Is FRAPS the only option?

Looking at trying my hand at putting together a CoH themed video using captured in game footage and just wondering what people tend to use for the video capture.

FRAPS is the obvious choice, but I wondered if people had experience with other offerings? Have looked at "WeGame" (which no longer works / is supported) and "SocialCam" which was terrible.

I use the older version of Playclaw and it works perfectly for my needs. ( http://www.youtube.com/user/SurrealSam ) Theres a new version out that I have not upgraded to because I like to give versions time to get bugs worked out. Last I checked it was a little cheaper than FRAPS. I use VirtualDub to do simple editing and encoding for youtube.

There is also a program called DXtory that does the same thing, its a bit pricier, but I think also has more options.

MSI has a free graphics card app called Afterburner that does screen capture. I have not played with this at all.

FRAPS is pretty much the standard. Between it and Handbrake (free video encoder), it should handle most of your needs.

Be aware you will want to play around with your recording settings. What worked for me is to capture at full resolution and Playclaw`s high-speed low-compression algorithm. That generates very large but very good looking files which I then edit and encode for upload with virtualdub. Depending on your CPU & HD speeds your mileage may vary.

Good info and exactly what I was after. Thanks muchly

There's also the OpenSource program CamStudio, which is my "when FRAPS doesn't work" backup program.

When demorecording, I tend to export the demofiles to JPG, compile them in VirtualDub and render them as an AVI. Then I edit the vid files in Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, and save the end file as a WMV - high quality without being humongous like an AVI is.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I use Quicktime screen record because I'm kind of poor. The videos don't come out looking good at all. If you have money to spend and want to make high quality videos, I'd highly suggest going with something else.

Cheers for the advice all. I ended up sticking with FRAPS, and VDub for the raw footage processing and upgrading my old copy of Power Director 8 to version 10 to glue it all together.

One problem / question I have though, when you're processing the original AVI file through VDub, do you use any compression codecs, or just leave it raw? Problem I have is that I've been using the Intel 5.1 codec to compress the AVI file to a more manageable size, and the old copy of PD8 I was using was able to open that fine. PD10 reports that it's an invalid file format despite me downloading and installing ffdshow codecs.

Thoughts? Apologies if any of these questions are a bit dumb, but I'm a complete rookie to all of this!

*EDIT*.. Helps if I read replies properly. I'll give the Sony Vegas Platinum software a look and see if I can export as WMV from the cropped AVI file without using any AVI compression codecs.

Had a moment of clarity in the shower. As you do.

Think I'm just going to crop the files in VDub without compressing them, import the cropped files in to PD and then export the whole video as something else; WMV, MPEG4 or whatever.

Wood. Trees. *facepalm*

Have since found a still better way of doing things. After a bit of trial and error with various compression codecs, and after a bit of googlage, I managed to find the XVid codec. Has all kinds of benefits. VDub will process the compression and cropping faster, the resulting files are much, much smaller than the originals with this compression (e.g.. a file that was 1.6GB in Fraps compressed down to just 80MB with XVid) and most importantly, Power Director 10 recognises it quite happily.

I now have a butt load of video captures to process. Happy days!