what's best for recording game footage

K

kingdomwinds

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
406
I tried fraps but i noticed that my framerate took a hit when i was recording. Is there any software that can capture game footage without a huge performance hit?
 
FRAPS is definitely the best one out there, and it doesn't cause any significant slowdowns for me when I use it, but another one you could try is Camtasia Studio.
 
FRAPS is hands down the best software for this... it works unobtrusively and very well.

It's some of the best money I've ever spent on software.

If you're having slowdown issues check the following:

1. The biggest performance boost you can get when having FRAPS record realtime video is NOT to record to the same drive Windows is on and NOT to record to the same drive your windows swap file is on. Let FRAPS record to a HDD that's not being used for anything else simultaineously, you'll be thrilled at the results.

If you let FRAPS try and record to your o/s drive (and the drive Windows keeps it's swap file on by default) then FRAPS will constantly be fighting Windows swap operations while trying to write the video stream to the drive. It's not pretty.

2. Remember that your frame rate is always going to drop to whatever framerate you set in FRAPS when recording. So if you have FRAPS set to record at 30FPS whenever you hit the record hotkey (F9) your frame rate will drop to 30FPS.

3. Having a multi-core CPU will help you immensely when using FRAPS to record video on-the-fly. This way FRAPS can use the extra CPU cores to process video while the main CPU core is free to play the game without any chugging or slowdown.
 
Honestly, the best option for this isn't a software solution, it's hooking a DV camcorder up to the S-Video output on your graphics card and recording to it.
 
Fraps is the best one out there. The reason you take an FPS hit for the most part is your overall hardware power and performance. For optimal configuration, you should have a SATA-II harddrive, a decent video card, and one of the newer processors (doesn't have to be new-new; just don't use a SocketA for instance).

The next alternative would be to hookup a digital camcorder to your video card and audio ports (using S-Video/DVI/HDMI + Analog Adapters for the Left/Right/White/Red audio cables to your audio port on your computer).

Although I wonder if there are any BETTER alternatives to a DV camcorder, because if I can, I would like to get as pixel-perfect recordings possible. If I record my desktop using a camcorder, the image won't be pixel-perfect because of the way the camera records/encodes the material. o_O I would really like some suggestions on this too.
 
Unknown-One said:
Honestly, the best option for this isn't a software solution, it's hooking a DV camcorder up to the S-Video output on your graphics card and recording to it.
Click to expand...


Really? Can you record realtime in super-high resolutions with crystal clarity with that option? Your option is going to be 720x480 at the very most and will be aliased to hell and back because of the double digital/analog conversion and interlacing.

I understand it's an option for some people, but definitely not for me.

Being able to record on the fly at 1080P (the native resolution of my monitor) is pretty damned cool...
 
Cerulean said:
Although I wonder if there are any BETTER alternatives to a DV camcorder, because if I can, I would like to get as pixel-perfect recordings possible. If I record my desktop using a camcorder, the image won't be pixel-perfect because of the way the camera records/encodes the material. o_O I would really like some suggestions on this too.
Click to expand...

If you use FRAPS it will record the desktop, but only in Windows Vista because of the way Vista's Aero uses the 3D hardware to render the GUI. It comes in handy for recording demos and instructional videos for friends/family/clients.
 
Here's a ~6 minute 1080p video of me fooling around in Windows... This was recorded with my paid version of FRAPS at full 1080p resolution (1920x1080) which so happens to be native for my 42" LCD.

http://files.noxtek.com/nox_fraps_playingindesktop.avi

It's about 70MB and encoded using DiVX/MP3, the quality could have been better if I'd made the file size closer to 100MB but I figured I'd save that disk space and bandwidth for something better. :p

If anyone has any game requests I'd be happy to do some clips. :)
 
Blue Falcon said:
Really? Can you record realtime in super-high resolutions with crystal clarity with that option? Your option is going to be 720x480 at the very most and will be aliased to hell and back because of the double digital/analog conversion and interlacing.

I understand it's an option for some people, but definitely not for me.

Being able to record on the fly at 1080P (the native resolution of my monitor) is pretty damned cool...
Click to expand...
He's attempting to overcome the performance hit of screen recording, only way to do that is with a separate piece of hardware doing the recording.

No requirement of uber-high-quality was made by the OP.
 
Fraps
Pros:
Best Quality
Easy to setup
Cons:
HUUUUUGE file size. Not recommended for recording 1 hour clan games.
Some games slow down to match fraps recording framerate. So if you're recording at 15fps, your ingame framerate crawls at the same speed despite having a 9800GTX!!! :( Setting fraps to 60fps speeds it up to playable speeds, but then your harddrive suffers trying to keep up.

GameCam
Pros:
Nice interface and overlays on the game itself.
Smaller filesize, you can record for hours!
Cons:
Setup is a bit tricky
High CPU usage
It doesn't do any filtering when rescaling (e.g. 1280x1024 game screen recorded as 320x240), there is no bilinear filtering so it'll tend to look blocky.
Some antihack programs like gameguard think it's a hacking tool

Main pros of the gamecam is the smaller filesize. You can habitually set it to record while you play without worries about your harddrive running out, so that if any interesting bits happen, you've got it on video! The image quality may be handled by using a better codec, but that would mean more CPU :(

Fraps is better quality wise, and lower CPU usage, but the file size prohibits me from recording more than 30 minutes. And the way it screws up the framerate makes it hard to use in high level deathmatches :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top