logo Sign In

Extracting cutscenes and gameplay action from PC game.

Author
Date
Author
Time
Post link
Hi all. I'm a big fan of the Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight computer game and I recently got the idea to take the cutscenes from that game and cut them together into a little movie, plus putting some gameplay in between the cutscenes when neccesary. Possibly fitting in some lines of dialouge from the radio drama to make the gameplay seem less gameplayish

I now turn to you for help on how to extract these cutscene files from the game, and how to record gameplay. Done right, this could be a pretty sweet little movie.

Thanks in advance.
N. Hanzon
Author
Time
Post link
Lately several people on the boards have been working on gameplay/cutscene discs. There's daveytod's 'Battlefront: Journal of the 501st', MoveAlong and galactus are putting together a 'Bounty Hunter' disc and finally there is Kaal-Jhyy's 'Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II' disc. That one has been around for a while and I have this disc. I can say it's extremely well done and while it is not an edited-together movie, it does have all the cutscenes (including alternates) plus related extras. I highly recommend finding someone to trade with for it.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

Author
Time
Post link
Since this is in the how-to section for future reference it should be posted that if it is a computer game then all you need is a screen recording program such as Camtasia, this will allow you to record the audio and video of both cutscenes and gameplay, but if the game is on a home system then you will need a video capture card, or any video card that also offers video-in capabilities, seeing as how I have never used one I will allow someone else to elaborate on the process of using one of those since I'm sure there is a better way of capturing the video from that rather than using something like Camtasia.
Author
Time
Post link
Thanks, klokwerk, for the info and link. I had downloaded the Journal of the 51st already (that was my inspiration for doing the this to DF II - JK) and I've seen the Bounty Hunter disc but I had no idea about Kaal-Jhyy's project. It seems very impressive indeed. Too bad there are no seeders left on the torrent.

And DarthBalls1138, thanks for the tip. I remember now having heard of Camtasia sometime ago. Do you know if it compresses the video it records or not?

I still would like to do this thing, since my initial idea was to make a movie out of the cutscenes, gameplay and additional sound elements, rather than just edit the cutscenes together. I'll look into Camtasia for sure, but if anyone else knows of a better way to capture gameplay into video files, please share it. Also, is there possibly a way to get the cutscenes extracted from the game somehow, like getting the source video files instead of capturing them from playing the game?
Author
Time
Post link
Camtasia gives you the option of compressing it or not and if you choose to compress it it will let you choose to do so with whatever codec you have on your system!