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Old 4th June 2011, 09:56   #1  |  Link
GreatEmerald
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 3
Recording in full HD

I have a fairly complex problem here and I was wondering if anyone could help me with it. I am trying to record a full HD playthrough of a first-person shooter game and put it on YouTube, but due to a few technical problems I can't seem to find a good way to do that.

I'm using both Windows and Linux (it doesn't matter much which platform I record this on since the game is cross-platform, but naturally Windows is more optimised). I've tried a few different recording programs, and noticed that usually it either slows down the performance of the whole PC or the recording. Usual desktop recording software, like Camtasia Studio, Expression Encoder (Windows) or FFmpeg, recordMyDesktop (Linux) usually end up with a very low framerate in the recording itself, while in game the framerate is high. It seems to be better with OpenGL/DirectX accelerated recording software, like ZDSoft, Fraps (Windows) or glc (Linux). Their output generally has better framerate, although the game itself can be less responsive.

Fraps generally works the best so far, but there are a few problems: the framerate is fluctuating (if I set it to record at 40 FPS, I get 40-20 FPS in the game, and dips are more like spikes), and the sound from the game doesn't record properly after a map switch, which is really odd.

If I use ZDSoft with the MJPEG codec, I get smoother 40 FPS - it goes around 50-30 FPS without causing spikes. However, ZDSoft doesn't allow recording more than one audio input, which could be a problem. I've also tried a lot of different codecs, but they all seem to be slower than MJPEG.
So, do you have any suggestions about this? Is there any way to get a better framerate or a way to record two streams of audio and sync it with video? Since I have to press F8 to start the video recording, maybe there's a program that would record sound using the same key, and that way they could be synced?

This is what I get when I record the game, then use FFmpeg to convert it to WebM video and upload it to YouTube:
Fraps - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyTH9VfkCUQ
MJPEG - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oz1bGpSajY
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