Recording Gameplay

Slinkie

Slinkie

Slinkie

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Hi folks,

How do you go about recording gameplay? I have bought the full version of fraps and want to take a few videos but the files are massive! I might have to get a bigger hard drive. I have just been testing it out and using 30fps and half size a three and half minute video is 3gig in size!

If I was to record a whole game of BC2 it'd be massive!! Are there any better alternatives? I am thinking specifically of the games I play so BC2, MW2 and UT3.

Cheers
 
Fraps records to a uncompressed format. You are supposed to encode them to your favourite format after capture. Something like H.264 or DivX.

I use Sony Vegas to edit my footage and then export to H.264. But you can also use something like Xilisoft or Handbrake to do a straight conversion.
 
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You record in fraps then use Windows Movie Editor to compress it to a much smaller file, then you can upload to youtube and delete the huge fraps recordings when youre happy with the outcome.
 
Aye, Fraps is cool. Bought it the other week to get some BC2 footage as it hasn't got battlerecorder :(

Record to external eSata drive, drops my FPS from 60 (vsync'd) to 30-45.
 
Yeah use FRAPs and have the footage going to an external hdd to put less strain on your primary drive.
 
Are there any better alternatives?
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I wouldn't say better (not arguing either way)but nevertheless an alternative - xfire.

If xfire is running, just press ctrl+v and recording begins, ctrl+v to stop, come out of game, window is there with a choice, upload or delete. If you choose the former, it will compress it for you. Pretty simple, quality is a bit naff like but if it's for recording cheats etc, you can spot the w*****s easy enough.

This is highly rated also: http://www.wegame.com/ Good quality.
 
The problem with software-capturing game footage is that all of those type of programs introduce mouse lag and can really dent your framerate.

The best program I've seen is "wegame", recording at the standard definition (640x400), the mouse lag and dip in framerate is almost unnoticeable.

A five minute video will be around 120mb, much more hard drive friendly than frapseses uncompressed behemoths. Of course, you'd probably still compress them before uploading to youtube or whatever.

Note though that it isn't compatible with all games, they update it to work with newer games every so often, you can see a list of the games it is compatible with on the download page -

http://www.wegame.com/download/

UT3 and MW2 are both on the list, BFBC2 is not but other battlefield games are so you could always give it a go.

The best way of recording footage is to get the game to record a demo and then play it back later while recording it but not many games have a record function nowadays.
 
iv been uploading raw fraps footage to youtube lol my framerate drops from 100+ to 20s when fraps runs! are any of those programs free?
 
pzr vr6 said:
iv been uploading raw fraps footage to youtube lol my framerate drops from 100+ to 20s when fraps runs! are any of those programs free?
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Have you got 3.1.2?

Using an early v3.0.x caused major FPS drop while recording for me. I thought it was just Dragon Age: Origins being too demanding as FPS plummeted to single figures. Then tried recording Dead Space, as I know that had no issues previously and it also plummeted.

After switching to latest version the recordings didn't affect FPS, in Dead Space anyway.

As for OP, what resolution are you capturing in? As that affect file size. You could try the half-size option. Also capturing above 30 FPS is probably not that great as it will get chopped, although some people were complained that it affected their gameplay recording at 30 FPS.

Edit: re-ead that you've tried those settings. Maybe disable sound and add a music track during editing stage. But doubt no audio will affect file size that much.
 
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Thanks all,

I'll just keep it as it is, I have a spare external 1TB hard drive I might use just for these videos so I won't have to worry about space and then convert the file type later.
 
Xfire is ok, but you can only upload to Xfire's website as far as I know.
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They are saved locally in C:\ProgramData\xfire\videos so you can do what you like with them.

Start xfire, click on small clapperboard icon and in the right pane, it shows you what is uploaded, what you have locally encoded or not ... worth checking this as omg, I have 3½Gb in old videos!!
 
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