Minema Mod

Minema Mod 1.12.2, 1.11.2 allows you to record smooth videos in Minecraft even at extremely low frame rates by turning the Minecraft engine into an offline renderer. This allows you to use very expensive rendering techniques which would normally be too slow for real-time rendering and capturing.

Minema Mod 1.12.2, 1.11.2 (Smooth Movie Recorder) 1

Technically, it can be compared with the startmovie command in Source engine or the fixed_time_step variable in CryEngine. If you try to record, for instance, an explosion of 1,000,000 TNT blocks with tools like Fraps, Dxtory or Shadowplay, you would get nothing more than a slideshow. Even if your PC is fast enough for the targeted movie frame rate, it usually produces less smooth results than Minema. But keep in mind that this mod is designed for intermediate users that need to record cinematic or experimental Minecraft movies rather than for “normal” gameplay movies.

With this mod, you can easily record ridiculously complex scenes, like 32000 eggs and arrows spawned simultaneously at one point with random velocity

If you tried to record that with tools like Fraps, you would get nothing more than a slideshow. Even if your PC is fast enough for the targeted movie frame rate, it usually produces less smooth results than Minema. But keep in mind that this mod is designed for intermediate users that need to record cinematic or experimental Minecraft movies rather than for “normal” gameplay movies.

How to use:

For Official Versions

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To start and stop a recording session, simply press F4. The key can be configured in the key bindings menu.

Recommended third-party mods:

Camera Studio – for smooth camera movements during recording.

Recommended ffmpeg parameters:

Lossy H.264:

-f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -s %WIDTH%x%HEIGHT% -r %FPS% -i - -an -c:v libx264 -preset medium -qp 10 video.mp4

Lossless H.264 (RGB mode):

-f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -s %WIDTH%x%HEIGHT% -r %FPS% -i - -an -c:v libx264rgb -preset medium -qp 0 video.mp4

For Unofficial Versions

Show Spoiler

Load the mod with forge.

Configure it by Clicking at Mods -> Click at Minema -> Click at Config

You should have three sections: Encoding, Capturing and Engine Overrides

Each setting has an explanation if you hover over it!

Here are only some notes to the important bits:

You have two options when recording with Minema:

Export every single frame as a tga file. (png, jpg or others are not supported anymore!)

Disable ‘Use video encoder’

Use a video encoder (ffmpeg.exe and you will have no hassle) to encode a video in real time.

Enable ‘Use video encoder’ and follow the ffmpeg guide.

Frame height and width:

By setting a custom resolution, Minema will resize the framebuffer and record with this resolution. This is not down/upsamling, this is the native resolution!

Use PBOs:

Minema detects if your GPU supports this and uses the old method if necessary. So this setting should be enabled all the time.

Engine Overrides:

Minema is for local world recording, obviously. None of these settings work properly if you are recording on a remote server.

And to finally use Minema: Press F4 to start/stop recording. You should here a chicken laying an egg to indicate that recording began/stopped. Simple as that.

Setting up FFMpeg:

Download the ffmpeg archive (see Downloads) and extract ffmpeg.exe which is inside the bin folder in this archive. Put ffmpeg.exe into your root minecraft install folder and you are good to go with the default settings.
But please use at least v3.2.4 or set the output color format manually to yup420p! Only then video files will be compatible with popular video players and editors!

Editing the video encoder parameters: The only interesting part is the ‘-qp 18’ part. This number might only be positive. 0 means pretty much lossless quality, the higher this number gets the lower the quality gets. (30 would be very lossy for example)

These parameters are effectively the command line arguments given to the video encoder. This in theory makes Minema compatible with pretty much any video encoder.

Search and download ffmpeg for Windows 32 bit

Search and download ffmpeg for Windows 64 bit