Regular contributor to AusGamers parabol has written up a simply awesome step-by-step guide showing you how to easily record videos from Source engine games - including Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike Source - and get them online on the YouTubes. The tutorial covers how to install the required video editing software, recording the video from the game, encoding the video and getting it on YouTube with a minimum of fuss.

If you've ever wanted to show off your mad skillz, now is your chance - have a read, start recording and get to uploading!

Nice work parabol.

Nice work parabol.

+1

Nice tutorial! Can I ask why you leave out the audio compression though?

Using this tutorial, you actually end up with quite a large audio stream (even bigger than the video stream) It might not be a huge problem for short videos but if you really want to make your files smaller and quicker to upload then encoding to mp3 audio is a must.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8804/audicompression1us7.png
By default VirtualDub doesn't provide good quality mp3 encoding settings, that's probably why you found the quality to be bad when you tried encoding to mp3. You need to add a proper codec.

I suggest installing LAME ACM MP3 Codec http://www.free-codecs.com/download/LAME_ACM_Codec.htm (also free)
Then you will have decent quality compression options to encode your audio with.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7027/audicompression2ek0.png

last edited by Davetron at 14:31:03 15/Dec/08

last edited by Davetron at 14:32:16 15/Dec/08

davetron, good point dude - though Id recommend using the LAME ACM codec from rarewares (not for any reason, I just prefer it over free-codecs.com - http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-dshow-acm.php)

You can also bring up the demoui by pressing shift+f4 or something similar. Fairly sure it is f4.

It's Shift+F2

wish i bothered to figure out this s*** ages ago.

i could have been sitting here basking in the glow of all the positive youtube comments i would have no doubt been receiving for my epic spy vids.

I'm a Digg h8r but I want to do my bit to make this front page. +1 from me.

I got videos on youtubes of our epic first night of l4d no mercy expert finale. Only did it the quick way with fraps so its fairly terrible quality though.

hah sweet.

all those noobs in the comments saying that it must be on easy mode. we just make it look easy (after the first 5 failed attempts lawl) :P

you guys must have been on easy mode!

Nice tutorial! Can I ask why you leave out the audio compression though?

I figured it was a YouTube problem, as I mentioned in the tutorial.

I experimented with a range of MP3 bit and sampling rates, which sounded perfectly fine and high quality when listening-to/watching the output encoded movie. After uploading the exact same AVI to YouTube and playing it back though, the audio was just terrible. Never figured out why so I just stuck to keeping the original stream untouched.