Video capture

Basic (demo playback only - use external application)

Available on all systems.

Use /demo_capture start <time> - ezQuake will create a folder called "capture_[starttime]" containing a sequence of screenshots and a .wav audio file. To stop the capture early, use /demo_capture stop

To control the format & frequency of the screenshots, use /sshot_format & /demo_capture_fps.

An external application (such as ffmpeg) can then be used to create the movie file. Example of ffmpeg command to compress using x264:

ffmpeg -i shot%06d.jpg -c:v libx264 -preset fast -crf 19 -c:a ac3 -b:a 256k -profile:v main -pix_fmt yuv420p -b-pyramid none output.mp4

Create .avi directly (demo playback only - Windows only)

An extended form of the command is available on windows:

• /demo_capture start <time> <avi-filename>

This will create a .avi file instead of individual screenshots.

• /demo_capture_codec: sets the video codec used for compression (available codecs will be listed, if an invalid one is specified). If blank, video will be uncompressed.
• /demo_capture_mp3: if set, audio will be compressed
• /demo_capture_mp3_kbps: sets the bit-rate of audio if compressing to mp3

Recommended codec for this method is x264vfw, or for lower-quality, xvid

Note that currently ezQuake uses the older AVIFile Windows API, and is limited to producing .avi files. .avi files can become corrupt once hitting a 2GB filesize limit, use /demo_capture_vid_maxlen to split the capture up into multiple files, and then use a tool such as ffmpeg to stitch them back together again.

Using screen capture tool

Alternatively you can use a screen capture tool such as Obs or nvidia's GeForce Experience to capture, although you may get mixed results with gamma correction etc.

As ezquake is an OpenGL-based application, you may need to enable desktop capture in your video capture software.