Bungie Details Halo 3 Render-to-Video Service

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Looking to satisfy the video sharing needs of the Halo 3 playerbase, Bungie is planning to soon roll out the public beta of its video-to-render service, which will allow players of the title to convert captured Halo 3 clips into computer-playable files.

Players that put game clips on their Bungie.net file share will be able to spend "Bungie Points" to convert the clips into standard video files. The service will provide two options: 640x360 WMV at "about 1Mbps," and 1280x720 WMV at 6Mbps.

Bungie Pro subscribers will automatically earn free Bungie Points, and point packs will also be sold. The public beta, scheduled to run until July 7, is currently open to all Bungie Pro members that registered prior to yesterday morning.

Two examples of video render quality can be found on the official Bungie site.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 13, 2009 2:01 PM

    You can render GTA4 videos to a 720p WMV for free. Bungie Points are dumb.

    • reply
      May 13, 2009 2:09 PM

      not on the xbox

    • reply
      May 13, 2009 2:13 PM

      bungie takes the file from the xbox to the computer through their servers. gta4 records from your computer to you computer. there's no video playback on the xbox 360 gta4.

      and yet, bungie points are dumb.

      but it was probably the only way to make this project make sense on paper.

    • reply
      May 13, 2009 2:24 PM

      Not the same thing Bungie is doing here

      • reply
        May 13, 2009 2:34 PM

        [deleted]

        • reply
          May 13, 2009 3:21 PM

          no, bungie is providing a service that is unmatched on consoles. They can choose to charge a fee for it if they'd like given that their is no competition for said service.

          Same thing with Xbox LIVE vs PS3 Online. Free service is great, but it's not always the best (this is a matter of opinion - ymmv).

    • reply
      May 13, 2009 3:36 PM

      You have to first understand that the player-made in-game Halo 3 "videos" aren't actual video recordings, they're an record of "player inputs" and when a person downloads and plays back a player made videos, it just tells their Xbox how to make the match play out again in real time.

      I say again, the player "videos" aren't actual video recordings.

      This means for Bungie to make videos out of them for the player (since Halo 3 obviously isn't on PC yet), Bungie has to use their own technology (probably something like a Gamebridge) to record each match individually AS it's being played out.

      Since you'd have to pay money to get something for yourself that'd do the same thing, I don't see why Bungie charging to do the whole process for you is unfair.

      Granted, Bungie could just patch in actual video recording software into the game and make a feature to send it from the console to a computer, but that's some hefty development time. Bungie has to be able to make a profit off something that's going to take a large development time, their employees still have to get paid.

      • reply
        May 13, 2009 4:37 PM

        They're called demos. Been in FPSes ever since Wolfenstein 3-D (1992).

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