RPVs and FLVs and So On

[chumbucket]

Hey internet wizard game shut ins!

One of you should create a program that converts RPVs to watchable movies and FLVs for youtube.

It would be great for UOSA promotion to have a lot of easily created, easily viewable movies.

That is all.

[nightshark]

Run the RPV while recording with Fraps?

[Roser]

I cant get fraps to record UO.... I'm a fraps noob

[the bazookas]

I've thought about how to do this, and I've looked into it a little bit. I'm not sure what the best approach is, but in a couple hours of messing around, I have found the following:

• The AVI recording in Razor can be run while playing an RPV (I think you may want to use the latest version of razor for this, because I have some old AVI videos from Razor that didn't seem to work correctly). Anything less than full size resolution is terrible looking, though, and the AVI's are enormous in size (226MB for 9 seconds in one video that I tested). I'm also not sure how well a low-end computer can handle that type of capturing (it might slow things down).
• There is an AVI to FLV converter with a free version that seems to work well. I haven't tried to upload any of the resulting FLV's to Youtube, but I successfully converted a Razor-recorded AVI to an FLV using it. It is called Prism Video File Converter Plus. That 9 second video was compressed down to 2.8MB from 226MB using this converter while keeping practically the same image quality (e.g. I can easily read small Windows text in the titlebar of the window). That doesn't seem too bad if you ask me .

I'm going to play around with it some more, but that might be worth trying.

[chumbucket]

I was aware of the FRAPS-style option. I was just hoping one of you could make something where we record a RPV run it through a program and a watchable, uploadable video results. Though bazookas seems on to something, so maybe there is hope.

[the bazookas]

Last night I tried a few different programs (I've always had a back-burner interest in making video tutorials and other stuff (like bazooka videos) using screen recording, but until you posted about it, I figured I'd do it later)... so I'm glad you asked this question to finally get me to look into this.

There are a bunch of options out there (google something like free screen recorder and you'll see)... I messed around with 4 or 5 of them. A bunch of them really don't seem to work that well (long export time, not a lot of control over video quality etc., slows down your computer a lot), but I did find one that seems to work VERY well (sound, microphone, control what part of the screen you record, different options for lossless recording (for using programs like a web browser where the screen doesn't change that often) or compressed mpeg recording (for video games like UO)... Looks like a great program to me. I've messed with it a little bit, but haven't had time to really tweak the options.

You can download it at
http://download.cnet.com/BB-FlashBack-E ... 65043.html
(NOTE that from cnet, you download a "cnet downloader" thing, which downloads the installer... but you also will want to uncheck a box on Step 2 (I think) so it doesn't install some other program that is supposed to check whether the software you got from cnet is up-to-date (I don't want crap like that running in the background).

or directly from their website (I was having trouble getting it to accept my download request when I entered my e-mail address, which is why I used cnet instead)
http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack ... /Home.aspx

If you wanted to use it to record video games, it appears to work WAY better to change it to mpeg recording mode as opposed to lossless (which makes sense).

In the "record a new movie" window, go to Tools->Options->Record Mode tab-> "I want to record moving video or games (MPEG mode)

Seems to be a really good program for what you are looking for.

[the bazookas]

Oh... and I almost forgot to address your real question:

As for a custom direct .rpv -> flv conversion program, based on my experience in dissecting a particular file format in order to do some custom stuff with it, it is an exceedingly (that's +20), if not supremely (+25), difficult task--generally there simply is not enough documentation (and if there is, it's proprietary) to know byte-by-byte exactly what a file contains such that you can program your custom software to interpret it correctly (only the first step to actually doing something with it).

Furthermore, the fact that an .rpv is displayable at all is because the software that they have created (Razor) apparently "sends" these recorded packets to the UO client, which interprets them as having come from the "server" and therefore responds by displaying what the UO client was made to display (background maps, animations, etc). Unless you re-implemented the UO client with animations and all, it would be impossible to generate the images that you want from an .rpv--it doesn't inherently contain any image information at all, which is why it is so light-weight... and even if you could get the images out of the .rpv, you would probably end up doing some kind of screen recording in order to create a video file... Hence, using a 3rd party screen recording software to record the client running the .rpv is really the viable way to go here.

[LudKrud]

wut heem blah????
dat basuuka hab tu mudje tyme tu teenk......

[the bazookas]

wut heem blah????
dat basuuka hab tu mudje tyme tu teenk......

For a machine, there is always time to think... it's all about figuring out what to think about.

But in any case, this what you get when you combine an "internet wizard game shut in" with not much going on at work.

[McSchnurke]

Oh... and I almost forgot to address your real question:

As for a custom direct .rpv -> flv conversion program, based on my experience in dissecting a particular file format in order to do some custom stuff with it, it is an exceedingly (that's +20), if not supremely (+25), difficult task--generally there simply is not enough documentation (and if there is, it's proprietary) to know byte-by-byte exactly what a file contains such that you can program your custom software to interpret it correctly (only the first step to actually doing something with it).

Furthermore, the fact that an .rpv is displayable at all is because the software that they have created (Razor) apparently "sends" these recorded packets to the UO client, which interprets them as having come from the "server" and therefore responds by displaying what the UO client was made to display (background maps, animations, etc). Unless you re-implemented the UO client with animations and all, it would be impossible to generate the images that you want from an .rpv--it doesn't inherently contain any image information at all, which is why it is so light-weight... and even if you could get the images out of the .rpv, you would probably end up doing some kind of screen recording in order to create a video file... Hence, using a 3rd party screen recording software to record the client running the .rpv is really the viable way to go here.

^ UOSA player of the month, BTW.

[the bazookas]

Here's an update--it appears screen recording of UO with the end result being good Youtube videos is definitely possible using a few free programs. If anybody has anything to add (or take away) to my conclusions, please do so.

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