Video capture software

[juniglee]

Hey all,

Wanted to ask some questions to anyone who has used video capture software before, like Fraps, Bandicam, Hypercam, etc. I am thinking of recording some tanking runs, for educational purposes.

- For those who have used Fraps or Bandicam, is the single license cost worth it?
- If you have used both before, which did you find was better?
- What do you feel about Hypercam, if you have used it before, since it is currently free?
- Are there any other suggestions about other software that I should consider as well?
- I'll post my current PC specs below: based on that, let me know if recording while playing will affect my frame rate/game lag, and how I should deal with it if there is any.

Also open to recommendations for video conversion software. I've heard the raw recorded videos tend to be quite huge in size (something like 9GB for a 10 minutes video), so I'd definitely need to reconvert and re-encode them to a much smaller size, otherwise my HD will die. If anyone knows of any cheap/free option, other than Adobe Creative Suite, that'd be great.

My current PC specs (just the minimum I think is required, let me know if you need more info):

8GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
Gigabyte GTX670 OC (factory clocked) - just a single graphics card
Intel i5-3570k (factory clocked)

[cearka]

I bought a license of Fraps and it's all I use. Lightweight, stable, and to the point.

[Khalus]

As long as you have a GTX Kepler GPU from nVidia{600/700 series}, you don't need external recording software anymore. Through the use of nVidia's GeForce Experience {ver1.7}, nVidia have adding a new feature called Shadowplay that once activated, its always recording the last 10-20min of gameplay directly through their GPUs:

First and foremost, GeForce Experience 1.7 introduces ShadowPlay, a free, fast, easy-to-use, gameplay-recording module that allows you to record video of your gaming’s most exciting moments and share it so the whole world can stand in awe of your gaming prowess. By utilizing this hardware encoder, ShadowPlay’s impact on game frame rates is far lower than that of traditional recording applications, which can place great strain on the CPU. With higher frame rates you enjoy smoother gameplay, and by encoding in H.264, ShadowPlay avoids the humongous multi-gigabyte .files associated with other applications. This saves space, but more importantly reduces stutter by avoiding unnecessary hard disk thrashing.

ShadowPlay has two user-configurable modes. The first, the eponymous Shadow mode, constantly records your gameplay, saving up to 20 minutes (10 minutes in Windows 7) of high-quality 1920x1080 footage to a temporary file. If you pull of a particularly impressive move in-game, simply hit the user-defined hotkey and the footage will be saved to the user’s chosen directory. The file can subsequently be edited with the free Windows Movie Maker application , or any other .mp4-compatible video editor, and uploaded to YouTube to share with friends or the World Wide Web. For local playback, we recommend Windows Media Player or MPC-HC.

[juniglee]

As long as you have a GTX Kepler GPU from nVidia{600/700 series}, you don't need external recording software anymore. Through the use of nVidia's GeForce Experience {ver1.7}, nVidia have adding a new feature called Shadowplay that once activated, its always recording the last 10-20min of gameplay directly through their GPUs:

I will give it a go, but sounds like it only records up to 20 minutes (10 minutes since I'm using Windows 7). Wonder what happens if I run for longer than 20 minutes...I'm not too keen on mashing together two 20-min videos, seems like it will be very disjointed.

[lordkabal26]

You can turn it on manually to record constantly. I personally live stream to twitch.tv using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), from there I upload highlights to my youtube channel.

[raelgun]

let me help you here, first thing, having a mid based computer spec wise is fine, the most important component is actually your storage drivers, first off as this is an mmo, your gonna have to have 2 HDDs that have a decent RPM/write speed, non of this laptop or 5700 rpm ones, the write is intensive.

have the game on your main drive, can be boot or the drive which isnt the mass storage, and your other drive which is the mass storage drive with lots of space where the raw footage gets recorded to, if you want to record at full scale 1080 p and at 60fps.
this is all from personal experience and this advice has helped many others. NEVER HAVE THE GAME AND RECORDING DESTINATION on the same drive, the drive cant cope.

[raelgun]

for software, theres fraps, fraps has the best compatibility for video editing software outright, the only downside to fraps, it only records in 1 format, and its huge, when i was recording 1080 full at 60 fps smoothly, a 53 sec file will take up 4 GB, just to give you an idea of the sort of HDD space your gonna need for that, fraps can now record 1 long file, my advice is actually, is to break that up into smaller chunks, easier editting and uploads.

theres bandicam, its good, ive used both this and fraps, bandicam lets you choose a variation of encoding formats, all have advantages and disadvantages, the default encoder is lighter then fraps. the quality takes a little bit of degradation, but the file out put is loads smaller, like massively. but bandicam isnt as stable as fraps, not saying its unstable, also compatibility isnt as friendly with video editting software

[raelgun]

i use sony movie studio 12 plat hd software, great peice of kit, its a cut down version of vegas and does everything vegas does expect 4 K rendering at a much smaller price tag