August 6th, 2008 by admin

As a pre-emptive to a detailed blog post I have planned regarding producing high quality videos for
Youtube from any pc-game, although I will be focusing on Battlefield 2142, I am going to produce a
simple guide that is especially useful for people who may not have done this before or may not have
experience editing. the quality of the output at the end will not be that of the videos here that I
have made recently but as I said, it is mainly for beginners and will provide an excellent start
point.
What we will need for this method which will be the ‘Killcam’ method is xfire ……. and Windows
Movie maker. That is it!

For this example I kept everything simple, I will break it down step by step and provide examples and
recommended viewing where necessary, the video I made for this tutorial of sorts is as simplistic as
it gets, a short video of the menu from the game Mass Effect made from 3 clips but I will go into
details later.

Step 1: Download and install Xfire, Xfire provides us, once installed and logged in, with an excellent
system for taking screenshots and videos. Added to that it is an IM service among other things it is a
useful tools for gamers in general. That being said though the quality of the videos is not of the
highest standard and gameplay become choppy while using it.
As a sidenote: Instead of Xfire you could use Fraps which I will detail in the next post in the coming
weeks but for this quick and simple approach we will stick with xfire.

Step 2: so now that we have Xfire installed we need to get our videos. So make sure you are logged
into xfire and start your game of choice. When playing or at anytime you want a clip etc ingam just
prell Scroll Lock + V and Xfire will start recording what you see. so for example play Battlefield and
get recordings of you killing people for example and to stop the recording press Scroll Lock + V
again. While recording your gameplay will probably seem a bit slow and choppy at times. In the top
left you will have an indication of how big the recording you are making is.

Step 3: So we have our videos so let’s exit our game, Xfire will tell you how many videos you took and
they are saved by default in C:/ProgramData/XFire/Videos. I only took 3 simple short videos and here
they are:

Step 4: Let us open up Windows Movie maker now that we have our videos, you may want to move them to a folder on your desktop if it makes it easier for you to find them later. Here is what my Windows Movie Maker (WMM) looks like, you have a different version but they work the same way.

Now click File>Import and select your files. I had moved mine to my documents from

C:/ProgramData/XFire/Videos. Here is what it looks like now.

Let’s get to work

step 5: If your clips are done perfectly and you just want to put them together just drag them in
order onto the storyboard, but chances are you may have to clip a bit off the end of a video for
example. this is a little more complex than what has come before. So we put videoclip A on the
storyboard in the first position, the box we see with the play button is to see a preview of what our
video looks like.

So, we need to shave 4 seconds from that clip for example, to hide the fact that we got killed so
double click the icon of our clip on the timeline and press play in the preview box, when you find the
point you want to stop the clip, press the split button.

You will now notice we have 2 clips on our timeline, the second one can be deleted and now we have our clip and no one will know we got killed This process of cutting up clips to show only what we want in our video will require some practice and practice in the editing process is invaluable so please
take your time on this aspect of producing the clips as it is vitally important.

Once we have that first clip done then let us drag another clip down to the storyboard to go in after
it, cut that short or cut a bit from the front if necessary, this can be done by splitting it near the
start right after the bit you do not want shown, then on the storyboard when the extra file appears,
delete the first one and you will be left with the remainder of the claip, from just after the bad bit
onwards.

And that covers the basics of adding video to your storyboard. To add a song just import it like you
did with the video and drag it onto the storyboard, it will switch to timeline view for the song but
just click the view option to go back to the storyboard mode if you want to, or you can work on
timeline, the cutting and cropping of the clips is the same.

NOTE: You can also cut the clips before you put them on the storyboard/timeline and rename them etc. This may suit some people more

This is the longest part of editing. Please take your time. Rushing this part can be detrimental to
your effort and put you off editing.

Step 6: So now our timeline is full of wonderful clips of our amazing gaming skill, in my example
there are just three clips and it is just of the menu of Mass Effect but you get the point. When you
are happy with it and the dong is the same length as the video, check it on the timeline and drag it
back to the correct length if it is too long etc.

Also in this example due to the clips I was using I actually changed hardly anything except cut them a
bit and I did not add music.

Our next step is to go to File>Publish Movie.
Select Publish for playback on your computer, Give it a name and a sav location and then pick the
render details. Best to leave it render for best playback quality like so

We will go into more detail on rendering in my future editing post to learn how to optimize it for
Youtube but for now let it pick auto.

Now publish it and it will be saved where you specified. The length of time it takes depends on the
length and quality of the video. in my case it took about 30seconds is all but mine is very low
quality and short with no sound.

Below you can see how the sameple turned out, While watching please take note of how choppy it is, how pixelated it is and how unenjoyable it is to watch.

Choppiness: there were 3 reasons for this, first is that I used xfire to record which generated alittle bit of the choppiness, Secondly I had loads of programs open while recording so that slowed itdown and third, the render/publish quality was poor which just added to it.
Pixelated: The recordings were made on a 1680×1050 high quality monitor powered by an 8800GTX, just to
clarify that the source files were of high quality, The main loss came from the rendering/publishing
settings, the compression that youtube puts on it and the conversion youtube does to make the file a
.fla format. More details in the next post.

The boring factor came from the unexciting content and the lack of sound. these are 3 things you
should take note of for future reference.

So there you have it, your first basic video of you playing any game you please. Please post your
results below or any questions you may have I will be happy to answer. Happy Editing!

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