Osu: Ability to save replays as video

[kerrytazi]

Sometimes it is not suitable or even possible to share replays of game with "osu replay files". So it may be cool feature to save reaplays as video like avi/mp4 formats with choosable framerate and resolution.
This way much easier for end-user to just click "save as video" instead of installing screencapture programs.
And sometimes on low-end PC it is not even possible to record replay.

[peppy]

On a low end PC where it is not possible to save as video, it will be just as impossible for osu! to do so. There’s no magic zero-overhead method to save video. It would need a full background render workflow which would likely take minutes to hours.

I disagree with implementing this at an osu! level when operating systems have this functionality built in already at negligible performance overheads (both windows and macOS).

[iptq]

i've been working on a program to do this for some time, although it's still undergoing massive rewrite (read: progress has stopped) to integrate with libosu. The idea would to have it be calculating the offset in non-realtime so you can still achieve nice fps with a low-end computer.

(example of emitted video: https://streamable.com/2g9o2)

[peppy]

The way lazer is written, it would not be hard to do something like this. I just think it's an unnecessary feature for a game to implement itself when external solutions already exist.

[AlFasGD]

It's never bad to have an extra feature despite the alternative options. It's just not of high priority, I would prefer to see this being implemented once the rest is done.

[peppy]

Disagree. Feature creep is definitely a real thing.

[iptq]

third-party plugin api when??

[ayrod]

This feature is the #1 thing you should be working on.
With replays, you can only share with people who already play the game. With "export as some_video_format", you can have your players post their clips on their Discord. Then sit back and watch your playerbase grow.

Using screen recording software is not a solution. It makes videos of terrible quality because it has to work in real time. And even if it worked fine, it still wouldn't be a real solution. When you say "use a third party", you lose 95% of people. The feature has to be directly available in osu!.

[peppy]

We have plenty of priorities. Finishing the game and restoring all existing features is higher priority than a new (not-so-easy-to-implement) feature for us.

We'll keep this on the back-burner though. You're welcome to start on this one if you feel skilled enough!

[Gabixel]

Of course, this is a good idea and can help saving time, but remember what peppy said...

On a low-end PC where it is not possible to save as video, it will be just as impossible for osu! to do so.

osu! isn't the only game that doesn't export an entire replay as a video. For example, _League of Legends_ saves replays with its own .rofl file format, but nobody is complaining about this replay feature.
One difference is that League also has a "highlights" feature that saves the part of the replay that you're watching at that moment into a .webm format (and you can watch it on normal video-player apps, but I don't know exactly its process between recording and converting it to video).

So maybe a good solution could be something like a "_Record this play_" toggle option before playing a song (but this is not for low-end PCs I guess), or even a similar "highlights" feature when watching a replay, and then save the recorded part into a .webm video (for example), instead of converting an entire .osr file in video.

Of course, this is just an idea, what I tried to say was that if this is not possible, it doesn't mean that _osu! is incomplete_ or _osu! is losing people_: new features are always welcome, but only if they are good, funny/enjoyable, useful, easy-to-understand or easy-to-use. [sorry if there's bad english]