Quality - Part 2 ...

OK so now I've decided to use Fraps, whats next for quality.
Well quite a few things:

• Game engine output
• Graphics card handling
• Editing software handling

For Part 2 of Quality I am going to concentrate on the game engine output.

For the UT engine there really isn't a whole lot you can do to make your settings any better than someone elses. Unlike Quake 3 which seems to have almost limitless configurable options when you see the movies, UT has nearly none in comparison.

To get what I believe is the maximum quality within UT I do the following:

• First and most importantly, make a second copy of UT. This allows you to edit the user/unrealtournament ini files without worry and also remove files not needed (eg. maps)
  
• Install S3TC textures, but also keep a backup of the old ones for them "corrupt" demos
• Install the latest opengl driver from mindspring
  
• Install EyeCandyLightHQ (see bottom of the page for your version, I used the first one)
• Go through each preference and turn them on or off (eg. coronoas on, decals off)
  
  
• Force the refresh rate of UT to be the same as your capturing refresh rate (eg. 60fps)
• Make UT run windowed and full screen at the same resolution (eg. 848x480)

The last 2, although not majorly important will help you if you are going to be using RypelCam.

Now comes the boring bit, start doing test captures.
Do them over and over again until the output matches what you want to see.
I am a great believer in doing as little post-processing as possible, so for example if your in-game colour looks superb but your capture colour is too dark, make the game lighter.
Once you are happy with the output make backups of your user.ini and unrealtournament.ini
Also make your current ones read only as the last thing you want is them getting corrupt or knackered and all that hard work going to waste.

Anyway enough rambling, Part 3 will deal with Graphics cards and possibly the editing software.