From UDK to our Trailer video

I had to get the level I had made from UDK into our trailer so I had to somehow record footage and export it as an AVI for use in a video editing suite at a later date.

I wanted the game to appear as though someone was playing it so I couldnt use the conventional camera export found within the program itself. Deadline was looming so I needed something of a quick fix to my problems.

I downloaded a program called camstudio which allowed me to select a region of the screen to record. I fiddled around with the options for what seemed like hours as I kept getting poor frame rate or poor quality footage. Each and every time I tried different capture and record settings until I finally found the right balance.

To record, because I am such a novice at UDK, I am unfamiliar with how to export the file as a level and the method I tried to do this just didn't work for me. I read forums to try and find some fix but couldn't find the right answer to my problem. I ended up recording the preview window that is accessible in UDK itself, and using camstudio to record that specific region of the screen.

I managed to get a suitable piece of footage and was really excited until I played it back for the 5th time and noticed that an error message from UDK displays all the way through the entire piece. As time is running out I may have to use this piece in our final video, I will endeavour to find a fix before then though.

But for the time being, here is my UDK level:

It still needs to be cut in a movie edit suite to remove the bits at the start and end, but could feature in our trailer as an example of gameplay.

First version of trailer after decompression and editing.

This isn't the full trailer for the game, I just wanted to have a go at making movie files myself. Ryan has created the actual trailer using his mac and Final Cut Pro. Which will appear in a later post.

 Here is the storyboard I have made to quickly design how the final video should look.