What are some good alternatives to Lagarith Lossless in Windows XP?

[GAP]

I mostly use Lagarith to record my gaming videos but it seems as though that there some games that will not agree with the codec or even playback on VLC Media player. I do not want to go back to Xvid or Full Frames uncompressed but it seems Lagarith isn't really agreeing with some games that I am playing right now. I know TASVideos recommends that I use this but what should I do just in case in may not work for some games? And what codecs are just as good as Lagarith? I just need something so that record with until I export it to my laptop for editing.

[GMJCZP]

Try with UTVideo Codec, but since it stopped being compatible with XP some time ago (I think the last compatible version was 15), you could try Reino's FFMPEG builds, (http://forum.doom9.net/showthread.php?p=1922562#post1922562) which in my opinion distributes the only versions compatible of FFMPEG with XP, as follows:

FFMpeg.exe -i "video" -vcodec utvideo -pred medían -an -y "output.avi"

Edit: the issue is that you must have the codec recognized in the game, you would have no choice but to try version 15 of Utvideo.

[Andouille]

I do not want to go back to Xvid
Nice idea... Xvid can not do lossless.

[benwaggoner]

Lossless HEVC can do really well with gaming content, particularly if your encoder can use transform skip or lossless cus. Sharp-edged text and aliasing is hard to losslessly encode with any codec with only DCT-like transforms.

Do you need mathematically lossless, or is visually lossless sufficient? Real-time encoding required?

[GAP]

I was looking for some real visually lossless codecs that use RGB and can encode in real time. I mostly use Lagarith prior to editing (via cutting some clips and upscaling with x264/h264) so I need something that is similar to that.

[StainlessS]

You say RGB, [Lagarith rgb(RGB24), rgba(RGB32), YV12, YV16, YUY2].
My version Lagarith v1.3.27, shown in VirtualDub2, Menu, Video/Compression/Lagarith Lossless Codec/Configure (Version @ top RHS).

Maybe try HuffYUV, UtVideo, and MagicYUV. [all have RGB modes]

[GAP]

Okay Thanks. Can anyone tell where I can find guides for these codecs?

[benwaggoner]

Ah, visually, not mathematically. Much better! Do you really need visually lossless RGB? Would visually lossless YUV not suffice? Or YUV 444?

Using an encoder built-in to your GPU will reduce CPU load that might impact your game. A high bitrate HEVC could be really good for this.

As someone who was a heavy user of Lagarith WAY back in the day, I'm amused to learn that it's become a real-time codec for gaming capture! Moore's Law is a wonderful thing.

[GAP]

Ah, visually, not mathematically. Much better! Do you really need visually lossless RGB? Would visually lossless YUV not suffice? Or YUV 444?

Using an encoder built-in to your GPU will reduce CPU load that might impact your game. A high bitrate HEVC could be really good for this.

As someone who was a heavy user of Lagarith WAY back in the day, I'm amused to learn that it's become a real-time codec for gaming capture! Moore's Law is a wonderful thing.

That is a good point. Sometimes my game would freeze on on me due to reasons involving the CPU. I could use something that is easier for me to use as sometimes Lagarith can freeze on you. What YUV or HEVC codecs for XP (or Windows 10) do you suggest?

[benwaggoner]

I dont think you've said, but it kinda depends upon what you are using to cap the game thingy.
[ie which kind of codecs you can use, Video For Windows or DirectShow]
Last I looked, quality order for current-generation GPUs was NVidia > Intel > AMD.

[GAP]

You say RGB, [Lagarith rgb(RGB24), rgba(RGB32), YV12, YV16, YUY2].
My version Lagarith v1.3.27, shown in VirtualDub2, Menu, Video/Compression/Lagarith Lossless Codec/Configure (Version @ top RHS).

Maybe try HuffYUV, UtVideo, and MagicYUV. [all have RGB modes]


I will give those a shot as I need to experiment to see which one works for me. UTVideo does have RGB and RGBA options but UTVideo so many options that it is easy to get voerwhelmed. Same with Magic YUV but I am experimenting and I am also looking into FFV1 as well.

[StainlessS]

@GAP,
You have not told what you are using to capture the video, [nor codec versions],
nor what the options you are having trouble with are. (best see the documentation, if you find the home site for whatever version codec).

[Liisachan]

These are just workarounds, but no harm in trying in case you didn't try them yet...

Plan 1. Lightly throttle the game process with Battle Encoder Shirasé so that it won't use CPU more than say 99%. This might give Lagarith more CPU time, and so it might work better.

Plan 2. Similarly, Task Manager -> Set Affinity [tweak]

Plan 3. Lagarith -> Use Multithreading [check/uncheck]

[GAP]

@GAP,
You have not told what you are using to capture the video, [nor codec versions],
nor what the options you are having trouble with are. (best see the documentation, if you find the home site for whatever version codec).

I mostly dump footage from emulators and the codecs I used Lagarith Lossless 1.3.2.7 for dumping and x264 8 Bit for final encodes. It seems it one of the games that I am playing seems to have a problem with Lagarith and it applies to both my computers. If I go for uncompressed it works fine however because it uncompressed, it will take longer to watch it as Virtualdub2 and VLC Player cannot playback uncompressed without slowing down on certain frames.

These are just workarounds, but no harm in trying in case you didn't try them yet...

Plan 1. Lightly throttle the game process with Battle Encoder Shirasé so that it won't use CPU more than say 99%. This might give Lagarith more CPU time, and so it might work better.

Plan 2. Similarly, Task Manager -> Set Affinity [tweak]

Plan 3. Lagarith -> Use Multithreading [check/uncheck]

I will give those a shot to see if I get a different results.

[StainlessS]

[EDIT: Arh, emulator eh!, I did not know they did that. I dont play games :( ]

Well if uncompressed works fine, maybe a simple extra step might be a work around.

Below is bat file demo I already posted somewhere, I edited it to the option to convert video to UT_Video and copy audio,
however result is in MKV [Can just change the output extension at end of uncommented line to ".AVI" instead (if required)].
The "ACTIVE" line in BLUE, and Extension to change in RED.
Input YUV will output UT_Video YUV, and input RGB will output UT_Video RGB. [audio is copied, see other lines for examples to use output pcm].
Should be reasonably easy to figuire out.

Demo.Bat

REM https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1908619#post1908619
REM We DO NOT LIKE SPACES IN FILE NAMES (REM == REMark ie comment)
REM We DO NOT LIKE ACCENTS IN FILE NAMES.


setlocal

REM Where to Find ffmpeg
set FFMPEG="C:\BIN\ffmpeg.exe"

REM Where to get INPUT files, No terminating Backslash, "." = current directory (ie same as dir .bat file)
set INDIR="."

REM Where to place OUTPUT files, No terminating Backslash. "." would be same as .bat file, ".\OUT" = OUT folder in same directory as bat file.
set OUTDIR="D:"

REM Below, can add INPUT extensions as eg *.WEBM (SPACE separated, Batch Processes all INPUT type files in INDIR)
FOR %%A IN (*.AVI *.MKV *.MP4 *.MOV *.QT *.3GP *.DVB *.VOB *.MPG *.MPEG *M2P *.PS *.TS *.DIVX *.XVID *.FLV *.WMV *.ASF *.MXF) DO (

REM ****** Un-REM [ie SELECT] ONLY one of below lines, Comment out ie REM the remaining lines.
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec utvideo -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec huffyuv -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec magicyuv -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec v410 -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec r210 -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -sn "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.MKV"
%FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec utvideo -acodec copy "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.MKV"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vn -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.WAV"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec rawvideo -f rawvideo -an "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.rawvideo"


REM *****************************************************************************************.

)
Pause

REM ... Above Command lines, What they do if UnREM'ed (and all others REM'ed, UnREM=UnCOMMENT ) :
REM (1) Convert Video to UtVideo lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (2) Convert Video to HuffYUV lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (3) Convert Video to MagicYUV lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (4) Convert Video to v410 Uncompressed 4:4:4 10-bit lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (5) Convert Video to r210 Uncompressed RGB 10-bit lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (6) Remux NO SUBTITLES, copy both video and audio but NOT subtitles(output MKV - see file extension at the end of the Remux line, ie MKV).
REM (7) Convert Video to UtVideo lossless, copy audio (output MKV).
REM (8) Skip any video, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM (output WAV).
REM (9) Convert Video to rawvideo uncompressed, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output y4m).
REM *****************************************************************************************.
REM In the UnREM'ed command Line [ie without a preceding REM]:-
REM '-vcodec utvideo' means convert video using utvideo codec.
REM '-vcodec copy' means copy video rather than convert.
REM '-vn' means no video output, use instead of eg '-vcodec utvideo'
REM '-acodec pcm_s16le' means convert audio using pcm_s16le codec.
REM '-acodec copy' means copy audio rather than convert.
REM '-an' means no audio output, use instead of eg '-acodec pcm_s16le'
REM The file extension at end of the line determines output container, eg '.AVI'
REM
REM From Command line with ffmpeg somewhere in your environment PATH:-
REM 'ffmpeg -codecs >D:\ffmpeg_codecs.txt'
REM Writes a txt file of ffmpeg available codecs to D:\
REM At start of txt file it shows a 'legend' or 'key' for codecs that can be used for video and audio,
REM use only ENCODING SUPPORTED codecs, prefereably LOSSLESS.
REM Supported codecs will vary with ffmpeg version.
REM *****************************************************************************************.


Will batch process all files in input directory.

[benwaggoner]

I mostly dump footage from emulators and the codecs I used Lagarith Lossless 1.3.2.7 for dumping and x264 8 Bit for final encodes. It seems it one of the games that I am playing seems to have a problem with Lagarith and it applies to both my computers. If I go for uncompressed it works fine however because it uncompressed, it will take longer to watch it as Virtualdub2 and VLC Player cannot playback uncompressed without slowing down on certain frames.
If you can't play back uncompressed in realtime, I'd worry that you might not be able to record uncompressed in realtime, and thus would get dropped frames. So double-check that before trying uncompressed.

Recording uncompressed video is a great use case for RAID, if that's an option for you.

[GAP]

[EDIT: Arh, emulator eh!, I did not know they did that. I dont play games :( ]

Well if uncompressed works fine, maybe a simple extra step might be a work around.

Below is bat file demo I already posted somewhere, I edited it to the option to convert video to UT_Video and copy audio,
however result is in MKV [Can just change the output extension at end of uncommented line to ".AVI" instead (if required)].
The "ACTIVE" line in BLUE, and Extension to change in RED.
Input YUV will output UT_Video YUV, and input RGB will output UT_Video RGB. [audio is copied, see other lines for examples to use output pcm].
Should be reasonably easy to figuire out.

Demo.Bat

REM https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1908619#post1908619
REM We DO NOT LIKE SPACES IN FILE NAMES (REM == REMark ie comment)
REM We DO NOT LIKE ACCENTS IN FILE NAMES.


setlocal

REM Where to Find ffmpeg
set FFMPEG="C:\BIN\ffmpeg.exe"

REM Where to get INPUT files, No terminating Backslash, "." = current directory (ie same as dir .bat file)
set INDIR="."

REM Where to place OUTPUT files, No terminating Backslash. "." would be same as .bat file, ".\OUT" = OUT folder in same directory as bat file.
set OUTDIR="D:"

REM Below, can add INPUT extensions as eg *.WEBM (SPACE separated, Batch Processes all INPUT type files in INDIR)
FOR %%A IN (*.AVI *.MKV *.MP4 *.MOV *.QT *.3GP *.DVB *.VOB *.MPG *.MPEG *M2P *.PS *.TS *.DIVX *.XVID *.FLV *.WMV *.ASF *.MXF) DO (

REM ****** Un-REM [ie SELECT] ONLY one of below lines, Comment out ie REM the remaining lines.
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec utvideo -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec huffyuv -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec magicyuv -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec v410 -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec r210 -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.AVI"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -sn "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.MKV"
%FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec utvideo -acodec copy "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.MKV"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vn -acodec pcm_s16le "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.WAV"
REM %FFMPEG% -i "%INDIR%\%%A" -vcodec rawvideo -f rawvideo -an "%OUTDIR%\%%~nxA.rawvideo"


REM *****************************************************************************************.

)
Pause

REM ... Above Command lines, What they do if UnREM'ed (and all others REM'ed, UnREM=UnCOMMENT ) :
REM (1) Convert Video to UtVideo lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (2) Convert Video to HuffYUV lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (3) Convert Video to MagicYUV lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (4) Convert Video to v410 Uncompressed 4:4:4 10-bit lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (5) Convert Video to r210 Uncompressed RGB 10-bit lossless, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output AVI).
REM (6) Remux NO SUBTITLES, copy both video and audio but NOT subtitles(output MKV - see file extension at the end of the Remux line, ie MKV).
REM (7) Convert Video to UtVideo lossless, copy audio (output MKV).
REM (8) Skip any video, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM (output WAV).
REM (9) Convert Video to rawvideo uncompressed, Convert Audio to 16 bit PCM audio (output y4m).
REM *****************************************************************************************.
REM In the UnREM'ed command Line [ie without a preceding REM]:-
REM '-vcodec utvideo' means convert video using utvideo codec.
REM '-vcodec copy' means copy video rather than convert.
REM '-vn' means no video output, use instead of eg '-vcodec utvideo'
REM '-acodec pcm_s16le' means convert audio using pcm_s16le codec.
REM '-acodec copy' means copy audio rather than convert.
REM '-an' means no audio output, use instead of eg '-acodec pcm_s16le'
REM The file extension at end of the line determines output container, eg '.AVI'
REM
REM From Command line with ffmpeg somewhere in your environment PATH:-
REM 'ffmpeg -codecs >D:\ffmpeg_codecs.txt'
REM Writes a txt file of ffmpeg available codecs to D:\
REM At start of txt file it shows a 'legend' or 'key' for codecs that can be used for video and audio,
REM use only ENCODING SUPPORTED codecs, prefereably LOSSLESS.
REM Supported codecs will vary with ffmpeg version.
REM *****************************************************************************************.


Will batch process all files in input directory.

So I coy this and make into batch file? Okay.

If you can't play back uncompressed in realtime, I'd worry that you might not be able to record uncompressed in realtime, and thus would get dropped frames. So double-check that before trying uncompressed.

Recording uncompressed video is a great use case for RAID, if that's an option for you.

I will double check to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

[StainlessS]

Yes copy to Bat file, but DO READ the instructions in REM's.

[GAP]

I forgot to ask this but do you copy the whole thing or just leave out the REMs?

[StainlessS]

I would copy "as is", you might want REM's for reminder in future [but they dont do anything].

[GAP]

Your suggestion works so far and I also think I realized that the game had a problem only in certain places. Thanks for the help. It really does make things easier.