Greetings Summoners,
I realize that it is perhaps a bit early to be getting meta with this blog (see what I did there?), but I wanted to take a moment to talk about generating content for it, specifically, video content.
Since starting this blog (since before starting, even), I have been searching for ways to easily capture and share video from League Of Legends. Last night, I waged an epic war on multiple fronts of recording, and screen capture. I have not yet lost the war, but I had to cut my losses and run after last night's battle.
I began with a streaming tool I had used in the past, called XSplit Broadcaster. This is a fantastic tool, and streaming with it was a breeze, but I was unable to get the free version to record a full-screen game as anything more than a black background with mouse movements. (That said, there is a game capture option in the pay-for versions, and a separate product, called XSplit Gamecaster that I may revisit in the future.) For the time being, it seemed, XSplit Broadcaster would not meet my needs.
Since starting this blog (since before starting, even), I have been searching for ways to easily capture and share video from League Of Legends. Last night, I waged an epic war on multiple fronts of recording, and screen capture. I have not yet lost the war, but I had to cut my losses and run after last night's battle.
I began with a streaming tool I had used in the past, called XSplit Broadcaster. This is a fantastic tool, and streaming with it was a breeze, but I was unable to get the free version to record a full-screen game as anything more than a black background with mouse movements. (That said, there is a game capture option in the pay-for versions, and a separate product, called XSplit Gamecaster that I may revisit in the future.) For the time being, it seemed, XSplit Broadcaster would not meet my needs.
At that point, I turned my focus to another game-recording tool I had been using for some time called, League Replay. I have been wildly enthusiastic about this software. Over time, I have accumulated 10+ GB of replays, saved as .LRF files. I've even written and distributed a small batch file script to simultaneously launch League Of Legends and League Replay, so that my every game would be recorded without having to think about it.
In theory, League Replay is the perfect extension to League Of Legends for saving and sharing game replays. In practice, it is a demon sent from hell to tempt you into eternal torment. The software is in fact, terrible. Just terrible. My 10+ GBs of .LRF files simply DO NOT WORK.
However, since I was so in love with the idea of this software, I began troubleshooting my problems. This was a fairly big mistake on my part. League Replay is so full of bugs that it is difficult to even find others discussing your specific problem. (Keep in mind that this is a fairly niche application! The online content surrounding it should be relatively easy to navigate, but it is not!) Fortunately, I found a YouTube user called, Tetos who has posted videos pertaining to my exact problems with League Replay. He even managed to correct one of my own mistakes in the usage of the program (you must wait for 3 minutes - sensibly, the exact time of the spectator delay - after a match for the packaging of the replay data to complete, otherwise your replay is NFG), but it STILL WASN'T ENOUGH. At this point, it appears that my next step in troubleshooting League Replay is to fully re-install League Of Legends, something that I am not willing to do on my limited time and bandwidth.
Some good did come from my efforts, though. In troubleshooting League Replay, I re-discovered a program that I had long known about, but hardly touched, called FRAPS. The free version of FRAPS does what I wanted: to capture snippets of game video. It's simple. It's effective. It's what I expected from the get-go. The only downside is that I cannot record more than 30s (which is a good thing, since I don't want to dedicate much of my computer's resources to doing so), and must have the presence of mind to predict the action that I want to capture, and the dexterity to start the recording in time to capture it.
For the moment, this will do. I promise that with time, I will have some nice visuals for you to accompany the discussion.
Some good did come from my efforts, though. In troubleshooting League Replay, I re-discovered a program that I had long known about, but hardly touched, called FRAPS. The free version of FRAPS does what I wanted: to capture snippets of game video. It's simple. It's effective. It's what I expected from the get-go. The only downside is that I cannot record more than 30s (which is a good thing, since I don't want to dedicate much of my computer's resources to doing so), and must have the presence of mind to predict the action that I want to capture, and the dexterity to start the recording in time to capture it.
For the moment, this will do. I promise that with time, I will have some nice visuals for you to accompany the discussion.
The Future
The future, for me, seems to be a combination of League Replay (or an alternative called Baron Replays that I have heard high praise of, but have yet to try) and FRAPS to get ingame-video, supplemented with an Xsplit product for streaming/vlogging. Fingers crossed!
Update 26/12/2014: Tonight, I received notice of the release of version 0.8.9.22 of League Replays. With cautious optimism, I downloaded and installed it. To my absolute delight, this update corrected the problem that had been preventing me from completing the creation of my replays. All the replays I have made since this update actually work, and I will be able to get League Of Legends gameplay video in the way that I hoped that I would. Many thanks to the developers for their perseverance.
Update 26/12/2014: Tonight, I received notice of the release of version 0.8.9.22 of League Replays. With cautious optimism, I downloaded and installed it. To my absolute delight, this update corrected the problem that had been preventing me from completing the creation of my replays. All the replays I have made since this update actually work, and I will be able to get League Of Legends gameplay video in the way that I hoped that I would. Many thanks to the developers for their perseverance.
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