I'm very unhappy with the Theater Mode in Black Ops 2. I had some amazing multiplayer and zombies games I'll never get to upload now.. Don't get me wrong, this is my favorite CoD game yet, but a few things that are broken with the Theater have really pissed me off!
First, we were told we could upload videos that were up to 2 minutes in length. Well, videos over 1 minute that I've tried to upload usually freeze during the rendering process or stop and give an error message. It plays through the video fine, then when the actual rendering starts, it's very slow and gets slower and slower until it freezes and I have to shut off my PS3 manually by holding down the power button. When they don’t freeze, it says it finishes successfully, but then it never shows up on YouTube (and I know my CoD: Elite and YouTube accounts are linked because I can get short videos to upload properly).
>>UPDATE: I can now usually upload the longer videos, but then they have the audio/video sync issue mentioned next... Also, since I made sure that my controller doesn't auto turn off, it has never given an error or frozen when I Render videos.
[Errors/freezing when controller turns off was patched in 3/12/13 update]
THE MAIN ISSUE (AUDIO/VIDEO OUT OF SYNC):
Another big issue is that when I have been able to get a video to successfully upload to my YouTube channel, the audio is out of sync with the video (it’s a few seconds ahead of the video). If I try rendering the same video on different occasions, the amount of time that the audio is out of sync by will vary (usually 0.5 to 4 seconds). It also seems that the audio is more out of sync on videos that are longer or that were made from a lot of separate clips in the editor. This kept happening on a 43 second video that I tried to upload five or six times (and all other videos since). It also keeps adding a few seconds to the videos that aren't supposed to be there.. my 43 second video keeps coming out as 47 seconds (and when you play it on YouTube, it skips from 45 to 47 seconds). But that part is much less important than the audio being out of sync. I'm three months behind on posting videos because I have to find time to edit them myself to fix the audio.
What I'm even angrier about, though, is that the gameplays that are automatically saved get deleted after 1 week. That is completely lame!! I hadn't had time to try to work on this issue, but I had edited together eight videos (filling all of my video slots) that were just under 2 minutes and were freezing when I tried to render them. A week later, not only were those gameplay recordings all gone, but I couldn’t even load the edited videos that were made from those gameplays! I hadn't even played the game in that week, so no new gameplays were recorded. INSTEAD OF ONLY KEEPING GAMEPLAYS FROM WITHIN THE LAST WEEK, KEEP THE LAST 20 GAMEPLAYS OR 2 HOURS OF RECORDINGS, NO MATTER HOW LONG AGO THEY WERE!!!! You don't have to use those exact numbers, but what I'm saying is: some amount of gameplay recordings should ALWAYS be saved if there are no newer gameplays, NO MATTER HOW OLD. My PS3 was broken for about a year, and I haven't played Modern Warfare 3 in that long, yet all my edited videos and my last 30 or so gameplay recordings are all still there!! Take a page out of their book!!
>>UPDATE: Recently, my edited videos have become loadable and playable again, but when I try to render them, I run into the issues I mentioned above (audio out of sync with video, errors, freezing).
Lastly, a new issue.. Now when I Render videos, it almost always shows up on my YouTube account saying the video "Failed (upload aborted)" even though on my console it finished and gave the message saying it was successful.
>>UPDATE: This now happens only very rarely.
So to summarize, the big issues are:
** When rendering does finish “successfully,” the audio is always out of sync with the video and a few seconds are added to the video that are not supposed to be there.
** Rendering sometimes freezes or gives errors, or will finish but the video never shows up on YouTube. [this is now rare]
** Gameplays get deleted after 1 week, even if there were no new ones to replace them. So: IT SHOULD KEEP SOME AMOUNT OF GAMEPLAYS FOR GOOD IF THERE ARE NO NEW ONES TO REPLACE THEM. ESPECIALLY, EDITED VIDEOS SHOULD ALWAYS BE KEPT AND LOADABLE!!!!
Other, less important issues:
** Final Killcams are not shown in Theater recordings like the used to be.. we want those in our recordings!
** Emblems on guns do not show up in rendered videos (though they do show up when you just watch the video).
** It doesn't seem to record every game that you play.
** It will stop recording if there is a host migration.
Is there anything I can do to avoid any of these issues or does the game need an update to fix them? Please help!
>>UPDATE: I saw that they released a patch that fixed some of these issues for PC players on December 14.. Please release it for console players too!!