Recording

While playing RCT3, video recording with SHIFT CTRL F11 will record extremely slowly but you'll see that when you play the video (viewing it in a media player or video editor for example) the video will view at regular speed.

Some of us have noticed that in a huge busy park that is running full tilt and flat out, SHIFT CTRL F11 might not work at all.

If you get to the point where your park will no longer record video or if you simply want to explore your recording options you can use a third party video screen capture program. Some screen capture applications will allow you to set the specific area of the screen that you want to record which is handy if you don't want there to be any margins to crop out later. Third party screen capture applications are more convenient to use if RCT3 is in windowed mode.

It’s also a good idea to remember that one shouldn’t increase the frame rate of the video recording application so that it records at too high a frame rate value. During installation they generally set themselves up near the highest frame rate they are capable of handling on their host system. Frame rates that are too high for the application to handle result in finished videos that jump from one still image to the next while showing very little video movement during playback.

Billboard Videos

It appears the only video file type recognized by RCT3 is the .avi file. We’ve unsuccessfully tried .wmv, .mpg, .3gp, .flv, .mkv, .mp3, .mp4, .swf and .htm files. We’ve also tried an animated .gif saved as an .html file. Apart from the .avi none of these file types will display in the billboards menu except the .wmv. Sometimes we saw a proper thumbnail of the .wmv file and sometimes we saw a solid gray thumbnail. Regardless which thumbnail was on display every time we tried to use the .wmv file a message displayed indicating the file type was unsuitble.

Here’s an image taken from the original video that we’re about to example. The actual image/video size is around 8” x 6”.

Here’s a screenshot of the video, under 2MB in size, that we tried on various billboards:

As you see all the videos display with black margins. It seems there is the same amount of surrounding margin regardless of the proportions of the video in relation to the proportions of the billboard.

We've noticed that sometimes the billboard display will hang and display solid black between the last frame of the video and the first frame of the beginning of the video. The larger the billboard the longer it hangs in solid black between looping.

Here is a screenshot of a still image shown on those same billboards. Note there are no black margins with the still image.

Now we've slightly increased the filesize of the previous grizzly bear video to a little over 2MB. We'll use the same billboards and the Alvin Swazonegger cheat. Ordinarily in RCT3 videos over 2MB are not supported. Technically the Alvin Swazonegger cheat gets us around this but the cheat will only load the large video files onto the billboard; once loaded they will not play or display on the billboard – there’s just a still image showing pixelated chaos.

Linking Videos To Your Billboard

If you’d really like a video on a billboard in your park, the video file can be linked to the billboard as if it’s a still image. Open the game, select the billboards menu, browse to your video as if you’d browse to an image, select the billboard, and there you are. You can place your videos in the same folder with your RCT3 billboard images in Documents\My Pictures or you can use the folder of your choice and then use the in-game billboard browser to find your RCT3 videos folder.

Videos can be successfully loaded onto billboards located in the billboards menu, or from billboards located in any of the various scenery menus. When placing, the billboard videos do take a few moments to load and during load will give the impression the game is hung and frozen but that will pass in a few moments. The larger the video file the longer the ‘freeze.’