Demo Recording

Demo recording is a game feature which allows the player to record in-game footage into lightweight .dem files.
This feature is widely used by many players as it does not stress the game at all and the created files don't take a lot of HDD space, so they're very easy to share afterwards.

Recording

For capturing the demo into a video file, use this guide instead.

To record a demo file:

• Load up any level (or join the server, and open up the console
  
• Write a command record <demoname>. The demo will begin recording.
  
• Go back In-Game, and do anything you want to get recorded.
  
• After that, open up console again and write stop. The demo recording will stop. You'll be able to see the length of your demo in seconds.
  
• That's it! You can find your demo in your game's directory, for example
  \common\Half-Life\valve.

Playback

There are several ways to playback your recorded demo. If you want to turn your demo into a movie file, you'll have to use this feature. Here's how you do it:

• Open up console
  
• Write a command playdemo <nameofyourdemo>
  
• The demo will start playing back.

• Alternatively you can use viewdemo for more playback options like slow-motion, rewinding, pausing etc. However, viewdemo will NOT work with demos recorded on older (or different) versions of the game.

Recording with HLTV

HLTV is a tool designed to record better Half-Life demos. It works like an additional client and it can record every players' POV in the server.

You can download HLTV from Steam's Tool library by getting Half-Life Dedicated Server.
Once that is done downloading, head to it's directory and launch hltv.exe

You'll now have to connect HLTV to a server (like you'd connect to a server yourself using a console). There you can start recording the HLTV demo. Use stoprecording to stop the recording.

[whoops! something went WONG]

Hi, is there a way to playback multiple demos in queue?

[黑桃♡スペード]

I want to record single player level mode.

When I use the record command to start recording, most of my weapons will disappear :( Do you know how to solve this annoying loophole?

And when I try to record with HLTV, it can't connect to the game (localhost). I guess this is because the single player mode is not a server. Can HLTV only be used to record multiplayer games?

I hope to get your help :)

[rei]

What about NGHL recording? I see that when I am recording an demo in NGHL, It auto-ends on the frame when it starts loa- Oh nvm i can use that

[[FJC] Fusionhead]

Thanks for responding execut4ble! I've looked at the file in a hex editor. If I can figure out which hex string that is used for talk key pressed and then released, I can snag what's between. Then try to reassemble it. More digging :)

[executλble]

Yeah, startmovie would be a way to record the audio of the demo on the client. I've no idea if it's possible to record into a distinct audio file serverside though, sorry.

[[FJC] Fusionhead]

@execut4ble. startmovie looks like a client command only.

What I'm doing on the server side is enabling SourceTV in the server.cfg file and setting the record game option. This creates a .dem file like this for each map played and puts it in the hl2mp root folder of the server.

example automatically generated map recording with embedded audio track: auto-20190322-1013-dm_resistance.dem

Once these files are moved into the client folder to play them you type "SHIFT-F2" to bring up the DVR. I know the audio track is embedded into the dem file because I can email it by itself to others and they can play it on their client dvr.

The .dem file has an embedded audio track in it. Perhaps there is a way to instruct SourceTV to create an associated audio file like startmovie does on the client.

[[FJC] Fusionhead]

@execut4ble. Thank you. Is that a client command, server or both? I'm looking into to it. I'm running a headless linux server to host the game. If it works by commands or rcon, I can script it.

[executλble]

@Fusionhead, try the startmovie command, I believe it lets you record into a WAV file.
Should look something like "startmovie movie wav", then play back the demo and after it's done, use "endmovie"

[[FJC] Fusionhead]

In hl2dm, is there a way to save off the embedded audio files such as player voice chat? I record every game via SourceTV and sometimes players are abusive when an admin is not on. Yes, we still have a hl2dm server running for over 15 years now. My idea is that if I can export the audio track, either for each player in the dem file or the complete audio track for the dem file, I could do audio processing to convert them to text so I can then automatically scan for key word triggers that I can review. I think it would be fun to program this, probably in Python.

[ttv/tylergale 22 lamis place]

Thanks dude now i can have a bhop fragmovie