Ok, because it confused the Hell outa me, here’s a quick guide on how to make movies in Halo 3 using the Theater Mode.

Using the Theater

In Halo’s Main Menu select ‘THEATER’ This takes you to a Lobby screen -it automatically selects ur last game, but select ‘FILM’ to see a list of the last 25 games u played.

It tells you the time of the game, the map and the game-type (eg. Team Duals – Valhalla 14/12 9:00pm) and there’s a picture of the map incase you can’t remember which maps which.

Controls

It’ll now launch the game, as normal, and as soon as it starts u’ll be following ur player at normal speed, here’s some basic controls so you can get to grips with it.

(A) – Play / Pause

(B) - Show / Hide HUD and details

(X) – Show / Hide Playback Controls

(Y) – Detach camera (first click backs away, but still follows. Second click completely detachs from character)

Right Trigger – FastForward, and when you’ve Paused (A), the RT will slowly jog through if lightly pressed.

Left Trigger – Speeds up the camera movement, if you wana zoom across the map, LT will get u there faster.

Analogue Sitcks – are movement as expected.

D-Pad Up/Down – selects which player the camera is following.

Left and Right – Skips through the timeline, like chapters on a DVD,

Note: you cant skip forward until it’s loaded that far.

Filming

Ok so once you found the clip you want to record, get you’re camera in position, and play it through, to make sure it plays out as expected, note what time the event happens eg. 5:06. Now skip back to before the event eg 5:00, pause (A) and bring up the playback controls (X). Select PLAY, and get ready to hit RECORD just before your event eg. 5:05. Don’t worry that the timeline is visible, as this is something the viewer can turn on/off afterwards anyway. When you hit STOP, It asks you to Name the video and Gametype, by default it fills these in for you anyway, but u might wana name the video to something that describes it like ‘No Scope’. It’ll automatically upload it straight away.

Sharing

Now you want other people to see this video right? So go back to the Lobby, select film again, then select FILESHARE.

Now select a free slot (you six in total) and select the video you just saved, now selecting the video in fileshare will give you the option to recommend it to a friend. So send it to ur mates gamertags, so they can download it and watch ur movie.

Getting it Online

OK now this is a lot trickier, basically there’s no built in way to upload ur videos the the internet. So this leaves you with two options..

1) The quickest/nastiest option i use, is to point a camera/webcam at the tv and film the video as i play it back in the theater. Some tips, set the camera at the same height as the tv, and straight on, not at an angle. Now get it nice and close so the tv screen fills the whole view of the camera, this will help ur camera adjust to the brightness of ur screen. Hit Play in Halo, then (B) to hide the timeline, then hit RECORD on your actual camera/webcam. Upload this as normal to youtube etc…

2) is to use a capture card. This is a card or usb stick u can buy for ur computer, that allows it to record video input. This is expensive, with the cheap usb sticks startin at £30 and they don’t support 60Hz only 50Hz, so won’t work with Halo. If you get one, make sure it has the same inputs ur xbox uses as outputs, either the red, white and yellow phonos, the Red, green, blue composite, or ideally the hdmi. Capture the video and upload as normal to youtube.

Summary

Normally just being able to send the video to ur friends is enough, and this is all done nicely. Although its a real shame u cant upload them directly to the net. If you have footage from one of our game’s or something u’d like to put up on our site, feel free to send it to me using FILESHARE, and if i really like it, I’ll try n record it and get it on youtube for you.