Rasteve:
I find Windows Movie Maker (WMM) to be very intuitive and easy to use compared to any similar freeware or shareware programs. Only problem is that it only saves in .wmv format.
As far as the tedious building frame by frame animations go, I suggest ZD Soft Game Recorder. The trial version allows one minute recordings of in game footage. These actual game recordings can be used in the creation of .avi videos.
Moreover, Fraps trial (30 seconds of video) but it doesn't have the options for reducing the file size output that ZD Soft Game Recorder does. There is also Taksi an Open Source game recorder touted as a fraps clone but I couldn't get it to work.
Actually, I had the opposite complaint about WMM in that it doesn't take an existing .avi file and separate it by frames (frame by frame). Instead it detects only certain transitions or key frames and spreads them out in chunks.
Still, we can use WMM to capture single frames for editing, only that seemed very tedious to me.
Alas, the biggest problem with using .avi in scenario designs is the file size, and although I've tried various compression codecs, none seem to reduce the files nearly enough to make them user friendly.
So, I'm still searching for a way to reduce the file sizes while maintaining a decent video quality. I just got VirtualDub V 1.6.16 (can't figure it out), and eRightsoft SUPER (very intuitive), both are free programs. So far I'm having some success with .wmv to .avi conversion only the audio was slightly out of sync. Yet, we are still looking at about 15 to 20MB for 2 minutes of video.
http://www.zdsoft.com/game-recorder/http://www.erightsoft.net/home.html
"I take it that this is the Anastasia Scud pines for?" - Epic Commander
"What Ana said. Use sugar and the whip." - aka the Pilot
"I think you will realize the emphasis was on Ana and Cake." - Monk
[This message has been edited by Angel Anastasia (edited 10-01-2006 @ 09:18 PM).]