free or semi-free programs that are powerful and feature-rich enough for the job (VirtualDub comes in mind). Feel free to experiment and tell me if you have good suggestions. I hope this helps all the people creating their great movies from cs 1.4-demos. I am sure this tutorial is incomplete and could improve, so send your comments in at varvas@pikkupojat.org. Good luck with the movies. Its hard work, yes, but go for it.

This Tutorial was modified by EKS to work with his Demo Recording script.. 

To check the full version of this tutorial go Here: http://www.pikkupojat.org/cgi-bin/pikku.cgi?movie-tutorial