How to create TF2 videos without using FRAPS or other external recording programs

With frightening regularity, I see people post TF2 videos with atrocious quality to Youtube, citing their "low-end hardware" as an excuse for the low settings and poor framerates in the video.

If you use FRAPS or any screen recording tool to make your TF2 videos, you are doing it wrong. Here's how you can create a video using max graphics settings with constant framerates even if your hardware sucks:

If you haven't already done so, you need to record a demo of the gameplay that you want to create a video from. Do this by typing "record [demoname]" in the console while you are playing and "stop" when you are done. Once you have your demo file, follow these steps:
■Load up TF2 using the settings that you want to show in the video. This includes screen resolution. If you are planning to upload to a low-quality Streaming site, I advise using 640x480 so that it will take less time to render and upload. If you're uploading an HD video to Youtube, use 1280x720.
■Open up the console and enter the following commands: "sv_cheats 1" and "host_framerate 30" (You can record at a higher framerate if you want a 60 FPS video for editing purposes, but most streaming sites like Youtube use 30 FPS.)
■Start playing the demo either via the console command "playdemo [demoname]" or the demo ui accessed via the command demoui or keyboard shortcut shift+f2
■When you get to the part of the demo that you want to record, type "startmovie [videofilename] avi"
■You should get a pop-up window with a list of codecs to choose from. I recommend using the XviD codecs. If the list doesn't include the codecs you need, you may want to grab CCCP or K-Lite (pick one, you can try the other if it's not working).
■After you've begun recording the movie, allow the game to play out. The playback will be choppy and look buggy and the sound may loop or be completely muted. Don't worry, this is normal and the finished video will not look like this. Just allow the demo to play until it's gotten as far as you want to record. If you have a lower-end system or you're recording a rather lengthy video segment, this could take awhile, so you might want to find something else to do while the video renders.
■Type "endmovie" in the console when you are done recording.
■The resulting AVI file will not be located in your TF folder. It will be put in your "team fortress 2" folder with the name you required, e.g. C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/bobsmith/team fortress 2/mymovie.avi
■Now you can import the AVI into Windows Movie Maker or whatever program you use if you need to do any further editing.

Now you guys don't have an excuse to upload 10 FPS videos to Youtube.

I saw that on the steam forums too and have some addenda:
- xvid really is the best to use; the only caveat is that there's a tiny little logo on the bottom right. It's easy to edit out, but if you want full screen glory, then you can just start your movie early in the demo; the logo goes away after about 10 seconds in the finished movie

-You REALLY don't need to record 1900 x 1200 or in 1080 HD for youtube, which is where most of these end up. 720 is fine. If you're machine is a beast, the by all means go ahead, but anything over 1080 is wasteful

-Even if your monitor is 16:10 or 4:3, you can still record in 16:9, either in windowed mode or full screen; the picture will be weird looking, but the video will still show up perfectly on a 16:9 screen or in the youtube player

- Do NOT use demoui or demoui2 to pause your demo, start the movie and then unpause. The audio will often be screwed up if you do this. You must just have a demo running, and then put the startmovie command in console

- Adjusting host_framerate speeds up the game, have "startmovie MOVIENAME avi" on the clipboard so you can quickly paste it into the console

- Note that the movie does NOT render when you pull up console; if you want to save yourself the editing and rendering trouble, just hit ~ and skip a bunch of the demo you don't want to render

Thanks guys.

cool