In-Game Cutscene Extraction/Conversion?

[Chandrila]

Is there any way to extract prerendered (i.e. not using the ingame engine) cutscenes from games and/or convert them into a Windows-readable movie format (such as mpeg, avi, mov etc)? Or is there a program out there that can capture onscreen video and audio and save that as a movie file? I only ask because I have several games that I wouldn't mind having the cutscenes for available as movie files. Any help gladly appreciated.

[delightuk]

Not easily! Most of the time thee videos are stored in bespoke formats - in fact some of them use the ingame engine to render them in realtime. When TV programs show clips from games, they use a converter on the monitor connection which converts it to PAL composite video so they can video it. You may be able to use some sort of capture program like Lotus Screencam - though I'm not sure it'd work very well. To get MPEG/AVI files you'd need two computers, one with a Monitor -> PAL Composite Video converter (or a Video card with TV Out) and another with a Video Capture card to record what's on the first computer's monitor.

[Twiguru]

yea i tried this with 2 pcs one (mightypc) playing the movie the other with recorder type thing on a wintv card. worked well got some good stuff.