- Alex Trust
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- Exalted Heroic Member
I think I about pissed myself when i read the headline, but after reading what fine print there was, I about broke something.
The render-to-video feature sounds cool at first glance, but for all the players out there looking to create a montage or a machinima, this is by no means an alternative to a capture card. As a matter of fact, buying a capture card would not only be a worthwhile investment for multiple reasons OTHER than Halo 3 captures, buying a capture card SOLELY for Halo 3 captures would no doubt be cheaper in the long run.
Bungie's "point" system will work much like cell phone minutes in most company's rate structures. There's not going to be "partial points" involved. You will spend a point to render an SD video of "up to one minute" of footage, and a single point will likely cost about a dollar each (but hopefully cheaper). Most players interested in montage and machinima creation will be using clips averaging between three and ten seconds in length, with a montage average of fifty clips per video. Assuming the conclusion drawn about cost is accurate, a single montage would cost around $50 to render via the render-to-video feature. That's $50 you could be putting towards a capture card.
For the people who are rubbed a little raw by the conditions of the rendering feature, there's more than likely a lot of red tape and conditions behind the scenes that Bungie might be legally obligated to abide by. There are server costs to consider, bandwidth usage too. So there are reasons why they have to charge for the service, but I think many people would agree that there are better ways to go about charging for this kind of service. For example, if I were to render all of my clips to video that I have, that would be about 10 minutes of footage that would cost me about $150, solely because all of my clips are 3-5 seconds. Copying a cell phone company's rate structure feels more like extortion if you ask me.
The feature is a breakthrough, no doubt, and we're all going to use it, even if it's just with the free points that us Pro subscribers will get every month or so, but this feature seems to be suffocating in red tape. I hope this good idea doesn't get killed off by Microsoft's greed before it has a chance to really flourish.