Question Did you think Christmas was over?

What up everyone, I'm pretty excited about this one!
Did you think Christmas was over?
Not quite yet...
Here is a little riddle for you...
What do you get when you cross SimTools and a customized Screen Recorder?

The person that gets the right answer, gets to try out the beta app.
Simple, yea?
yobuddy

Video Ride Recorder!
It could not be easier!

Record a race, compile the video, and then take a spin on your new Ride Film!
Now you can really show of your driving / flying skills!

Guy's, I really didn't think this one was goona work, but its works so well it kind of blew me away!
I believe it is fully working now and all that is left is the End Ride Film end effects. (like fade out)
And NClabs and I are looking into the possibility off adding 3 sec count down to start clips on the front.
This way you don't get slammed into a race and it end abruptly.

The last thing i did tonight Is figure out how to save about 18% off the file size!
I gotta crash for now, I'll post more info soon!

(i tried to send you guys the file but its way to big for on here.)
(Send me you skype details in a PM and ill send you both a copy to play with.)
Take care,
yobuddy

I got to test the prototype out and provide feedback, it is simple to use and renders the video much faster than I expected.

Don't rule out VR videos just yet. If there is an easy way to render them, say once VLC has VR support, then I suspect it is still a future possibility.

Or simply send the pics to another pc (over tcp or something) to do the rendering?
Sounds like more testing lol

@yobuddy can correct me if I have this wrong but the way I understand it works from our Skype conversation is that the app takes a ton of jpg's and writes the telemetry to the file with every picture, then compiles the video from those pictures. So I suspect down the track it may be possible to do the same thing with photosphere images if there is a convenient way to render them to a VR video.

@noorbeast ,
That's right buddy.
It also records the sound, then crunches it to a mp3 and adds it to the Video.
It produces a Ride Film that can be instantly opened with the Video Ride Player and taken for a spin.
You can even open it up in the Video Ride Creator, and check out he telemetry you just captured.

I added ending effects tonight.
All videos get 1sec of ending black screen (no matter what).
This keeps all videos from abruptly ending.
And you can now select ending video effects.
There choices so far are:
- None
- Fade Out
- Drop Out (Screen shrinks to center and disappears)
- Drop Fade (Mixture of the above effects.)
And more can be added over time.

I also got Upscaling and Downscaling working excellent!
When Downscaling, the screen captures are reduced to save disk space.
Where as when upscaling, the screen captures are taken at native resolution and up-scaled when the video is made.
(Which also saves disk space.)
So I think all the Lead Out stuff is done, just the Lead In stuff to do left.
And maybe a final Gui.

This is pretty funny, (but ignore if you don't like geeky stuff.)
When we recording "what you hear" from the pc, we used whats called "WasapiLoopbackCapture".
Which works great for quality audio, but it has a huge flaw for what we are doing here.
It simply won't record anything is there is no sound.

It took me awhile to figure out what was happening.
Some vide synced perfectly, some off by a ton.
Some seemed to put sounds together when there was suppose to be a huge pause...
It would even stop recording if sound goes away. lol
So, hmmm, what to do?
Turns out you can fix it by playing a looping (1 sec) sound file playing nothing but silence in the background while recording. LOL
Sure enough, it thinks it suppose to be doing something constantly, and records perfectly.
Anyway, the workaround just made me laugh a bit.
yobuddy

Today's Progress...
Everything is done except the 'Lead In' vid(s)!!
(if you knew how long it takes me to make these 'ok' looking GUI's, you would feel bad for me lol)

Simple slim design.


With a Hidden Options menu (now saves & loads your settings also).


New "Capture in Progress" (slow blinking) warning light.


And one for "Building Video" too.


And here is what you get!
Instant Ride Films!


I added Hot Keys also (if i didn't mention it yet)
This works nicely so you can get to where you want to start recording in the game, and easily start and stop the app.
btw, if you don't like what you captured, no need to compile it, just start a new recording and it will start a new Ride Film project.
That's all for now, Take care!
yobuddy

The super simple interface is awesome and a snap to use!

@prodigy

Actually it takes the whole Screen Capturing thing to a new level.
Because not only does it capture the video and the sound of the game you are playing, but it also records the telemetry from the game also.
It can produce an instant Ride Film from anything you can play with SimTools.
So you can record yourself in a sick race, then replay the same race with motion!

Another Nice thing with the video rides, is that they all use the same Min/Max values for every vid.
So you simply setup once and then all the vid's will work as intended.
(you don't have to set each one up for the ride.)

Take care,
yobuddy

@paulopsx2
Well the recorder will work weather it is receiving data or not, so it will still make videos.
But the Video Ride Recorder is able to record live telemetry from SimTools at the same time as capturing videos, resulting in 'ready to ride' films for simtools.

So now you can make a game plugin for anything that has telemetry available.
And then make Ride Films from what your now able to use with SimTools.
This is just one way we can make Ride films for our sims.

The Video Ride Creator will be expanded to included allot of features we need for easily making telemetry files by hand.
(Or at least easier)
So we will get making them by hand covered also.
Take care,
yobuddy