I know its kinda long. Rep if you think this is good info. 01) What is it ? Battlefield 2's Battle Recorder is a tool that enables you to view a full recording of a match after the dust has settled. Invaluable for clans who want to analyze their performance. No additional files are required to use the basic recorder, but we're going to take things further in this tutorial and show you how to export your demos as AVI file. Lets start by launching BattleField 2 and a single-player map. 02) Lights, Camera, Action Recording a movie of your single-player match is easy. First bring down the console - the panel that enables you to type commands to tweak your game as you play. You do this by hitting (~) key. Once the console panel is down simply type the command demo.recorddemo (name) . This will begin recording your match. If you want to finish recording at any time, bring down the console again and type demo.stoprecording . 03) Multiplayer Movies Making a movie from multiplayer match isn't quite as simple, as you don't have control on the server. However, you can ensure you're playing on a Battle Recorder server using filters. Check the box for Battle Recoder when you search for a server and you'll see a list of servers that allow demo-making. You'll have to complete a full map, at which point you'll find a bookmark to the recorded demo in the lefthand pane under Community in the top menu. 04) Manual Labor You'll need to manually move the recorded demo file into another directory before you can see it in the Community page's Battlerecorder Library pane. Once your recording is complete, exit BF2 and browse to your install directory (normally C:\Program Files\EA Games\BattleField 2). You'll find your demo files in the Mods\BF2\Demos folder. Copy these and place them in the following directory on your PC: My Documents\BattleField 2\Profiles\Default\Demos. 05)Panning For Gold You can now view your demo in-game by selecting the file in the Community Battlerecorder Library window and clicking play now. Once the action is underway you can start panning the camera around: Press T to bring up the camera Rose menu. You can also use the spacebar to switch between players, and your right mouse button to alternate between player camera and free view. Use the W-A-S-D keys to move around in free mode. 06) Bullet Time Press Q to bring up the Playback Rose option menu and change the demo speeds, or use the number keys as shortcuts. Pressing 1 will pause playback, while the 2 key will revert the demo to normal speed. Its important that you get used to the different cameras speeds at this time because in the next step we'll add your own camera view and everything you do will be recorded permanently. 07) By Your Commands To ensure viewers see what you want them to see, you'll have to re-record the demo with fixed cameras. For this you must run an additional program called demo.cmd, via a DOS command-prompt. (Download this program from ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/misc/demo.cmd.) Once you've got the file, place it in the root directory of your Battlefield 2 directory (C:\Program Files\EA Games\BattleFIeld 2) 08) DOS'ing Around At the command prompt, switch to your BF2 directory by typing CD\Program Files\EAGames\BattleField 2. Now type demo.cmd +c yourdemoname yourdemonamecam and your game withh magically launch. Click join on the map screen to enter the demo. When the demo launches. all the camera movements you make will be recorded in a seperate file: the cam file. 09) The First Take Once you've recorded your fancy camerawork, you can view the results by launching the new version of the demo from the command prompt. Simply typle demo.cmd yourdemoname yourdemocam . Make sure you're happy with the cameras and speeds, going back a step to change things as you see fit. When you're happy we can move on to the next step" this will render the movie as an AVI file, so do make sure your demo is perfect first. 10) Window Jumping Using the command prompt again, type demo.cmd +r mydemoname mydemonamecam. This will launch BattleField 2 and begin loading the map; however, this time, once the map is loaded, the demo won't fire up. Its' waiting for you to select the level of compression with which to render your movie. Annoyingly, this option opens in a window behind BattleField 2, so you'll need to use Alt + Tap to switch windows to the Movie Compression dialog box. 11) Render Me This box gives you a number of options for rendering. The default format will give you a top-quality movie file but will be far too big for sharing. I recommend DivX: typically this will create a file of 10MB for every minute of footage. Tab back to BF2 and click Join. Your demo will play and rendering will begin. When you want to finish recording, press the R key and exit BF2. Your finished AVI will be in Mods\BF2\Demos in your BF2 directory. Insight: Before you render your movie, you can clear all the clutter from the screen. Simply bring down the console and type renderer.drawhud O to turn off the onscreen HUD and all its furniture. 12) Turn It Up Right now demos are rendered without sound, but Battle Recorder does offer some help. Bring back your command prompt, and type demo.cmd +s yourdemoname yourdemonamecam in the BF2 folder. You'll get audio playback of environmental sound, which you can record as your soundtrack using third-party software like Total Recorder (www.hughcruteria.com). Add your sound file and edit your movie using the free Windows Movie Maker.
