I always find it difficult to describe techniques through words, or even pictures. Likewise, people that come to me asking questions about what they're doing and how they can improve have difficulty telling me what it is they're running into. I've found a way to create videos of myself playing Puzzle Pirates. I doubt it's the best way out there, but it works and it's free. Any videos you might find on this blog were made using this exact technique.
When I set out to try to find a way to make videos, I had a few goals in mind. I wanted it to be fairly easy. I wanted the videos to be of good quality. I wanted to be able to narrate the videos. And, quite importantly, I wanted the cost to be...well...free. This technique manages to cover all these goals pretty well. The only drawback I've run across is that the resulting video files can tend to be quite large. Perhaps someone else can find a way to compress them without losing too much quality but, as of yet, I haven't found a way (nor have I looked particularly hard).
Anyway, my goal with this post is to allow other folks to make videos the way I do. Hopefully, when people have questions or want to make videos of the way they do things, they can use this to easily make a video. Videos tend to make things far easier to share, in terms of playing puzzles, and such.
First things first. In order to make a video, you're going to need some sort of screen capture software. The first thing I found was Camtasia Studio. It looks like a great product but, as best I can tell, it comes with a 30 day trial and then costs somewhere around $300. The trial won't work and $300 is somewhere around $300 over my budget. So, while I think it looks great, it just didn't do, for me. I kept looking and found CamStudio. It's certainly not as flashy as Camtasia and it doesn't allow for video editing, but it's a nice screen capture application and best of all - it's free! Simply download the installation and install it from their website. If you need help getting it installed, they've created a video to guide you through the process. There's a link to it on their website, or you can simply click here.
Using CamStudio is pretty simple. I'd love to make a video of me using the video capture software, but I couldn't think of a good way to do it and I'm slightly nervous that the universe might implode if I tried, so, as ironic as it may seem, you're going to have to settle for pictures.
When you launch CamStudio, you should see something like this:
The first thing you need to do is to set the region of the screen that you want to record. To do this, have that little CamStudio window up and also have your Y!PP window up (please do not do this while playing Y!PP in full screen mode). With both windows visible, in the CamStudio window, select the "Region" menu and select "Fixed Region...". In the dialogue that appears, click on the "Select" button near the top. When you do that, your cursor should change to look like some goofy thing with a crosshair at the end. CamStudio needs to know how large of a rectangle to record. So, at this point, move your cursor to the top-left corner of your Y!PP window and click and drag to the bottom-right corner of the Y!PP window. Basically, you're going to stretch a rectangle the exact size of the Y!PP window. When you're happy with it (it doesn't have to be perfect), simply release the mouse button. Now that the capture region is set, click "OK" to return to the main CamStudio window.
With that in place, we can begin recording. To do that, click on the big red circle in the CamStudio window (far left). When you do that, you'll see a big rectangle border appear. Oddly enough, that rectangle should be exactly the same size as your Y!PP window. Go figure. ;) At this point, we've told CamStudio how large of a region to record - now we need to tell it where that region is located. So, move your mouse until that rectangle is right over your Y!PP window and then click your mouse. You're now recording! You should notice that the record button in CamStudio goes gray and you'll get little green flashing brackets around your window - these are all indicators that you're now recording whatever happens within those green brackets.
At this point, do whatever it is that you want to capture. If you want to capture yourself rumbling, go rumble. If you want to capture yourself sailing, go sail. If you want to capture yourself walking your pet cat from one level of your estate to another, go do that. Just be aware that everything that appears on your monitor within those green brackets is being recorded. When you're done, click on the Stop button in the CamStudio window (big, square, and blue). When you do that, CamStudio will pop up a window labeled "Save AVI File". Now, you just need to give it a location to save the data that you just recorded. I normally just save it to the desktop so I can easily deal with it, but go with whatever suits your fancy. And don't forget to give it a file name!
You can also set how you want to capture audio by going to the "Options" menu. From here, you can choose to not record audio, record from the speakers, or record from a microphone (if you want to talk right along with your recording). Often, I just record from the speakers but, if I know I'm going to be narrating over this, I might choose not to record audio, at all, so that the sound effects in the game don't interfere with my horrible narration. You can record from a microphone if you want to speak right along with the recording, but I don't really like that. I end up with lots of "Umm's" and "Err's" and silence. When I do narration, I need to know what I'm going to say ahead of time or it doesn't come across very smoothly. I'll talk about how to add in narration after you've already made a recording in a little bit.
Please remember that it will record *everything* that is displayed within those brackets. That includes the little CamStudio window, itself. To avoid getting that window in there, I make sure that there's no overlap between the CamStudio window and my Y!PP window. If you look at the video I've included here, you'll notice that the CamStudio window makes an appearance, or two. The reason is because I was recording the entire screen, so there was nowhere I could hide the CamStudio window.
Depending on how long the video is that you just created, CamStudio may appear to freeze for a little while. The longer the video, the longer it'll freeze. Just be patient - it's working. Once the file is created, a new window will appear - the CamStudio Player. This allows you to view the video file that you just created. Just use the play and stop buttons on the top to view your video and make sure you captured what you wanted.
So, at this point, you could be done. You've successfully created a .avi file that you can now share with other folks. However, you may not want to stop here. I sometimes want to edit the video (cut parts out or splice in other videos) and add narration. For that, I use Windows Movie Maker, which comes, for free, with Windows XP. Here's a quick rundown of some of the basics, although I'm sure you can do far more with it than just this.
The following section is also illustrated briefly here. (It's a video of me making a video...kinda weird, but okay.)
When you launch Movie Maker, you should see a panel on the left side that says "Import Video". Click that link and then select the .avi file you just created with CamStudio. It may take a few moments to import, but you should see a thumbnail of it in Movie Maker, once it's done. (As an aside, I've noticed that Movie Maker will try to determine where there are logical breaks in the video and split it up, accordingly. For example, if you start your video with you standing in a distillery, then play the distillery puzzle, and then leave, you may get three videos appearing, instead of just one. It's not a big deal - it's just your video split into pieces.)
The area at the bottom of the screen is your "timeline" (See image below). Drag the video (or parts of your video, if that's the case) into the white boxes at the bottom. As you do, you'll notice that your video appears in the black box on the right. You can use the video controls at the bottom to view your video here (although it's usually far too small and looks like crap, but that's beside the point). At this point, you can add narration by going to Tools->Narrate Timeline... (You'll need a microphone, obviously). You can also add some video effects, if you so desire by right-clicking on the video in your timeline and selecting Video Effects, Fade In, or Fade Out. In general, I try not to use the effects too much, but I do use a Fade Out in the video here.
When you're done, go to File->Save Movie File... You'll go through a little wizard which will ask you questions like where you want to save the file, what you want to call it, etc. Just answer the questions and, when you're done, click Finish. You'll have to wait a little while for the video to be created, but you can just let it run and walk away. The longer the video, the longer it'll take to process. When complete, you'll have a nice .wmv file, which will play in Windows Media Player and is much easier to give to people than a .avi file, which require a specific codec in order to play.
You may want to play with the quality setting. I often go with the default (best for playback) and, often, that works. However, I have run into cases in which the final video is of horrible quality and simply isn't usable. If that happens to you, all is not lost! Just go back in to save your movie again and select a different quality option. It's important to always review your video when you're done. Just remember that there's always a trade-off between video quality and file size. Better looking videos will tend to be much larger files, and vice versa. So, if you can get away with a lower quality, it'll be easier to send to folks. If you just can't get away with it, or file size isn't an issue, go with the better quality. High Quality Video (Large) tends to be a very high quality compression level, but it also tends to make large files.
I hope this helps people make videos! If you have questions, please let me know. I can always try to add to this guide.
