Good guide, but like others said, slightly outdated/suboptimal. Some notes:
- About motion blur / frame blending:
I think people should not bother with frameblending/motionblur if they go beneath a 8x blend rate, which means 30x8=240 host_framerate on a normal youtube 30fps video. Anything lower looks blurry and ugly, I'd much rather look at unblended crisp raw 30fps video in that case.
Bottom line: If you cba with recording at 240+ fps, just go for 30fps straight outta TF2, it's a much faster and resource-light workflow anyway. Also prefer SrcDemo2 frameblending over Vegas frameblending because of HD space and quality reasons. Watch out if you go into slowmo with SrcDemo2 though, you will have to go into extremely high framerates.
- Tip for the Virtualdub TGA->AVI stage, will save you loads of HD space:
Don't export uncompressed from virtualdub, as your hard drive will be full before you know it. Install http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html , a lossless compression codec, meaning that you won't lose quality exporting from virtualdub for further editing, but you will get a smaller filesize compared to not compressing the video at all. How to use: Before you "save as .avi", go to Video -> Compression, and select Lagarith Lossless Codec. My settings: http://prntscr.com/miokk
- Tip for for people who don't want to edit big fragvideos, but just want superfast single-clip processing and uploading:
You can work with just VirtualDub; no other apps required. Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/ which will add the x264 encoder to the list of compression codecs in VirtualDub's Video -> Compression. My settings: http://prntscr.com/miof7 (make sure zero latency and virtualdub hack are ticked!) You can also use multipass encoding for better quality at a smaller filesize, but I usually don't bother, as this tf2->vdub->youtube method is used for quick and dirty exporting anyway.
(Installing x264vfw will also make this encoder show up in the "Video Format" dropdown box in the Customize Template dialog box of Vegas "Render As" stage; so you will be able to export directly to a small-size Youtube-compatible format from Vegas.)
- About Sony Vegas:
This is basically a subject for a whole new thread, but: I really do not understand why Vegas Pro has become the "fragmovie industry standard". Maybe because it's easy to pirate? Because it has a few consumer level ease of use options (at the cost of other features)? It's simply a way inferior product compared to Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro (I've been editing as a side-thing for about 10 years and produced various sorts content in all 3 NLEs).
I recommend anyone who hasn't grown too attached to Vegas, or is completely new to video editing, to skip Sony's version of Windows Movie Maker and go for a fully featured editor instantly. Pp and FCP aren't rocket science, the basics of movie editing are the same in any of these apps, yet they will save you much annoyances, bugs, crashes, and offer many tiny features that will make your editing workflow so much faster and efficient.
About AE: I wouldn't recommend anyone to edit their movies in After Effects, it's simply not built for that (the way it displays and handles the organisation and manipulation of video clips in the timeline seems almost purposely made impractical, so Adobe wasn't competing with their own Pp software).
- About framerate settings in Virtualdub
Most people seem to agree that the proper setting is to sync video framerate to audio length, however, this should not be the "correct" way of doing things, as you'd end up with clips that all slightly vary in framerate, which can lead to some problems in your editor or finished product (for instance, pull up/down artifacts). I've been outputting from VirtualDub at a flat framerate (normally 30) instead of syncing to audio length, and I'm not noticing any desync.