Optimal codec for screen recording (games&desktop)?

[evilfurz]

Which codec(s) is the best for screen capture, mainly game recording? I've made some game videos using Camstudio but I'm not sure which codec I should use. Some people tell that lossless codecs, such as Huffyuv which has worked pretty well for me, are the best option. Others think lossless codecs should be used only when there are large areas of same color such as on most desktop programs, and they suggest Xvid (etc.) for games. What do you think?

As I said, I've mainly used Huffyuv but the performance could be better as I don't have very powerful computer. Uncompressed capture is the best solution in terms of performance but it can't be used with Camstudio as it results in huge file sizes which Camstudio is unable to handle (the AVI file gets corrupted if the file exceeds a certain size (2GB??)). Fraps has a lot better performance but it doesn't work well with some games.

[Leeloo Minaï]

What sort of games do you want to capture and what is your hardware ?

- if you plan to capture games in small windows or with simple graphics (flash, emulators), go for Camstudio codec : this is the fastest codec i know for screen recording and assimilated usage

- if you plan to capture 3D games in high resolutions (640x480 and greater), your best choice will be FRAPS which is dedicated to this kind of program.

Be careful, what do you call lossless capture ?
Screen recording codecs work in RGB24, while FRAPS works in YV12 colorspace...

[Rumbah]

Fraps has been able to capture in RGB for over a year now (in Vista and 7 it can record the desktop, too).

Imho Fraps is one of the best you can get for capturing games and it can split your movies so Camtasia can work with them. x264 compresses game content very well, too, but as your computer is on the slow side I would use that after the cutting for archieving only.

[Baalthazaar]

Fraps is a good investment too. I purchased Fraps over 4 years ago and it's gone through countless updates since then all of which I've been given for free - this includes updates to the program to make use of multi-core systems, capture in RGB, and capture in HD resolutions. I've got to say Beepa is a classy company for not charging each time they revise their software :)

Also their tech support is awesome - you send them an e-mail and you get contact from a real person very quickly. I sent them an e-mail a few weeks ago asking if 10-bit capture was in the future for FRAPS since it seems there will be encoding/decoding solutions for it within the next few months and I got a very cordial response saying "We're not planning to implenent 10-bit per channel capture in FRAPS at this time but we'll pass your thoughts along to our developers."

[evilfurz]

What sort of games do you want to capture and what is your hardware ?

- if you plan to capture games in small windows or with simple graphics (flash, emulators), go for Camstudio codec : this is the fastest codec i know for screen recording and assimilated usage

- if you plan to capture 3D games in high resolutions (640x480 and greater), your best choice will be FRAPS which is dedicated to this kind of program.

Be careful, what do you call lossless capture ?
Screen recording codecs work in RGB24, while FRAPS works in YV12 colorspace...

Yes, Fraps rocks with most modern games. But I also play some games with which Fraps doesn't work well.

My hardwarez' configuration is:

-Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
-Radeon x800 XL GPU
-2GB o' RAM
-200GB and 160GB hard disks

With lossless capture I mean that no lossy compression is used. Colorspace changing might also cause loss but I meant only the compression algorithm. And YV12 is OK, doesn't have to be RGB24/32.

Camstudio codec... Yep, it's pretty fast but is it as fast as Huffyuv? And do these lossless codecs work well with complex textures or would Xvid, for example, be better?

[Sharktooth]

you can try MSI Afterburner too. it's a free videocard overclocking and testing (see kombustor) utility that works on AMD/ATi and Nvidia cards but it comes with screen and multithreaded video capture too (look at settings). it comes with RTV1 and MJPEG or uncompressed video. it's co-developed by MSI and RivaTuner.
link: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/overview.htm

[evilfurz]

you can try MSI Afterburner too. it's a free videocard overclocking and testing (see kombustor) utility that works on AMD/ATi and Nvidia cards but it comes with screen and multithreaded video capture too (look at settings). it comes with RTV1 and MJPEG or uncompressed video. it's co-developed by MSI and RivaTuner.
link: http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/overview.htm

Hm... I might try that but it seems that it can't capture audio. And does it work with those games which don't use Direct3D or OpenGL, unlike Fraps which doesn't?

[Leeloo Minaï]

Camstudio codec... Yep, it's pretty fast but is it as fast as Huffyuv? And do these lossless codecs work well with complex textures or would Xvid, for example, be better?

After doing synthetic tests with a RAM disk (in order to avoid write speed problems inherent to HDD), it seems Huffyuv is a little bit faster than Camstudio...

For desktop or old games capture, if textures are not filtered (like PS1 games), Camstudio offers the best speed and still a comfortable compression power.

Huffyuv is a more generic codec which works well with more complex textures, but also generates bigger file size, take care of this if your HDD is not from latest generation.


I can't talk about Xvid since i don't use this codec.