I mentioned last year that Bungie was looking at implementing a render-to-video feature for Halo 3’s saved films that would allow you to view Halo 3 saved films outside of Halo 3 without using a capture card. As of yesterday, the render-to-video feature went live via a public beta open to all paid Bungie Pro subscribers.

the details:

- SD and HD renders have a point cost associated with them for each minute of film (and yes, 1:01 counts as 2 minutes), an amount currently defined by your Bungie Pro member status. Bungie has stated that if you need more points, you’ll be able to buy them. After choosing your rendering option, you will be told how many points it costs before you accept.

- File format is WMV.

- Feature/service is in beta – they’ve only allotted everyone enough points to upload SD videos, though they’ve said they’ll let us try HD out soon enough; only other beta testers can see the videos on bungie.net and the player is not embeddable – so you’ll have to download them then re-upload them to a hosting service for now if you want to show them off; Beta ends ‘sometime in July’.

As a quick test, I walked around my Sandbox creation 712342. I saved a 37 second clip, then put it on my Halo 3 file share and chose the ‘beta – render to film’ option for the clip on bungie.net.  It took the service roughly 2 minutes to render my video (and told me about as much) in SD and the above video is the result. It also gives you a nice idea of what my newest map is like. You can also view the video on bungie.net here.