Trying to capture gameplay footage

[Cyber Akuma]

I am trying to capture footage of a videogame I am playing on my laptop.

The game runs windowed.

I tried both CamStudio and the Latest version of Camtasia, and I tried setting the FPS to 30.

CamStudio didn't record the audio even though I told it to record audio from the microphone (I connected the headphone jack to the microphone jack, it worked before).

And the video was practically as slideshow.

I then tried Camtasia.

It recorded the audio, but it was very low volume and muffled.

The video was fairly decent, but still too choppy.

On top of this, both CamStudio and Camtasia caused the game to constantly freeze for a few seconds every 30 seconds or so.

Any advice? Any settings I cna change on CamStudio or Camtasia? Or another program I can try? Any way I can plug the VGA out to something else to record from?

[Sagekilla]

Try fraps (google it) instead. It was designed for video game capture. Camstudio is meant more for desktop capture and not game capture.

[reepa]

When capturing audio, instead of looping wire from output jacks to input jacks, record the output by selecting the appropriate recording device from Recording Control (i.e. select "Wave" or "What-U-Hear").

[Cyber Akuma]

Try fraps (google it) instead. It was designed for video game capture. Camstudio is meant more for desktop capture and not game capture.

Thanks for the suggestion

Fraps seems to run far far better than the other two I tried.

The gameplay still runs a little slower than it should, but at least it dosen;t constantly freeze or play extremely choppy.

Is there anything I can do about the game running a little slower than it should while recording?

When capturing audio, instead of looping wire from output jacks to input jacks, record the output by selecting the appropriate recording device from Recording Control (i.e. select "Wave" or "What-U-Hear").

I coulden't find any such options in Camtasia or CamStudio, that is what I USED to do, until they seemed to remove these options in later versions.

FRAPS seems to be able to do it though.

[tetsuox]

Thanks for the suggestion
Is there anything I can do about the game running a little slower than it should while recording?



Reduce the FPS settings to the lowest in Fraps (e.g. 25fps or even a lower custom setting)

Choose "Half-size" instead of "Full-size"

Lower your game's resolution

Lower your game's settings for more performance rather than quality


Fraps is very resource intensive, and it would be better to record gameplay footage on a more powerful desktop with a separate physical hard drive as your capture directory.

The freezes and choppiness are likely related to a combination of too high fps setting in Fraps, slow hard disk write speed (made even worse if you have low ram and windows has to swap/page data while playing) and < 2 cpu cores.

[Cyber Akuma]

Reduce the FPS settings to the lowest in Fraps (e.g. 25fps or even a lower custom setting)

Choose "Half-size" instead of "Full-size"

Lower your game's resolution

Lower your game's settings for more performance rather than quality


Fraps is very resource intensive, and it would be better to record gameplay footage on a more powerful desktop with a separate physical hard drive as your capture directory.

My desktop is far far far weaker than my laptop, plus im pretty sure the game dosen't access the HDD much after loading.

The freezes and choppiness are likely related to a combination of too high fps setting in Fraps, slow hard disk write speed (made even worse if you have low ram and windows has to swap/page data while playing) and < 2 cpu cores.

Those were only when using CamStudio or Camtasia, they did not happen with FRAPS, the game just ran slightly slower.

I wanted a high FPS to capture the movements well, ill see if there si much of a difference betwen 25 or 30 FPS recording, and ill see if there is a way to lower the game's resolution.

[Cyber Akuma]

I have tried multiple things.

From 15FPS to 30FPS dosen't seem to make a difference, the recording goes far too slow.

The only thing that appears to make a difference is recording in half size instead of full size.... but the game already plays back at a rather small reoslution window (640x480), so making a half-size recording at 320x240 makes a redicously small video, even if it does go full speed.

Is there anything I can do about this?

[BlackSharkfr]

yes, use external recording.
If your laptop has a TV output you can clone the output on the TV-out and use basicaly any TV-recoding method you have : VHS, DVD recorder, DVR, USB video grabber, or Desktop PCI capture card.

You could buy a cheap composite or s-video PCI capture card for your desktop, play on the laptop with the best performance you have while recording on the desktop at 60 (interlaced) frames per second at 720x480 resolution. You can get pretty good results with proper deinterlacing. That's the way i do it but since i have a powerful desktop i play and record on the same machine.
It's in my opinion way better than Fraps since you get a perfecttly stable and smooth framerate (but you can't get HD, since HD recorders are very expansive)

[Cyber Akuma]

My laptop only has S-video out, woulden't that mean I can't output anything beyond 480i?

[BlackSharkfr]

My laptop only has S-video out, woulden't that mean I can't output anything beyond 480i?

From a simple 4-pin s-video plug you can get 480i at 60hz (ntsc) or 576i at 50hz (pal).
But yes indeed that's the limit of SD resolutions.

More modern computers have an advanced 9-pin S-video out with a giant Y-splitter cable with composite/s-video and component output (YPbPr up to 720p/1080i) it's often called analog HDTV output, but the s-video transmission is still SD only.

If you have an HD DVR you could also record HD but i wonder if your laptop could deal with higher resolutions in games ?

[Cyber Akuma]

If you have an HD DVR you could also record HD but i wonder if your laptop could deal with higher resolutions in games ?

I don't think my DVR can record from any source that is not from it's RF cable connection, even though it can do HD.

And the 3D hardware in my laptop is TERRIBLE, but this is a very old and basic game, its not exactly Crysis quality, plus its running at 640x480. My laptop is able to run it easily.

As for the S-Video port, it only appears to have 4 pins.

[reepa]

I coulden't find any such options in Camtasia or CamStudio, that is what I USED to do, until they seemed to remove these options in later versions.

Those options are in Windows' volume control panel. Doubleclick on the speaker tray icon and go to Options->Properties, select Recording and click OK, which gives you the recording mixer.

[Cyber Akuma]

Those options are in Windows' volume control panel. Doubleclick on the speaker tray icon and go to Options->Properties, select Recording and click OK, which gives you the recording mixer.

Thanks, i'll keep that in mind for when I need to use Camtasia or CamStudio to record desktop apps or games that FRAPS cannot recognize (like Flash-based web games).

Can anybody help me with my current questions about Fraps though?

[Cyber Akuma]

Sorry for not replying in so long.

Since I have a lot to say, I figured it would be better to just recap what I am trying to do and have tried so far:

I am trying to capture footage of a videogame I am playing on my laptop. Its a fairly old Japanese freeware gamecalled Fate Axis: Omega Edition, so its not very taxing on any modern system, evne my old Pentium 3 desktop can run it well. ( http://www10.plala.or.jp/T-Riam/FateAxis/index.html )

The game runs windowed at 640x480.

At first I was using programs like Camtasia or or CamStudio but they were doing a terrible job, then I was told that these were not really meant for 3D gameplay recording and to try Fraps.

However, Fraps makes the game run at about 75% to half speed when I start recording, but it only does this on fullscreen.

FPS dosen't matter, anything I try from 60 to 15 FPS slows it down, but even at 60FPS the game runs smoothly at half size.

320x240 is just too small however, especially since the game uses a tiny font, so I want to record in 640x480.

At first I thought it was my laptop, since it's 3D hardware is rather lacking, a friend let me try to use his much more powerful laptop for this, it has a better CPU and it's GPU was far beyond mine, but the EXACT same thing happened!

Then I thought it may be disk access times, since once when I was trying to record to a fragmented portion of my drive it ran extremely slow. So I setup a ramdrive.... but still the EXACT same thing.

So what could possibly be causing this?

Its not the FPS, its not the CPU, its not the GPU, its not the disk access speed.... why does it only record at half-size without slowdown? What can I do to make it record full-size?

[tetsuox]

I installed the game and tried frapsing it myself. Here are my findings:

The game runs at a constant 30fps with the default settings ingame. It runs at this speed with or without fraps recording. The only time it slows down for me is during the kill shot with or without fraps running to about 12-15fps. I think this is the games normal "slow-motion" kill sequence.

My system specs:
C2D E7200@2.5GHz
6GB RAM
4x Harddisks
Vista x64 (Aero Glass enabled)
Geforce 9600GT 512MB (v-sync enabled)

Fraps:
version 2.9.8
Recorded the game in windowed-mode
FPS display enabled, update overlay once /second
Movie save folder: separate drive from Windows and Game
Full-Size
30fps (to match the ingame settings of 30fps)
Record Sound
Detect best sound input
Sound device: Vista Direct Stream
Sound Input: Stereo
No Cursor: Unchecked
No Sync: Unchecked

I hope some of this info helps, good luck!

Oh, and I'm running the game through Applocale (Japanese mode) not sure if it's required but I usually do this for native jpn games anyway as my system locale is set as EN-US.

[Cyber Akuma]

I installed the game and tried frapsing it myself. Here are my findings:

The game runs at a constant 30fps with the default settings ingame. It runs at this speed with or without fraps recording. The only time it slows down for me is during the kill shot with or without fraps running to about 12-15fps. I think this is the games normal "slow-motion" kill sequence.

Hmmm, odd, that is not what happened to me.

The second I press F9 to start recording, it will slow down on every system I tried it on, not just the kill shot.

BTW, in the options screen there is an option called "FPS MODE" and you can choose between "speed" and "drow" (I assume he meant to say Draw). Does this effect anything?

There also appears to be a "FPS SPEED" setting.

Any idea if messing with these would help? FPS SPEED is obvious what what is FPS MODE for?

I hope some of this info helps, good luck!

Oh, and I'm running the game through Applocale (Japanese mode) not sure if it's required but I usually do this for native jpn games anyway as my system locale is set as EN-US.

I noticed that the only apparent difference from running the game with a Japanese Locale and US Locale is that the Japanese text will appear as gibberish when in US Locale, but otherwise it runs perfectly fine.

[tetsuox]

I have my FPS SPEED setting set to 30, and Fraps is also set to 30fps.

FPS MODE, as far as my friend can make out (he can only read chinese) says DROW = show some picture, SPEED = show some speed. I assume one is for more detail, and the other is for less detail, it didn't make any noticeable difference to me.

Fullscreen and windowed in the game didn't have any effect on fraps recording either.

[~kev~]

Be sure to keep fraps updated to the newest version. The developer will release an update every once in awhile that will help with game play issues.

I just bought my version of fraps 4 or 5 months ago, and there have already been a couple of updates.