We got the new silk codec yesterday I believe. anyone try it yet? Would it replace vent?
Sounds like it could be easier to just invite people into a chat rather than have everyone log into a vent server, but what’s the voice quality like?
Also, apparently someone invited for a tour of Valve offices came back with a report that Steam will feature in game video recording. It would replace FRAPS, I would imagine at that point.
Anyone here any more info about that? Excited about any of these features?
I tried it, and it sounds fine. Haven’t really tested encoding time which is pretty important for real time gaming comms since it’s not very useful to say “look out behind you!” and have it reach your target 3 seconds later because it’s a slow-encoding codec. But it seemed useful, quality was fine.
I don’t think it’ll replace vent for me - vent still has other useful features like being able to adjust the volume levels on other people, set your own voice activation threshold, etc.
The new steam screenshots feature is pretty cool, so if they made a video clip recording service where you could host the clips on the steam cloud attached to your account that’d be pretty awesome, so long as it’s technically competitive with the other programs to do that stuff. Video recording can be a pretty taxing thing on top of running a game, so I’m curious to see what valve can come up with.
The video recording thing is just an extension of a feature they’ve had forever, which would render frames from a demo file. It isn’t real-time like fraps; it’s like the Halo/GTA/Skate system where you select something after the fact. Because of that, there isn’t any load while playing and the quality is amazing. The new system is basically a wrapper to make it newbie friendly, which is great since it was a pain to use before. They’ve had it in the works forever. Maybe I’m wrong though. Buddy’s post wasn’t terribly clear. I believe it was called “Source Film Maker” instead of “Steam Film Maker.”
Aha, you’re probably right, the TF2 beta mentioned that. It’s like a theater mode for BLOPs type feature, right?