I’ve spent most of morning experimenting with the TF2 engine and recording tools, after multiple attempts at recording a demo then exporting it to individual TGA files (and compiling in virtual dub) I found it a lot more efficient to do the dirty and export straight to AVI using the inbuilt tools.
In case anyone is wondering how to export demos to AVI from Team Fortress 2;
1. Start the demo
2. Bring down the console (~)
3. Type ’startmovie <NAME> AVI’
4. Close the console
5. When you want to stop recording, bring up the console and type ‘endmovie’
Although there is still a few things to be wary about when recording AVI demos using the TF2 engine, firstly be sure to run TF2 in a windowed mode as you need to be able view/edit the AVI settings popup. Secondly it’s a good idea to have either a Windows media codec pack or Divx encoding pack installed to get a good render.
Lastly audio, if you want to record the audio you’ll have to add more parameters after the ’startmovie’ command, you can find out what the parameters are by just typing in ’startmovie’ in the console.
