Breakfast Topic: Home movies
by Deb Montague 
Sep 3rd 2011 at 8:00AM
I am a screenshot addict. Right now, there are over 2,000 screenshots to upload to our guild web site, which has close to 1,000 screen shots already uploaded. I've screenshot pretty much anything that moves and some things that haven't. And then there are the movies. I didn't discover my Mac's ability to make acceptable movies until my guild had been around for over a year. The early movies were grainy, but they documented some of the events we did.
After some study and tweaking, I've gotten better quality movies where you can actually see who the people are in the raid. I'm still figuring out the sound issue, so some movies don't have sound. I've made a movie about everything from helping guild members with Tethyr, to our Onyxia raids, to our wiping on KT in Naxx, to some of our more, shall we say, colorful events.
I decided my task over the next few weeks would be to upload the 84 videos I have stored on my computer and get them onto the guild web site. The 66 I have already uploaded have sparked a lot of comments of "Oh yeah! I remember that!" and identifications of who some people are in videos. These also serve as a visual history of how the game has changed from the end of The Burning Crusade through Wrath and into Cataclysm. I spent the day before the Cataclysm, Nov. 22, 2010, filming every Alliance flight path in the old world. When I looked at those to identify them -- wow, the world has changed so much. I look back at the gear my character was wearing in the movies. "Oh yeah. I hated those shoulders!" And I really miss the Arena axe from Season 3. I never should have deleted it. The movies are a history of where we've been.
Does your guild make movies of the things you do? Do you have someone who puts together polished movies with titles and comments and snappy music? Or do you have someone like me who pushes a couple of key codes and films what's on the screen? How far back do your movies go?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MoarHeroisms Sep 3rd 2011 8:15AM
I too used to record WoW movies on my Mac back in BC. It was an iBook G4 which wasn't built for gaming so they were all filmed with 10 FPS. 5 minutes of film would take a half hour to compress via game settings, which would crash the game if you were doing anything in-game. Tough times they were.
I wasn't much into raiding at the time, but I did have a nice, casual leveling guild where I'd run members through Vanilla 5mans and tape the finales. My favorite movie was our epic battle with Thaurissan in Blackrock Depths, where we pulled half the room by accident but survived while saving the princess.
I still record WoW movies on my PC through Fraps, mainly top-tier raid boss fights, but mostly I stick to old-fashioned screenshotting. Speaking of which, I have 10,000 screens on my Mac waiting to be organized.....I should get on that some time.
Nina Katarina Sep 3rd 2011 8:16AM
My daughter loves to take screenshots of random things in cities especially, for some reason, skeletons. She gets really excited when there's a city invasion, because that means she can go through afterwards taking screenshots of all the leftover skeletons in strange places.
I suspect my baby may become a goth in a few years...
Noyou Sep 3rd 2011 11:20AM
Cute yet disturbing at the same time. I too like taking screen shots. Not so much of skeletons. More just of the different places I go. I think I am going to do a series transformed as a Gnomeregan Infantryman. Kind of life size lawn gnome. Yeah. I have probably a hundred or more screen shots. We don't have a guild page yet but when we do it will be fun to relive the last year in screen shots ;)
exogenesis. Sep 3rd 2011 9:08AM
Our raid leader sometimes puts together well-done videos of raid boss kills.
Myself, I like to go on flightpaths, turn the UI off, and take screenshots of various locations I fly over. Or I do it on my own mount. With my new, powerful machine, I have developed a love of taking locational screenshots, for the sheer beauty it can show.
HappyTreeDance Sep 3rd 2011 9:22AM
I raid on an aging mac, so I can't take video during raids, which is a real shame. There have been some amazing moments that I would have love to have captured, but I don't want to risk screwing up my frame rate to get them. Hopefully when I replace my computer, I'll be able to.
Screenshots on the other hand, I have so many. I love taking screenshots, whether it be of raiding, scenery, or a particularly good RP session. My one friend and I have a hilarious collection of our characters in various holiday get ups that I keep saying I'm going to make a calendar from. Nothing like having a happy holiday image of a death knight and a paladin riding around on reindeer together. :)
pancakes Sep 3rd 2011 9:32AM
I don't take videos, but I should.
I take so many screenshots though. I was looking through them the other day & found my first ever screenshot: my Orc warlock on the zep to UC wearing those grey robes with pink trim from WC & a purple brewfest hat (I started playing about a week before the first brewfest). It really took me back.
I also use screenshots to document changes in my UI. Its been overhauled a few times over the years, due to changing screens or crashes or just plain being bored of it, so it's nice to see where it started & to pick the good bits from old UIs.
Xantenise Sep 3rd 2011 9:57AM
I used to obsessively screenshot everything when I first started playing WoW in '06. It annoyed the hell out of me.
Until I looked back on them. Now I'm glad I kept the records.
Noyou Sep 3rd 2011 11:24AM
I have a couple of the first guild I was in. A guildy of mine used to like to buy ore to level blacksmithing. One day he was begging for ore so I offered to give it to him for free if he would run through SW wearing a wedding dress. Still to this day I get a smile when I think of that night. He was a good sport about it and I have 4-5 screen shots to document the event.
patgamer Sep 3rd 2011 10:02AM
I thought 700 screenshots was pretty extreme.. but some of these commenters make me look weak! :P
I have all of mine saved straight to the external hard drive, plenty of space on that to keep me going another few years. As for movies I did buy Fraps back in Wrath, I was going through a 'world PvP' phase.. doing silly things like sneaking into the horde stronghold in Grizzly hills and taking my low level alts to STV for some fun.
I actually wish I had Fraps recording every single moment of BC, I got up to a lot of strange things when I was a newbie.
Caz Sep 3rd 2011 10:18AM
I've got screenshots from random landscapes to 4 maning horde bosses and some from icc raid bosses. I also used to have some videos from the raids from two guilds, unfortunately most of them are lost as guild website shutdown after the guild disbanded but i have a few on youtube and it is funny how bad i used to be. Until i discovered the addon Multishot i used to forget to screenshot good moments but this addon is lovely as it takes screenshots from anything from dinging a new level to dungeons and raids. I have no idea how many i have on my laptop but it is nice looking back and remembering those good times even if they are over with those players.
CDave Sep 3rd 2011 11:34AM
I was really big into PvP videos back in Vanilla and BC. I still have almost a terabyte of raw footage that I go through sometimes. I used to study them for fun to try and extract any group or 1v1 strategies. I got bored one day and started editing them and adding music. I figured I'd be cool and use some hardcore badass music but after I experimented with some fun (read: Disney) music, I realized how much more fun and deranged the videos became. So I did quite a few videos of that. A few of my guildies thought I was a serial killer after watching some of them, but they sure liked PvPing with me.
Samhain Sep 3rd 2011 11:38AM
On my iMac (2010 i3 version) I have experimented with movies a few times. I still need to find the optimal settings for quality vs fp/s. Would love to make some movies of special/fun/epic moments for posterity or even some kind of youtbe series. With free iMovie editing tools, the possibilities are pretty extensive. Too bad you need a separate tool for recording live voiceovers.
Weezoh Sep 3rd 2011 12:54PM
Heh, I didn't know you recorded that tethyr when you helped me. Those are fun :)
RetPallyJil Sep 3rd 2011 1:07PM
It's funny you should mention this, since I am in in the final stages of gathering up and sorting out six-and-a-half years' worth of screenshots that I've taken.
Total count? 14,105 now that I've taken out random duplicates and stuff that wasn't worth keeping.
They range from the ordinary (Me showing off my awesome level 44 gear) to historic (fighting the first Scourge invasion) but they are all precious to me :D
Revnah Sep 3rd 2011 2:21PM
Screenshots all the way! I love telling a story with a screen. I have screenshots of Revnah and her "husband" on honeymoon, of my warrior discovering Nagrand when she was around lvl 65, of several characters mining and crafting, or sitting under a tree meditating (try and snap the exact moment a Tauren closes her eyes. Took me ages, haha)...
I'd love to make movies but my internet as well as my computer are very slow and I'm afraid it couldn't take any extra program running on top of WoW :-/
Josho Sep 3rd 2011 2:39PM
I just have my own personal photo album of my undead mage eating delicious corpses in every environment, zone, dungeon or raid.
Don't look at me that way!
Tri Sep 4th 2011 4:10AM
I like taking screenies and making movies out of guild events and stuff. To me, it's not much different than bringing a camera on a vacation, right? :)
PS. you're supposed to use the cannons to kill Tethyr xD