Possible to record cutscene sequences?

[deadweasel]

Hey fellas, just stumbled on the SCUMMVM project, and I have to say, beautiful work!
I happened to have an old original copy of The Dig, and though I was able to make it play nice under WinXP, your engine really made getting it to run so much easier. No more messing around with sound card settings! Yay!

I now have a question regarding the recording of video cutscenes from within the game. Specifically, can it be done? Or is there perhaps a way to convert the files (extensions: .san, .trs, .nut) found in the Video subdirectory to a more common format, such as .avi, .mpg, or even .mov?

I'm trying to show my younger brother, who lives out of state, what he will be missing if he passes up the opportunity to play this great game, and I'm hesitant to just send him my one and only (10 year-old) copy of the game unless I know he's really interested.

More importantly to me, I'd like to archive the cutscenes together as a small mini-movie, so that I can look back on the good old days, long after the CD has given up the ghost.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks again guys (and gals if any are involved) for your great work!

[SimSaw]

You need extern programs to do that. I would recommend Camstudio because it's free. You can also capture normal activities with it. I'd suggest you use a record window. To join the films together you can use VirtualDub or VirtualDobMod. But be WARNED: Such AVI things need a LOT of space on your disk! (Unless you prefer having long encoding times and low quality.)

[deadweasel]

You need extern programs to do that. I would recommend Camstudio because it's free. You can also capture normal activities with it. I'd suggest you use a record window. To join the films together you can use VirtualDub or VirtualDobMod. But be WARNED: Such AVI things need a LOT of space on your disk! (Unless you prefer having long encoding times and low quality.)

Excellent!
I was just exploring that possibility! I have a program called Quick Screen Recorder which does the same thing, but I'm having some difficulty getting it to pull the video smoothly. It could be the program, or it may be not enough horsepower on the computer (even though mine is pretty powerful).
I will try out Camtasia tonight, but either way, it looks like you're dead-on!

Thanks!

[SimSaw]

Camstudio was the name of my suggested program (just to be sure you didn't confuse it). Well, it's not really the program, it's rather the used codec. To avoid too big files, the program uses a compression which has got the disadvantage that some quality is lost. Of course you could try to use uncompressed pictures with some program (I think it doesn't work with CamStudio that way), but you would need a VERY, VERY, VERY BIG hard drive.

[Jake]

Alternatively, you could visit this site which has captured videos of many scenes from classic LucasArts games including The Dig.

[Kirben]

Hey fellas, just stumbled on the SCUMMVM project, and I have to say, beautiful work!

I'm trying to show my younger brother, who lives out of state, what he will be missing if he passes up the opportunity to play this great game, and I'm hesitant to just send him my one and only (10 year-old) copy of the game unless I know he's really interested.

I would suggest having brother try the demos of games, which can be found at http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/demos.php

[Dark-Star]

Of course you could try to use uncompressed pictures with some program (I think it doesn't work with CamStudio that way), but you would need a VERY, VERY, VERY BIG hard drive.

Actually it might be better to use a codec than capturing the video uncompressed, because it'll put a high burden on your disk drive which often simply isn't fast enough. If you capture 640x480x32 bit with 25FPS you're talking about 30mb/second sustained.
Try huffyuv as a codec (google for it, don't have the URL ready), it's pretty fast and lossless, and it does a good job on cartoon-style videos.
Thinking about it, for ScummVM captures, maybe even RLE compression would be enough.