You could always take video of your matches in Halo 3, but until now you couldn't do much with that video outside of your system. That's all about to change however, as Bungie has begun the beta for Render-to-Video, a for-pay service that will take your in-game video and turn it into a file you can download to play or edit anywhere.

The issue is that videos from Halo 3 are simply gameplay data, which is why they take so little space on your hard drive. To render all that information, you need some serious computing power, and Bungie is supplying that with The Contraption, a rendering hardware set up that will deal with all the data, turning it into sweet, sweet video.

Here's how it works, straight from the official website: "When a saved film or clip is in your File Share (or someone else's) and you want to turn it into a computer-playable video file, you can click 'Render Film' on Bungie.net and it will tell you the cost in 'Bungie(R) Points (tm)', based on the length of the file and the resolution you want to render to. If you have enough points, you can confirm your purchase, and a little while later your video will be available for you to view and download," the site explains. "Simple! (Well, simple for you. We have to deal with storing 500GB/day of new content!) There are currently two resolutions you can choose from. Standard definition is 640x360 WMV at about 1Mbps. High def is 1280x720 WMV at 6Mbps. That's full 720p resolution!"

That hardware isn't free however, and you'll be paying for points to spend on either standard definition or high definition video. Once you pay for your points, you can spend them on rendering some of your data, which will then be displayed on a webpage along with a download link. You download the file, and then do whatever it is you want with it. This will be quite the boon for machinima enthusiasts or people who simply want a compilation of all their best kills.

Beta participants will get a set number of points, but when the full service rolls out you'll be able to purchase as many points as you'd like. For hardcore fans, this could be quite the time- and money-sink.