How to Record and Compress Your Goals

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Biff
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How to Record and Compress Your Goals

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How to Record and Compress Your Goals


First of all, don't think that recording goals is technical and too much hassle, because it is actually really easy and can be done without buying any new software. So there is no excuse for not recording your best goals and entering them for future Goal of the Week videos!


Recording Your Goals


There are a couple of programs you can use to record your goals, namely Fraps (http://www.fraps.com) and Taksi (http://sourceforge.net/projects/taksi). Taksi is freeware and Fraps costs around £20.

If you use Taksi, create new settings with the following values:


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Make sure the "Capture Directory" is a directory on your computer, this is where your recordings will be saved. Also, make sure that Taski is open when you are playing and the green box is in the corner of your screen, otherwise you won't be able to record!

If you use Fraps, have the video settings set on "Half Screen" and "25fps".

The default key to start recording on Taksi is Scroll Lock and on Fraps it's F9 - you will need to change F9 on PES 6 to something else; I use F11. Just press these to start and stop recording.


Compressing Your Recordings


Video files recorded in Fraps and Taksi are uncompressed and take up a lot of space. A ten second recording takes up around 100mb with Taksi and around 50mb with Fraps. You will therefore need to compress your goals to make the file sizes smaller for uploading. You can do this in a number of programs. Here I will show you how to do it in Windows Movie Maker, which comes with Windows, and a free program called VirtualDub which can be downloaded here: http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/.


Compressing Your Recordings In Windows Movie Maker


You should find Movie Maker on your computer in "C:\Program Files\Movie Maker". Run moviemk.exe to open it then drag your uncompressed recording into the main window. Now drag the clip on to the top timeline underneath. Here you can trim the clip by dragging each end. Once you have done this make sure the Movie Tasks pane is open on the left, if it isn't click on the Tasks button in the menu at the top then select "Save to my computer" under "Finish Movie".

Name your clip and select the save location then in the next dialogue box select "Other settings" and then select "High quality video (large)" from the dropdown menu. You will now have a compressed wmv file around 4mb.


Compressing Your Recordings In VirtualDub


To open VirtualDub, double click on the VirtualDub.exe icon. You can then drag and drop your video file into it or open the file using the File menu.

If you recorded more of the highlights than you need, you can cut the video to just show the goal in the new compressed file. To do this, move the slider to where you want the video to start and click on the start button, then move the slider to where you want the video to stop and click on the stop button. The buttons are shown in the picture below. It is best to start your vid on the black screen before your goal and end your vid on the black screen after your goal.


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When you have your vid ready you need to set the compression you will use. Do this by opening the "Compression" link under the Video menu as shown in the pic below.


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You should select the DivX codec from the list as shown below. You will most likely already have the DivX video codec, but if it doesn't show up on the list you will need to download it from http://www.divx.com/divx/play/download/.


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When you have selected the DivX codec click on the "Configure" button to open the following dialogue box. With the free DivX codec you can only use the Standard Encode Performance, but to improve the video quality you should set the bit rate at around 3000kbps. This will create a file for your goal of around 10mb. You can set the bit rate lower to create a smaller file, but don't go too low as the quality won't be very good.


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Finally, click "OK" to close the compression dialogue boxes and then select "Save as AVI" in the File menu as shown below:


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You now have your file ready for uploading on http://www.sendspace.com/, http://www.yousendit.com/ or any other media hosting site. Make sure you use a hosting site where the goal can be downloaded and not just viewed.


Video compression error: the source image format is not acceptable

If you get an error when saving your video saying "Video compression error: the source image format is not acceptable" it is likely that you have an irregular screen resolution. Divx can only render videos that have a resolution that is a multiple of 4. To solve this, do the following before saving your vid:

Go to the Video menu and select "Filters...". On the window that opens click on "Add" then select the "resize" filter and click "OK". In the New width field, type 640 and in the New height field type 480. Click "OK" on both filter windows to close them and then save your vid as before. Make sure you also set up the Divx compression as mentioned above.
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