[W.A.C.]

I've been trying to figure out a way to make Fraps record footage of Sonic Generations without creating horrendous lag but my attempts have been very unsuccessful. I even tried having it where it puts the footage on an external hard-drive, but that was a massive failure as well. While I haven't tested the program on older games, I don't necessarily want to be stuck as some retro game reviewer and I wanted to record stuff from newer games for other purposes as well. Then when it comes to recording console games, I lack a capture a card. I use my monitor to play PS3 and Wii games so that might be a bit of a problem. Even though I'd like to record HD footage of console games, I don't want to spend a ton of money but I refuse to be stuck playing a lot of PS3 games in SD for capturing purposes. Any recommendations on what I can do?

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 09 January 2012 - 07:56 AM

[winterhell]

Consider using
http://playclaw.com/

It is considered faster/lighter than FRAPS for a similar quality. And it is multithreaded.

[Falk]

What are your system specs? Identifying the bottleneck and dealing with it would be a start. I personally can pump out 720p/60fps or 1080p/30fps on Fraps (registered a loooong time ago) but I've heard really good things about Playclaw as well, especially on capturing multiple audio sources.

[W.A.C.]

I tried PlayClaw and it made Sonic Generations run from 60 frames per second to around 20 frames per second on the damn hub world of all thing. These are my specs.

Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom II X2 550
Callisto 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-15)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA790X-UD4P (Socket M2)
Graphics
W2361 (1920x1080@60Hz)
512MB GeForce GTS 250 (EVGA)
Hard Drives
977GB SAMSUNG SAMSUNG HD103UJ ATA Device (SATA)
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223L ATA Device
Audio
ASUS Xonar DS Audio Device

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 09 January 2012 - 03:34 PM

[Chimpo]

If you want to capture console footage above standard definition, it's going to cost you some mula. There's no way around it. The cheapest capture card option I can think of is around $100. I'm at work so I can't give details. I'll post more when I get home.

[Falk]

Chimpo, on 09 January 2012 - 05:09 PM, said:

If you want to capture console footage above standard definition, it's going to cost you some mula. There's no way around it. The cheapest capture card option I can think of is around $100. I'm at work so I can't give details. I'll post more when I get home.

I've used Blackmagic Intensity cards at college, they go for ~$200 retail and are -extremely- reliable/versatile, but there's definitely much cheaper options.

If you want an extremely affordable solution, you could go the Easycap route, record everything in standard definition and just upscale to 720p for Youtube. I personally wouldn't do this, but:
1) to be quite honest 95% or more of the people who ever watch LPs would never care anyway (with no offense to you or LPs in general of course)
2) upscaling to 720p theoretically should do absolutely nothing to get you a crisper image, but due to the way Youtube encodes a video, (namely its bitrate caps for each stream) the upscaled 720p will actually look better than the 480p stream.

This guy's PS3 footage is all Easycap if you want a gauge. He also makes PC game footage/clips/montages/whatever of the sickest quality as an aside, yet resorts to easycap for console.


Keep in mind that if you intend to capture HD, the PS3's HDMI output includes HDCP which necessitates a stripper (which will cost more than the capture card itself unfortunately) or the alternative is to record via component video, which will result in slight color bleed. (This was how we ultimately captured PS3 footage with the Intensity cards, whereas X360 used straight HDMI)

[W.A.C.]

One of my friends who has no trouble with Fraps had the recording done on one hard-drive and has his games run on a different one. Well, I installed my brand new 2TB hard-drive tonight and I still have massive lag issues with both Fraps and PlayClaw. I have absolutely no idea what to do about this problem at this point. It's beyond irritating.

Edit-

In window mode for BSNES, the framerate of Kirby Super Star goes from 60 frames per second to like 40-45 frames per second with audio crunchiness when using Fraps. Considering how a lot of my review plans would involve that emulator, that's not good...

This post has been edited by W.A.C.: 17 January 2012 - 10:12 AM

[Covarr]

I've had good luck with Dxtory, it's the only thing I use when recording Minecraft. But really, the biggest factor is probably hard drive speed. If possible, you want to be saving to a HDD other than the one the game is on, and it should be reasonably fast.

[DimensionWarped]

Resolution is a huge issue when doing video capture. 1080p video handled entirely by software is probably what's destroying you. Consider cutting your running resolution in half while recording maybe. Won't look as pretty no doubt.

[W.A.C.]

Well, I have another weird issue. Sometimes when a game or program crashes (in this case Zoom Player), the audio totally fucks up to where it wants to constantly repeat a portion of some sound constantly until I reboot my PC. Any idea how I can fix that issue without rebooting?

Covarr, on 17 January 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

I've had good luck with Dxtory, it's the only thing I use when recording Minecraft. But really, the biggest factor is probably hard drive speed. If possible, you want to be saving to a HDD other than the one the game is on, and it should be reasonably fast.

Well, like I said in my previous post, I got a second hard-drive recently and I dunno how much that helps since it didn't really improve Fraps's performance at all.

DimensionWarped, on 17 January 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

Resolution is a huge issue when doing video capture. 1080p video handled entirely by software is probably what's destroying you. Consider cutting your running resolution in half while recording maybe. Won't look as pretty no doubt.

Well, here's the thing. I hate playing games in window mode and hate using lower resolutions so neither of those are options.

[W.A.C.]

Well, Dxtory is the only program I've been able to find that doesn't BSNES's gameplay both in game and in videos.



However, I recorded the resolution at 550x480. If I tried to make it 720p, it would lag the gameplay. The fact I'm allowed to play the game in fullscreen mode while recording it any resolution I want is probably the main reason I'm even able to record footage like that. I do get occasionally audio issues but it doesn't happen very much. Unfortunately, Generations lags a lot in that program but if I record it in 480p, the gameplay is at least around 30 frames per second. I guess with modern games, I'm going to be replaying a lot of sections for the sake of recording footage. :/ First game I'm reviewing is Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. I've recorded almost 2 hours of gameplay so far and the footage has been fine. Would've really liked to record stuff about 480p but oh well.

[W.A.C.]

And now for whatever reason, the program causes a lot of lag even though I'm pretty sure it's on the same exact settings as yesterday. I have no idea why it's doing this and now I can't continue recording. ._.

[BlazeHedgehog]

Resolution is a big deal when capturing video, but a BIGGER deal is data transfer rates. Don't just think you can buy a Blackmagic Intensity card and have it work straight out of the box.

If you're going to capture HD video, you actually need to dedicate a serious amount of hardware to it. Grabbing a 720p image isn't really that big of a deal for something like FRAPS; the issue comes when it needs to write that data to a HDD. The faster it can write that data, the less of a framerate impact you'll see in games (especially in Sonic Generations; that game is very, very, VERY heavily dependent on how fast it can stream data off the HDD).

This also applies if you're capturing video from a game console in HD, mind you.

It would not surprise me if the 2TB drive you're talking about is too slow for video capture. Most people serious about this kind of thing generally buy a storage medium specifically geared towards video capture - the faster the RPMs, the better. You could even get a SSD, but that's getting in to crazy territory. Your motherboard could also be a factor in this (but not likely).

The easiest solution is to buy an HD DVR. These come with a HDD built in and are guaranteed to work. But they're also $250+, because you're paying for video capture and storage together. However, you'll probably have to mess with splitter cables and all sorts of other nonsense.

The other option is to suck it up and capture in SD. For now, that's what I'm doing.

This post has been edited by BlazeHedgehog: 20 January 2012 - 01:09 AM

[W.A.C.]

[LINK]

This is the second hard-drive I recently bought. I think I'll just stick with recording in SD for now, but it just sucks I can't even record Sonic Generations without creating a lot of lag and now Dxtory is having problems recording stuff with BSNES out of nowhere.

[W.A.C.]

Well, this is driving me nuts. I have no idea why BSNES now runs like shit when I use Dxtory. I really really hoping to continue making progress in this video review but all of that has been halted out of nowhere because the program I was relying on decided to become a total bitch. I have no idea what to do now. I wonder if it has to do with the fact my version is a pirated copy.