Video Capturing

[wutae]

Hello, before ~2 months mmo-champion shown us a video capturing program named : camstudio, on the other hand most people who are using video capturing programs for gaming, propably already know fraps. My problem is that both of them have the same problem, they are annoying to use when you play arena, they drop the frames down to ~30 and makes the game annoying to play, myself using this computer:


Motherboard : Asus P5N-E SLI
GFX Card : Geforce 8600 GTS
CPU : Quad Core @ 2.4
HDD : Raptor 64G @ 10.000 Rps
HDD2 : WD 500G @ 7200 RPS
Ram : 3Giga @ 800 Mhz Using windows XP Pro Sp3 or 6Giga @ 800 Mhz Using Vista ultimate x64

My problem is that i want to find a Video Capturing Program that will not reduce my frames down to a rate that will effect my gaming.

Any program that manages to work @ 50 Fps will be perfect.
P.S i haven't tested the latest Fraps so if you got a link with a licensed version that works, will be appreciated.

 

[Zerubiel Propane]

Fraps or GameCam is your best chances.

If you need a licensed/cracked version, i will say two things:

Emule, or pay the price.

 

[Rellik]

Use fraps select a higher frame rate so that you record in 60 fps or it will drop you down to 30 (standard setting)
asign it to a diffrent core then the one you are using for your game and go for it

 

[Kinetix]

Fraps or GameCam is your best chances.

If you need a licensed/cracked version, i will say two things:

Emule, or pay the price.

actually you can get camtasia studio for free Theres even a portable version of it that you can carry on your usb pen. Fraps on emule is filled with trojans and virus so...theres also gamecam

if you have a tv card and a dual exit video card (most video cards now have) just go to windows and select second screen to clone 1rst screen and then connect second exit to tv card input. You can then use second pc to record what you are seeing in 1rst pc and without loss of framerate.

 

[Raven]

Emule

Only a complete moron would use that

 

[Ominous]

actually you can get camtasia studio for free Theres even a portable version of it that you can carry on your usb pen. Fraps on emule is filled with trojans and virus so...theres also gamecam

if you have a tv card and a dual exit video card (most video cards now have) just go to windows and select second screen to clone 1rst screen and then connect second exit to tv card input. You can then use second pc to record what you are seeing in 1rst pc and without loss of framerate.

That is very clever and a great way to record game play. I knew a guy that used to play games and record his game play onto a video. He did it by using a tv card connected to a video recorder. He would then send his videos to people that wanted to know how to overcome a certain part of a game. He was inundated with requests and could well have made a lot of money from it. He wasn't bothered but the system he used is similar to how Kinetix has described it as his game play wasn't affected in the least.

 

[Raven]

Only problem with that is your restriction on resolution, I tried it for a while and decided the slight drop in picture quality in using fraps was far less bothersome than playing a game at a clunky resolution

Oh and the latest version you have to pay for it (along with any other version) its like $15 for a life time subscription, well worth it when you realise its just some guy who has made it, not some corp. FRAPS show fps, record video game movies, screen capture software

 

[wutae]

Use fraps select a higher frame rate so that you record in 60 fps or it will drop you down to 30 (standard setting)
asign it to a diffrent core then the one you are using for your game and go for it

how i can do that ? asign to a different core ? Oo i know that most games use only one of the cores. but how i can asign fraps to use another core ? Oo

 

[wutae]

actually you can get camtasia studio for free Theres even a portable version of it that you can carry on your usb pen. Fraps on emule is filled with trojans and virus so...theres also gamecam

if you have a tv card and a dual exit video card (most video cards now have) just go to windows and select second screen to clone 1rst screen and then connect second exit to tv card input. You can then use second pc to record what you are seeing in 1rst pc and without loss of framerate.

very nice way, but i trully beleive that in 2008 there MUST be an easier way ;e moreover i am already using my second DVI output because i am using a dual screen to my computer

 

[Kinetix]

well you could have a quadcore 4000 with 4gb ram still wouldnt matter, your main problem is HD access speed. While using fraps for example your recording on a mpeg1 video with takes iirc takes around 10mbs, most hard drives today are 7200rpm wich cant take that much input even with sata cables. Either you have a SCSI HD or you´r in a lot of trouble

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

My problem is that i want to find a Video Capturing Program that will not reduce my frames down to a rate that will effect my gaming.

Will not happen. All programs hook into DirectX calls and at some point they have to write the data to a hard disk and that will slow down your system, if the data is uncompressed due to the amount of data being written and if you compress while recording due to the encoding the CPU has to deal with.

If you don't want to reduce your frame rates you have to use a machine that doesn't use much CPU cycles when writing to disk (e.g. different HD, SCSI) and use hardware compression (internal or external card). Problem with those cards is that only the expensive ones offer full resolution support.

 

[wutae]

as u saw above i got two HDDs once that i use windows and have installed my game with 10.000 rps and another for recording the video. i dont think that's the issue. moreover i got 6giga ram and not 4 .

Anyways i guess i will either have to record with a tv and a dvd rw or i will have to get used to play @ ~30fps.

Anyhow if someone managed to frap in 50+ fps let me know please

thnx for your time people

P.S i made the same question to 5 different forums, and only with this one i had a proper conversation ^^

Hope to see you all @ WAR

 

[Septina]

I run Fraps 2.9.4 i think, recording in 1280x1024, 60fps, full size and i dont get any noticeable fps drop while recording.
Have Fraps + the game on one disc and am recording to another disc.
As has been mentioned before tho, TV-out to TV-in recording is by far the best way to go tho but it's a bit of a process to get it working.

 

[Beltorak]

Think the writing to the HDD is what drains fps when you record. One way is to use RAID system so it can write on 2 SATA/SCSI channels simultaneously. Its not expensive and not very difficult just to set up.

 

[Vodkafairy]

tv-out recording used to be superiour to fraps, but it changed around when everyone started to get lcd monitors and dualcore cpu's.

tv-out = max playable resolution of 1024x786, max resolution it writes at is 720x576 and the the signal distortion really shows with the increased luminance of lcd's. file sizes are lower however, because you can compress while you capture. also its easy to record vent/ts, which is nice for some situations. and of course, no drop in fps!

unless you run rediculessly high settings at crazy resolutions, you should be able to fraps just fine. it will be way better quality then anything else.

e: what the fuck is up with the new title? :|

 

[wutae]

tv-out recording used to be superiour to fraps, but it changed around when everyone started to get lcd monitors and dualcore cpu's.

tv-out = max playable resolution of 1024x786, max resolution it writes at is 720x576 and the the signal distortion really shows with the increased luminance of lcd's. file sizes are lower however, because you can compress while you capture. also its easy to record vent/ts, which is nice for some situations. and of course, no drop in fps!

unless you run rediculessly high settings at crazy resolutions, you should be able to fraps just fine. it will be way better quality then anything else.

e: what the fuck is up with the new title? :|

well i am recording in 1280x1024. but i never said that i try to capture daoc ( i know that i am using daoc rvr area but this is the most popular area with many people that like to capture ) daoc nowdays should be able to be captured very smoothly.

 

[Vodkafairy]

but i never said that i try to capture daoc

me neither

 

[illu]

well i am recording in 1280x1024. but i never said that i try to capture daoc ( i know that i am using daoc rvr area but this is the most popular area with many people that like to capture ) daoc nowdays should be able to be captured very smoothly.

Recording Webcam?

 

[liloe]

Hm, isn't it possible to use TV out at higher resolutions?

And what most people already said is true. The bottleneck of your system is the HDD. When I record on my PC, I use a PCI-X RAID controller (RAID 0 system) and that works out quite well. Then again, my bottleneck is the GFX card ^^
OK, normally the 150 MB/s from SATA should be enough to record without a RAID system, but there's always the question if the OS can keep up with everything.

You can assign cores with the task manager by right clicking on the process and manually setting an affinity for one core. I'm not sure about Core Duo CPU's, but my Xeon's show up as 2 cores (due to the HT unit of the CPU), so you need to set the affinity to the 3rd or 4th CPU.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Hm, isn't it possible to use TV out at higher resolutions?

It is, your card has to support it, most don't.

 

[liloe]

It is, your card has to support it, most don't.

Ah ok...that sux cause I'm still looking for a FireWire TV card which supports high resolutions and offers Mac drivers

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Ah ok...that sux cause I'm still looking for a FireWire TV card which supports high resolutions and offers Mac drivers

The TV card's signal and resolution will be always NTSC/PAL, it is the graphics cards who do not scale down to that resolution properly.

I think the best solution of choice would a scan converter, though it is expensive.

Take TwinPact100 for example, around 500 Euro in Germany, but a really nice product, has FireWire in/out too.

 

[Ominous]

Shouldn't you give a lot more thought to what you want to do with the end result - the video? The higher the resolution the larger the file and the more hassle you are going to get with regard to getting someone to host it for you. I do a great deal of hosting of various files - including player made daoc files - and I draw the line at humungous files that will not condense down to a reasonable level. I run all through divx converters but even they can't reduce some video files that are already condensed at a high resolution and bitrate. How many videos have disappeared through being too large? Who wants to host a 1GB file when it could well have been just 3-400Mb in size but only slightly less smooth? Who wants to download it either? Believe me it does play a massive part in whether your video will be around for any length of time.

 

[liloe]

Shouldn't you give a lot more thought to what you want to do with the end result - the video? The higher the resolution the larger the file and the more hassle you are going to get with regard to getting someone to host it for you. I do a great deal of hosting of various files - including player made daoc files - and I draw the line at humungous files that will not condense down to a reasonable level. I run all through divx converters but even they can't reduce some video files that are already condensed at a high resolution and bitrate. How many videos have disappeared through being too large? Who wants to host a 1GB file when it could well have been just 3-400Mb in size but only slightly less smooth? Who wants to download it either? Believe me it does play a massive part in whether your video will be around for any length of time.

Well people nowadays have better connections and the point is, that with a higher starting resolution you can work much better. What you do at the end is another thing then, but at least you don't have to work with low-res vids while editing.

Also, thanks to other codecs (h264 etc.) you can get much better results than with DivX.

 

[Ominous]

Also, thanks to other codecs (h264 etc.) you can get much better results than with DivX.

Well I have experimented with the above and still divx comes out on top. Don't forget the divx team are working hard all the time to improve. You should try it- convert a video to flash and then use the divx converter to convert to divx. Which is of a better quality and of a smaller size? I always find that divx will produce a higher quality video and of a smaller size too. Am all for flash but for replaying a video using flash with full screen viewing seems to be beyond many website designers. My own site does show full screen flash but I only use that when I realize that viewers are not likely to be proficient with regard to installing divx. For gamer files I nearly always convert files to divx. This results in extremely small files and a few options with regard to the player - auto dimming of the window etc. At the moment I think divx is still top of the video converting tree.

 

[Septina]

Well I have experimented with the above and still divx comes out on top. Don't forget the divx team are working hard all the time to improve. You should try it- convert a video to flash and then use the divx converter to convert to divx. Which is of a better quality and of a smaller size? I always find that divx will produce a higher quality video and of a smaller size too. Am all for flash but for replaying a video using flash with full screen viewing seems to be beyond many website designers. My own site does show full screen flash but I only use that when I realize that viewers are not likely to be proficient with regard to installing divx. For gamer files I nearly always convert files to divx. This results in extremely small files and a few options with regard to the player - auto dimming of the window etc. At the moment I think divx is still top of the video converting tree.

That is all.

 

[Kinetix]

That is all.

Actually sept mate, Divx compression under flash aint that bad. Dunno if you watched the 2nd movie of Ortofon but its really good and you can insert extra media that can turn it more interesting without making the file too hight.

Frankly if ppl have a good pc and a SCSI hd i suggest recording on same pc @ PAL DV, then compressing it with h264 codec, but thats me...

 

[Septina]

Actually sept mate, Divx compression under flash aint that bad. Dunno if you watched the 2nd movie of Ortofon but its really good and you can insert extra media that can turn it more interesting without making the file too hight.

Frankly if ppl have a good pc and a SCSI hd i suggest recording on same pc @ PAL DV, then compressing it with h264 codec, but thats me...

Never said DivX was bad did i?

 

[Z^^]

Never said DivX was bad did i?

no but you thought it?! isn't xvid better or have it changed?

 

[Septina]

no but you thought it?! isn't xvid better or have it changed?

Havent used Xvid on any vid i've made in ages but last time i used it DivX was way better than DivX.