Making a movie of your Second Life adventures

Making a movie on SL for free

1. Download fraps at http://www.fraps.com/download.php
Fraps, a freebie, allows you to do video capture of whatever program you have on your screen. Fraps has a version with more capabilities for $39. Basically the freebie version will capture video to a small screen. If you want a bigger size movie, you'll have to pay.

2. Install fraps.

3. Go through the settings of fraps. (remember the general settings as you have to go into the program into turn it off or it is on all the time. It does have a slight lag affect on SL which can be a bummer when SL is also lagging so I only turn it on when I am "filming".
On the movie section, check the hotkey for starting recording -- it is probably F9. Also check where the movies are saved to and change it to the folder that you want.

4. Open SL, go to where you want to film (your setting)

5. Click F9 whenever you are ready to film. Fraps films is in short bursts. You will see a changing number in the top left part of the screen. When the number is red, you are filming. When it is white or yellow, it is done. So if you are walking, you will film the end point over again in the start of the next burst. Pay attention and check your short films. this will also give you a chance to film from several different angles.

6. If you have windows, you have a freebie movie editing program called windows moviemaker. However, just to keep things more interesting, let's download another freebie called Wax, a movie editing program.
a. Download it at http://www.debugmode.com/wax/download.htm
b. Install it.

7. Double click on Wax.

8. In the menubar, under "project" click on "add media files" and then do so.

9. Make a title image and end image as a jpg in Photoshop or Powerpoint. Add them into media files.

10. Add your title jpg file into the tracks under the 00:00. Decide how long you want it to last by dragging out the end of the file.

11. Add the next file under it. If it is just a video file with no audio, only one title track will feature the track. If you have audio, it will appear under the video track. If you don't want the total media file, select your beginning point by dragging in from the beginning point. You'll see that the beginning blue point shift. Do the same with the end point. Click in the middle of the file and drag it to the left so that it starts just after the title jpg.

12. Add the next media field under the previous one. Drag it to the right so that it is after the next file. Decide your beginning and end points.

13. Keep doing this until you are done.

14. Add the end jpg.

15. Now that you are done, go under the top menu "project" and click on "render"