Choosing recoding software for gaming

[sn0re]

I'm thinking of recording gameplays (or lets plays) in the future.I'm having trouble with choosing which software to record with.If anyone has any suggestions and tips,that would be great! :)

[Dim]

Fraps is an excellent recorder and fairly cheap too! You pretty much need the professional version though.

Otherwise, CamStudio is a good free choice, though no where near fraps in my opinion.

[sn0re]

Fraps is an excellent recorder and fairly cheap too! You pretty much need the professional version though.

Otherwise, CamStudio is a good free choice, though no where near fraps in my opinion.

How about Bandicam?I know it compresses the files and uses ''less'' CPU usage.

[Dim]

Fraps is an excellent recorder and fairly cheap too! You pretty much need the professional version though.

Otherwise, CamStudio is a good free choice, though no where near fraps in my opinion.

How about Bandicam?I know it compresses the files and uses ''less'' CPU usage.

Unfortunately I can't comment on that since I've never used it; maybe someone else will know more, but it seems solid.

[tengarp]

personally, I would reccomend fraps or dxtory, I know this is not very solid evidence, but all the top youtubers who upload pc gameplay use either of those programs, and I think that that is for a good reason. This is just my opinion...

[EChondo]

As others have said, the big YouTubers use Fraps, Dxtory, or Bandicam.

I personally use Dxtory as Fraps is very CPU dependent while Dxtory uses your hard drive speed. I haven't tried Bandicam, but I have heard good things. I used Fraps first and the change to Dxtory was very impressive and worthwhile. The things I hate about Fraps that Dxtory can do is that you can record in any resolution below your max res. and you can record multiple audio channels and if you bring the recording into a video editor, you have two/three/four different audio channels depending on how you configured it.

I highly recommend Dxtory, Fraps is decent but I'd rather choose between Dxtory and Bandicam to be honest.

[ionbasa]

I personally use Dxtory, along with the Lagarith Codec with encoding in YV12.

The down side is large file sizes, but the Lagarith Codec makes up with Multithreading and requiring less throughput to the HDD.

Alongside of that I also use Virtual DUB to then convert the Dxtory files to AVI using the x264vfw encoder, resulting in small file sizes and great quality.

If anyone is interested in a tutorial I may make one on this Forum if people want to know the basics to getting started.

I have found that Dxtory though may not detect every game (like OpenTTD) in which case I use Fraps.

Other software that may be of use:

Virtual Audio Cable ---> used for binding game audio and microphone input, although Dxtory natively supports this, Fraps does not.

AmarecTV --> used for capturing from a capture card like a blackmagic pro, or a Avermedia card

Open Brodcaster Software --> used for livesteaming

FFSplit --> same as above, but uses FFDshow

Virtual DUB --> just awesome loaded with features, open source video capture/processing utility

Adobe Premier Pro

Sony Vegas Pro

FFDshow-->Codecs, plays just about anything.

[sn0re]

What software do you guys think is easy to use?Most of the time I don't know what options will be best for recording.

[Chameleon]

I use dxtory, lagarith codec YUY2, and rawcap record to two drives. The reason I use it is because it's easily one of the most configurable recording programs.

Since dxtory has support for outputting to a "line" rather than a drive, it can be used for livestreaming in conjunction with something else like ffsplit.

dxtory allows you to control the amount of threads you want to dedicate to recording, which is a fantastic thing to control.

Likely one of the BEST features of dxtory is the ability to "stripe" data across disks in a raid-esque manner. If you set more than one recording drive and raw-cap record rather than to an AVI, it will record to both drives. This effectively removes any sort of speed bottleneck you would be experiencing.

If that isn't the best feature of dxtory, it's the ability to "scale" your recording. So you can play a game in 1080p and only record at 720p. Saving resources, and still getting a high quality recording out of it.

For where I can't use dxtory, I tend to just use fraps. It's somewhat limited in terms of options but it works well.

To record my MIC and other things aside from game audio I use Audacity. It's free/open source and works well. You can edit your audio from right within the application so I much prefer using audacity to any recording programs that grab your mic audio.

Fraps is probably the easiest to use, but if you have the patience to post on this forum and wait for responses, you can go find out the best settings for recording. Or you can just come back and ask us.....

[ionbasa]

Likely one of the BEST features of dxtory is the ability to "stripe" data across disks in a raid-esque manner. If you set more than one recording drive and raw-cap record rather than to an AVI' date=' it will record to both drives. This effectively removes any sort of speed bottleneck you would be experiencing.[/quote']

The only problem with this method is that the RAWCAP file may take awhile to re-compile and covert to AVI, therefore adding in an extra step, it would be easier to run a RAID 0 of 2-3 HDDs. Also by when using the RAWCAP converter you must manually add the individual RAWCAP files in corect order, which can be tedious. personally I would stick with just outputting to AVI.

Also the multi-threading ability of Dxtory is great! Also one last thing to add is that multi-threading can also be enabled in the Lagarith codec settings.

[LogicalDrm]

could recommend MSI Afterburner. It's much lighter than Fraps and easier to use than Dxtory. Plus it's free. Only downsides might be quality which I can't comment since my machine is too slow to get hd qulity anyway. Minus would be lack of secondary audio channel. It's either game sounds or mic.