Grand Thumb Auto XXVIII: The Sequel to Grand Thumb Auto XXVII

[toblix]

Well, that was awesome. If we remember one thing from tonight's game, let it be that I beat everyone at fire truck racing. I beat you all to a pulp!

Also, lots of awesome GTA racing, road blocks and shooting, and bonus: no boring prison sniperfest. Hope you got some nice clips, n0wak.

[miffy495]

tried signing in about 7 times, but never got to play. That's a full damn month I've missed now. :(

[Patters]

Missed it it see a film. should be on next week.

[ThunderPeel2001]

That was a rollicking good time! I think I'll definitely have to make this more of a regular thing now that I'm all unpacked. Next time hopefully my microphone will work, too.

Thanks for a fun evening!

Classic moments:

- Having spend a full 10 minutes in 1st place, being bombarded by JamesM with hand grenades after being caught up in his cleverly constructed blockade. Well played, sir.

- Being driven around by Nevinsky (I think) in Cops and Robbers and watching a bizarre pile up of NPCs that suddenly turned explosive... taking our nemesis Toblix with it, while we just watched in confusion.

[n0wak]

[Patters]

Probably not the best place to be.

[n0wak]

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[James]

I love how quietly demented it all seems without music or voice chat. This guy is just going about his business, as rockets fire in the background and cars drive into him. Then he rockets through the air without even the smallest of yelps.

- Having spend a full 10 minutes in 1st place, being bombarded by JamesM with hand grenades after being caught up in his cleverly constructed blockade. Well played, sir.

I like ruining things for people who are actually trying. And anyone else, to be honest. That in particular was great fun, though. I figured putting a roadblock immediately after a corner would limit people's ability to power through.

[jneeriem]

What a fun time. Sorry I had to run out early, I had something real to do. Which is very unfortunate. Anywho, thanks for the invite yesterday!

[Nachimir]

Gutted to have missed arsing around with the swings.

What setup do you use for filming n0wak? I have a flip camera I'm thinking of putting on a tripod next week.

[n0wak]

A very arse-backwards setup involving a TV Tuner card and numerous long cables, RCA splitters, male to female adapters, and male to male phono cables. If you pay close attention to the video, you might notice that only the left speaker audio recorded... I was short one splitter and didn't get both.

[jneeriem]

A very arse-backwards setup involving a TV Tuner card and numerous long cables, RCA splitters, male to female adapters, and male to male phono cables. If you pay close attention to the video, you might notice that only the left speaker audio recorded... I was short one splitter and didn't get both.

Sorry for being nosy about this, but I'm a bit of an A/V guy, so by TV Tuner Card, do you mean some sort of video capture card installed on your computer? If so, is the ass-backwards-ness a product of knowledge or budget? I would think you either split the HDMI or component output cables, sending one to your TV and one to a video capture card, even the pinnacle thingy would do that aright, and ... ok I'll shut up now. I could talk techie about this but will not for the moment, unless you have an interest in hearing such.

[jneeriem]

Oh and if you wanted to do multi channel audio recording, you could probably get the voices to go to your video as well. Though you have the option of sending mic signals through your main speaker feed as well, I just find the quality is pretty bad.

[James]

Sorry for being nosy about this, but I'm a bit of an A/V guy, so by TV Tuner Card, do you mean some sort of video capture card installed on your computer? If so, is the ass-backwards-ness a product of knowledge or budget? I would think you either split the HDMI or component output cables, sending one to your TV and one to a video capture card, even the pinnacle thingy would do that aright, and ... ok I'll shut up now. I could talk techie about this but will not for the moment, unless you have an interest in hearing such.

Doesn't HDMI have recording protection stuff that requires that you have expensive equipment to capture it? And isn't the 360 quite strict about all that HDCP stuff? If I unplug my HDMI cable from my monitor to check something on one of the other devices I use it for (I don't have a switch or multiple HDMI ports), when I reconnect it the 360 restarts.

I'd prefer to record things properly rather than pointing cameras at screens, but I don't really want to play in SD. Then again, I suppose I could live with it. But if, as you suggest, syphoning off signal from an HD feed – even if the syphoned signal was SD – is a possibility, I'd be interested in how it's done. I mean, clearly it's possible to split a signal and so on, but I mean if it's possible for a moderately interested home user.

[jneeriem]

Doesn't HDMI have recording protection stuff that requires that you have expensive equipment to capture it? And isn't the 360 quite strict about all that HDCP stuff? If I unplug my HDMI cable from my monitor to check something on one of the other devices I use it for (I don't have a switch or multiple HDMI ports), when I reconnect it the 360 restarts.

I'd prefer to record things properly rather than pointing cameras at screens, but I don't really want to play in SD. Then again, I suppose I could live with it. But if, as you suggest, syphoning off signal from an HD feed – even if the syphoned signal was SD – is a possibility, I'd be interested in how it's done. I mean, clearly it's possible to split a signal and so on, but I mean if it's possible for a moderately interested home user.

Depends on your budget. You can get an HDMI splitter cable for not too much, run one cable to your TV and one to your recording device. Now as far as the data being protected, I'm not as sure b/c I know you're right, with these digital signals there's more than just a stream of numbers representing the screen and how bright each color should be at each point. That being said, you can get video records that aren't in the $1000's of dollars range that accept component.

If you use a Mac as your computer this becomes easier, for example, there's this device called a BlackMagic Video Recorder, you can record 720p in component form. Now that just does video, to get the audio I would then split the L/R audio channels and get a separate product for that. If your budget is bigger, you could get something like the Matrox Mxo2 Mini. That's more expensive, but also has HDMI inputs and appears to do monitoring, which means no cable splitting. Basically, I think you set that unit up inline with your TV (so XBOX-Matrox-TV, still need to buy cords just not splitters), and hook the Matrox up to your PC (yes windows) and go from there. This device runs about 450 USD, so that may be way out of the "I want to record friends arsing around" budget, but could come in handy.

If you wanted to get the microphone audio included, i would get a seperate non-amplified sound mixer (Berringer makes cheap good ones) and run all your audio through that before going to the video recorder. By then you'd be set up to run your own video game clip website, so maybe this is all a bit out of what anyone here would be interested in. But would be cool.

[toblix]

Whatever you do, here's a tip: Don't record the chat.

[Nevsky]

I enjoyed this week!

- I came first, twice! (sex.ign.com)

- Thunderpeel, you are the most patient passenger I've had the pleasure to drive around. It was awesome seeing that bizarre pile-up/explosion/toblix-death, though.

- I love the airport map. I liked it last week with sniper rifles, and this week with rockets was good too. I particularly like being able to open up with a car and 'go crazy' - even if that usually means doing a weird jump, landing on the car's side, then getting rocketed.

Whatever you do, here's a tip: Don't record the chat.

I'd quite like a 'toblix-cackle' sample...

But, yeah, the chat is probably just a string of expletives, guffaws and meaningless babble.

(...we should make a podcast!)

[jneeriem]

It could be called Grand Thumb Radio...

[James]

If you use a Mac as your computer this becomes easier, for example, there's this device called a BlackMagic Video Recorder, you can record 720p in component form. Now that just does video, to get the audio I would then split the L/R audio channels and get a separate product for that. If your budget is bigger, you could get something like the Matrox Mxo2 Mini. That's more expensive, but also has HDMI inputs and appears to do monitoring, which means no cable splitting. Basically, I think you set that unit up inline with your TV (so XBOX-Matrox-TV, still need to buy cords just not splitters), and hook the Matrox up to your PC (yes windows) and go from there. This device runs about 450 USD, so that may be way out of the "I want to record friends arsing around" budget, but could come in handy.

If you wanted to get the microphone audio included, i would get a seperate non-amplified sound mixer (Berringer makes cheap good ones) and run all your audio through that before going to the video recorder. By then you'd be set up to run your own video game clip website, so maybe this is all a bit out of what anyone here would be interested in. But would be cool.

Yeah, that would be very cool, and I do have a compulsion to record things (I used to record the conversations my friends and I had at the pub), but I'm not sure I can really justify spending any real money on it, especially since I hardly ever do anything with any of this junk. I just like the idea of preserving things.

It's like how I'd like to own a load of music and audio hardware, but all I'd do is twiddle around with it for my own amusement, so I'd be basically spending hundreds of pounds on a toy. Wait...

[jneeriem]

I found myself going out to shop for laptops yesterday as if I were really interested in the video capture thing. Fortunately I'm in the market for some audio gear for some of my musical endeavors, so maybe some video capture equipment will just tag along...