I decided to write a somewhat comprehensive guide on recording clips. Might do one on basic editing in Vegas later. Commence wall of text.

Thanks to the following people for contributing:
Pixel
Zant
Waldo

Recording your clip is split up into 3 major steps.
[b]1. Lawena Recording Tool
2. VirtualDub
3. Compression

[u]1. Lawena Recording Tool[/u][/b]
[img]http://www.tf2.com.pl/sites/default/files/images/editorimage/Obrazki/LawenaRecordingTool.png[/img]
First off, you're gonna need to record your game. For this I recommended Lawena. It's free, has a myriad of features and is relatively idiot-proof. You can find it [url=http://code.google.com/p/lawenarecordingtool/]here[/url]. When you start it, the interface is pretty self explanatory. For most movies, it is usually best to have a clean look, so disable all the unnecessary shit like croshairs, domination sounds, etc. then set the "HUD" option to "None". This will disable everything except the killfeed. Notable exceptions to these guidelines would include medic movies where the HUD (Uber percentage etc.) is vital, sniper/scout movies where you might want a small crosshair or Kunai frags where you might want to see the health. It is recommended that you keep everything consistent throughout the movie. Viewmodel FOV, viewmodels, HUD elements all that shit. If you are making a proper frag movie, it is recommended that you record at ≈500 FPS as it means you can do some incredible slow-mo stuff and it makes the motion blur look orgasmically good. For gameplays however, 30/60 FPS should be fine.

Next, you will start TF2 through Lawena and hit Shift + F2 to open the demo UI and select the demo you want. [b]NOTE: [/b]your TF2 will most likely crash if you try to skip to a tick. To prevent this, disable "multicore rendering" under advanced options. Then skip to your desired tick, hit P on your keyboard and resume on the demoui. This will start the recording process and your framerate should drop sharply, the higher the recording framerate in Lawena, the bigger the FPS drop. Hit P again to stop recording. You may now close TF2 and begin the next step.

Information on how to change HUDs/settings/configs/skyboxes that Lawena uses can be found at the end.


ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTED BY WALDO:
http://
teamfortress.tv/forum/
thread/4675-demo-buddy-a-tool-
for-launching-demos-recording


[b][u]2. VirtualDub[/b][/u]
VirtualDub is a powerful but somewhat complicated video editing program. Feel free to explore it, but don't ask me for help with it outwith the steps that I have provided here as I am not an expert in it by any stretch of the imagination. First of all, you will need to download VirtualDub from [url=http://www.virtualdub.org/download.html]here[/url]. Once you have installed it and opened it, click file, open and navigate to program files/steam/steamapps/*yourusername*/team fortress 2/tf and you should see hundreds of .TGA files.
[img]http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2divx/virtualdub_video_dsc.gif [/img]
Click on the first one in the sequence and hit open (the TGAs will be named "a1_xxx", "b2_xxx" etc. depending on the order of recording. The first recording will be "a1", second "b2" and so on). Next go to audio and hit "select audio from file".
[img]http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2divx/virtualdub_audio_fpm.gif [/img]
Then navigate to your tf folder and select the audio file that has the same name as the TGA files. Now go to video, framerate and type in the framerate you used in Lawena. Do NOT select match audio length as it causes [url=http://youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en&client=mv-google&v=osIE3om6ZDg]audio syncing issues[/url]. Then select colour depth (fuck you, it does have a "u"! :P) and click 24-bit RGB (dummy alpha channel). Then click file and export as AVI. You are now 80% finished.