Poster: Bloodshot at 0000-00-00 00:00:00
Subject: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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I have worked in the Video Editing field for over 10 years. I was excited to learn that Blizzard has added the ability to capture game play via in-game Video Capture in the current PTR patch.
I tested the Mac Video Capture function on the PTR today and found it to cause the graphics to be very choppy. This is usually due to the video being captured on the same drive that the Video Capture software and OS resides on.
I highly recommend that Blizzard adds a function that allows you to select an alternate drive to be used for video capture. This is common practice in the Video Editing world and is well documented. This will also address the limited space on an OS drive (i.e. a 10k Raptor Drive).
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=1&sid=1#0 |
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Poster: Tigerclaw at 2007-09-22 22:56:29
Subject: Re: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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Q u o t e:
I have worked in the Video Editing field for over 10 years. I was excited to learn that Blizzard has added the ability to capture game play via in-game Video Capture in the current PTR patch.
I tested the Mac Video Capture function on the PTR today and found it to cause the graphics to be very choppy. This is usually due to the video being captured on the same drive that the Video Capture software and OS resides on.
I highly recommend that Blizzard adds a function that allows you to select an alternate drive to be used for video capture. This is common practice in the Video Editing world and is well documented. This will also address the limited space on an OS drive (i.e. a 10k Raptor Drive).
You didn't provide any details of which hardware you tested on, or what settings you might have tried to capture under, so it is somewhat hard for me to assess what the issue might be.
Nonetheless, we do have a way to capture to another drive if you would like to try that. You can set this variable in config.wtf:
SET MovieRecordingPath "/path/to/mymovies"
edit - OK, I see you are on a Mac Pro, I didn't read the later post right off the bat. If you could provide details of what res/FPS you had set up in the config dialog, that would give some more info to go on.
[ Post edited by Tigerclaw ]
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=1&sid=1#5 |
Poster: Tigerclaw at 0000-00-00 00:00:00
Subject: Re: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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Q u o t e:
As for the test I did yesterday; since I run at 1920 x 1200 wide I first try setting the Mac Options at maximum settings allowed. (Res: 1920x1200 FR: 100 Compress: H.264 Quality: High)
I then try lowering each setting to find one that wouldn't produce choppy game play. I started with 1920x1200 Res and worked my way down each Framerate. I repeated this step until I reach 800x500 Res, Framerate 30, and Quality at mid range. The 800x500 produce the best game play, but I had very bad screen flicker.
You should pay extra close attention to the data rate quoted in the setup dialog - 1920x1080x100 is beyond anything we've tested internally. You would need a drive (or RAID) capable of roughly 311MB/sec throughput in order to capture frames at that setting, since capturing is done to an uncompressed temporary format prior to compression. If you pick a data rate that is beyond your hardware capabilities, you will be more likely to encounter the symptoms described. When cpturing to a single hard drive of typical capability, staying under 20-30MB/sec is recommended for starters.
If you are seeing actual flicker where the contents of frames are inconsistent or incomplete, that sounds like a bug that we should look at. Feel free to mail any brief snippets exhibiting the problem (along with a system profiler report saved in XML format) to wowmacteam123@blizzard.com.
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=1&sid=1#14 |
Poster: Tigerclaw at 2007-09-23 14:26:38
Subject: Re: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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Q u o t e:
I understand completely. That's why I went through each setting starting from top down to test. One thing to keep in mind, most people will not understand video throughput rates.
I think the maximum setting I would offer is :
Resolution 1280x720 (HDTV)
Framerate 80
Quality High
Recording Rate is 117.524 MB/s which should work on a 7200 rpm drive on a S-ATA3 chain.
On the "Work Around" to the "config.wtf" file: I tried to enter the path for my video drive, but it still captured in my WoWTest folder on my root drive. It just created a new folder in the WoWTest root. Is there something I am missing with directing it to my other drive?
Also is there a way to set the Video Capture frame rate lower without effecting the Game frame rate? If so then I would expect to get the same performance as I do using a program called iShowU. I currently use iShowU at HDTV 1080p with the Apple Intermediate Codec at a Frame Rate of 30 capturing on my Video Drive.
Which 7200 RPM drive can deliver 117MB/second? I would like to buy some. In all seriousness we have seen Raptors (10KRPM) benched up to 75MB/sec (and up to 300MB/sec in RAID config with four drives) - and never seen a data rate that high with 7200RPM drives. There may be a misunderstanding here about SATA electrical interface speed compared with actual media speed.
It does seem obvious that some trial and error will be required for users that want to go higher than the defaults. On the other hand we did not want to put in any artificial caps on capture resolution or frame rate that would be frustrating to people with higher end systems or drives.
Mail me a copy of your config.wtf so I can look at it (please also include a system profile in XML format) -> wowmacteam123@blizzard.com. Usually you can get the exact path to an arbitrary folder by just opening Terminal, then dragging the folder desired into the Terminal window, then copying and pasting the text there.
2.2.0 doesn't allow for capture rate to be de-coupled from displayed frame rate, but we might add this capability in the future.
[ Post edited by Tigerclaw ]
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=1&sid=1#16 |
Poster: S4d1k at 0000-00-00 00:00:00
Subject: Re: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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Q u o t e:
On the "Work Around" to the "config.wtf" file: I tried to enter the path for my video drive, but it still captured in my WoWTest folder on my root drive. It just created a new folder in the WoWTest root. Is there something I am missing with directing it to my other drive?
This means that the path that you specified is invalid. If the game cannot create that folder it will revert to the default folder.
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=2&sid=1#20 |
Poster: Tigerclaw at 2007-09-28 21:46:16
Subject: Re: Mac Video Capture on PTR |
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Implementing the digital video style capture on Windows would be a lot less work than the idea proposed above. I'm not saying that the idea is not cool - it is - but it's a whole different ballgame from just streaming pixels onto disk efficiently and then compressing them later.
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778012305&pageNo=2&sid=1#26 |
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