Demo Video Creation

Once you've recorded your demo, it's likely you'll want to turn it into a video to share with others. Here's one way of doing that:

1. Load your chosen Source engine game and open the console.
2. Set your graphics settings to be what you want the video settings to be. E.g. if you want an 800x600 video, set your resolution to 800x600. Also set whatever graphical niceties you want - you don't need to worry about keeping something that gives you a good in-game framerate, but don't go too high or you might find the recording takes an eternity.
   Warning:Be aware of hard disk space requirements for long videos. An 800x600 resolution generates approximately 1.5 megabytes for every frame. It's easy to chew through gigabytes very quickly and if you run out of hard disk space, Source will just crash to desktop.
3. Enter host_framerate 30 into the console, where 30 is the framerate that you want your video to playback at (you might want something else).
   Note:Don't forget this step! If you do, your audio will likely not stay in sync with your picture.
4. Choose a name for your video (it doesn't need to be the same name as the demo file), let's say you've chosen %videoname%.
5. Enter startmovie %videoname%_ into the console. (The _ underscore on the end of your name is not essential, but useful for later steps.)
6. Enter playdemo %demoname% into the console, where %demoname% is the name of the demo you want to record.
7. Sit back and grab a beer while it records your demo - it won't necessarily run in real-time. Depending on your machine and on the graphical settings you chose, it might take quite a while. When it's done, the game will return you to the console.
8. Type endmovie into the console.
9. Quit the game and browse to the root folder of your mod or game (the one with the gameinfo.txt in it, e.g. Steam/SteamApps/%steamusername%/Half-Life 2/hl2 or Steam/SteamApps/SourceMods/metastasis).
10. Here you will find numerous Targa files named %videoname%%framenumber%.tga and a Wave file named %videoname%.wav. Now you need to take these frames and the audio and turn them into a complete video, using the external video creation application of your choice, be it  VirtualDubMod (free, but poor UI) or Adobe Premiere or whatever.
    Note:It's at this step where the underscore at the end of the videoname becomes useful. If you've recorded two similarly named videos, e.g. lewd_alyx_gmodscene1 and lewd_alyx_gmodscene2, it can be difficult to tell when one ends and the other starts when you're just looking at a directory full of hundreds of files named lewd_alyx_gmodscene%somerandomnumber%.

Adobe Premiere

1. Start a new project and set the project settings to match those you recorded the video in (frame size, pixel ratio, framerate).
2. Import the audio (File->Import... and browse for %videoname%.wav).
3. Import the set of frames by selecting the first frame of the video (%videoname%0000.tga) in the same Import window, and checking the "Numbered Stills" checkbox.
4. Drag the set of frames and the audio onto your timeline, and line them up at zero.
5. Select File->Export->Movie... to save out your video. Remember to check and tweak the codec settings to get a balance between quality and filesize that you are happy with.

VirtualDub

1. Open VirtualDub, then go to File>Open. Browse to the Source game's working directory, such as "C:/Program Files/Valve/Steam/SteamApps/yourusername/Half-Life 2/hl2"
2. Open the first frame, such as %videoname%_0000.tga. VirtualDub will take a moment to load all the frames it can find.
3. Go to Video>Compression, and choose a compression codec. If you have them, DivX and Xvid are recommended. Xvid generally results in a smaller quality loss, but DivX is smaller and is more popularly used.
4. Click OK.
5. Now go to Audio>Wav File... and select %videoname%_.wav.
6. Go again to the Audio menu and select Full Processing Mode.
7. Finally, go to Audio>Compression, and choose MPEG Layer 3. (more commonly known as MP3) Choose a compression level. (If you don't need audio for your clip, you can instead go to Audio>No Audio) Click OK.
8. OPTIONAL: You can add a resize filter to your video so the resolution is brought down in the final video. To do this, go to Video>Filters, and click Add... From the list of filters, select resize and click OK. In the two boxes given, enter the dimensions that you would like your final video to be. In Filter Mode, select Bicubic, and click OK.
9. Now that you have set up your video processing, go to File>Save AVI...and choose a save path. When you click OK, VirtualDub will process the TGAs into an AVI file.
10. OPTIONAL: If you are processing multiple images, check the box marked "Don't run this job now..." at the Save AVI dialog. Then, open your next initial frame and audio file. You do not need to change any settings, as they are kept during a session. Go back to Save AVI, and check the check box again. You can continue doing this until you have all the AVIs qeued up to be processed. Then, press F4 to go to Job Control. Click the Start button to process the videos one by one.

VirtualDubMod

1. Open VirtualDubMod, then go to File>Open. Browse to the Source game's working directory, such as "C:/Program Files/Valve/Steam/SteamApps/yourusername/Half-Life 2/hl2"
2. Open the first frame, such as %videoname%_0000.tga. Make sure Automatically load linked segments is checked. VirtualDubMod will take a moment to load all the frames it can find.
3. Go to Video>Compression, and choose a compression codec. If you have them, DivX and Xvid are recommended. Xvid generally results in a smaller quality loss, but DivX is smaller and is more popularly used.
4. Click OK.
5. Now go to Streams>Stream list and click Add. Open your %videoname%_.wav. Now rightclick on your new audiostream in Available streams and choose Full processing mode. Rightclick on your audiostream again, and click Compression to choose your audiocodec.
6. Click OK to close the Available streams window.
7. OPTIONAL: You can add a resize filter to your video so the resolution is brought down in the final video. To do this, go to Video>Filters, and click Add... From the list of filters, select resize and click OK. In the two boxes given, enter the dimensions that you would like your final video to be. In Filter Mode, select Bicubic, and click OK.
8. Now that you have set up your video processing, go to File>Save As...and choose a save path. When you click OK, VirtualDub will process the TGAs into an AVI file.
9. OPTIONAL: If you are processing multiple images, check the box marked "Don't run this job now..." at the Save AVI dialog. Then, open your next initial frame and audio file. You do not need to change any settings, as they are kept during a session. Go back to Save AVI, and check the check box again. You can continue doing this until you have all the AVIs qeued up to be processed. Then, press F4 to go to Job Control. Click the Start button to process the videos one by one.