How do people record Pinball FX2/3 Videos

[Iain1986]

Howdy,

I was wondering how people recording Pinball FX2/3 Playfield videos? Is there anything like the PBXRecorder for Visual Pinball that iterates through all tables recording one at a time?

Also, how do you set it up to show the whole table on screen instead of the attract mode?

Finally - The backglass images, where do they come from? And for people who use PinDMDv3, how do you record the DMD display for use in DMD videos? I know how to record videos with dmdext with VPinMame, but with dmdext.exe there only seems to be an option to dump all the frames out as .png files, do you then make a video of these all combined at whatever FPS it was displayed at?

Sorry for all the questions, i'm just trying to get to a point where I can produce all the media content I want on my own machine (possibly even megadocklets in the future too!). 

 

Cheers

-Iain

[Carny_Priest]

I have coded a script that records Pinball FX2 DMD videos using ffmpeg. It has not been updated for Pinball FX3 and it is not automated in the sense of reading through your xml and recording everything. You would run it one table at a time. I don't have anything for playfield and backglass, I usually depend on the community to make those, but there always appears to  be a delay in getting DMD videos done. I guess most people run in two screens and not three.

 

[Iain1986]

Does your script produce DMD videos fine with PinDMDv3 then? I've noticed some on the ftp "work" although the aspect ratio or size is maybe off as they seem to "wrap" round. Or get weird screendoor/grid patterns over the image. 

[32assassin]

I don't think anyone will make an automatic recorder for FX

given that you can record 2 versions of the video.

some people prefer "FLy By" videos with the default audio.

other people like the stationary videos with a separate audio. I don't like them because you have to start the game in order to keep the full table view in place.

When you do, some of the attract mode lights turn off.

 

Secondly,  we normally only get a 1-5 tables released at a time,  its a very easy task to record the videos one by one when you don't have to

record 100s of tables.

 

backglass images

all the backglass videos and images are made by users,  

find a HQ image you like and use your photo editing skills  and imagination to build whatever you can think of.

 

DMD videos

the video collections found on  the FTP are recorded by various users

unless you make one you are not going to find a full video set that works for your hardware.

I suggest you find a video that works for your hardware,  find the dimensions of that video

and  re encode all the videos using the dimensions of the video that works for your system.

 

[Iain1986]

Cheers for the info!

Main reason I asked was if I *was* going to produce my own DMD videos or the like, I might try and make it automated as I will have to go through 70+ tables :/

If Carney_Priest's script produces PinDMDv3 compatible colour videos then I'll just use that and see if I can automate it in any way.

Out of interest, this might seem stupidly simple..but *how* do you get PinballFX to sit in the Table view? The tables all "zoom in" on the plunger when you start....is that a game option somewhere to disable that?

[Carny_Priest]

I'm not aware of any camera options that do not zoom in on launch.

Here's a thread that has info. The script in this thread is old and was what I used prior to cabinet support getting added to FX2.

I do not yet have real DMD installed yet, but my current script makes use of freezy's alternate dmddevice.dll which I'm guessing you are already using. The mechanism for capturing frames is through display capture so you will need to use the virtualdmd option and displaying it somewhere on your playfield or backglass screen. Trying to capture from your real DMD with this method, it's not going to work.

Yes, your other option is to dump frames with dmdext and create a video from that. That's doable too, but you will have to figure that solution out on your own.

 

My most recent script is attached below.

CapFX2.ahk.txt