Finally getting to the point where it is time to make a trailer. What do you guys use to record your game footage? Been looking, havent seem to find a great solution.
We just directly use the simulator, with isimulate (app+SDK) to control multi touch and accelerometer from the device right to the simulator. Snapz Pro to actually record the simulator.
I do something similar to this: link Basically, record all inputs into a file during a playthrough. Then later play it back and save each screenshot. Finally encode all screentshots into a movie. It allows for smooth, 60fps stutter-free videos but it is fairly complex so I dont recommend it to for everyone. The link is well worth a read in any case.
For my Stacword game, I used iMovie to create a 47sec video with a mixture of screenshots and live action using the simulator. There's phonefinger.app which replaces your cursor with a human hand to make it look more realistic when showing the game play. If you want to go down that route. I thought about Snapz pro as it's very simple to use. I ended up playing a little bit extra and going with Screenflow. I thought to myself, it's only a few dollars but has more features than just recording your games. Allows more scope to use it for different things in the future, IMO.
I think you have a few options: 1// Record the simulator. If you need to use multitouch input, you'll probably want to use iSimulate. If your game is an iPad OpenGL based game, you might be out of luck... the sim often runs at about 20fps. 2// Record on the device by Jailbreaking or capturing inside your app. I've never done this. 3// Record using the HDMI out (iPad 2). It'll lower the quality a little and you'll need a hardware HDMI capture card (~USD$300?). Not ideal, but not a bad way to go if you don't have other options. 4// Get your game running on Mac or PC and use ScreenFlow (Mac) or FRAPS (PC) or similar. This option can be a good one if your code is all OpenGL/C based and portable. 5// Set up a dSLR or video camera. Can be good if you need to show hand interaction, but tricky to maintain quality. Need a good lighting setup and camera. We went for option 4 for our new game
I don't think anyone mentioned iShowU HD, which is what we use. We used to capture the Simulator, but OpenGL running inside the Simulator isn't always as smooth as it should be. Now that we've ported our engine to the Mac desktop we'll be using that as a source for future vidcaps.
We used PhoneFinger and Snapz Pro with the simulator: http://youtu.be/MnDvN45NsTY We will probably just record it with a camera next time. It's kind of a hassle using the simulator, and the performance on my aging Macbook is poor. This was our first video, it could have been a lot better.
Thank you. That video took literally 200 takes since I did it all in real-time. The next one we do will be a lot more polished for sure.
I originally started by using Sim Cap, and iMovie. But I was frustrated by the black bars on the sides of the screen and limitations in iMovie. And SimCap seems to slow down after you are recording for over a minute. So, I searched and found something called "ScreenRecord Studio". I am not sure yet, just downloaded the demo. I like that I can have multiple layers of video, and add a background instead of those annoying black bars. screen flow and Camtasia were also mentioned on the review site I found. But, ScreenRecord is pretty low cost.
Have you managed to get iShowU to make a smooth recording? I was finding it always came out a bit jerky. I got on better with the demo of Snapz pro but I'd already bought iShowU. Doh.
Whatever you do, don't use the screen capture in Quicktime. It uses H.264 or something and completely washes out the colors.
