Capturing In-game Videos

[Magister Lajciak]

Is there any free and easy way to capture videos in-game without them taking an inordinate amount of space?

[LadyCrimson]

without them taking an inordinate amount of space?

I think it would be possible for a program to record using a high-compression mode - whether it's practical is another story. For instance, such on-the-fly high-compression methods might not be able to keep up in terms of 'real-time data speed' - resulting in a jerky-motion, missed-frames, sucky end-result. Example, for many folk, turning on Fraps - a program that results in huge video files - to record whilst in-game, the FPS drops drastically because of the extra load. You'd probably need a really, really powerful computer to handle it.

 

So in short, my guess is that under most circumstances the answer would be "no."

Edited November 12, 2007 by LadyCrimson

[Magister Lajciak]

without them taking an inordinate amount of space?

I think it would be possible for a program to record using a high-compression mode - whether it's practical is another story. For instance, such on-the-fly high-compression methods might not be able to keep up in terms of 'real-time data speed' - resulting in a jerky-motion, missed-frames, sucky end-result. Example, for many folk, turning on Fraps - a program that results in huge video files - to record whilst in-game, the FPS drops drastically because of the extra load. You'd probably need a really, really powerful computer to handle it.

 

So in short, my guess is that under most circumstances the answer would be "no."

 

Fair enough and thanks! Anyway, what is the best (free) program you would recommend for video capture in-game?

[LadyCrimson]

Fraps is the most popular/well known. Guncam is another similar option.

There's many programs of the above type & quality these days - do some Google searches for game recorders or similar phrases. Download, compare; your mileage may vary.

 

BTW, "Free" for many of the shareware programs often means you download the whole program, but your video will have a visible name/logo watermark embedded in every frame. Some of them also use a length-timer to restrict time you can record in one shot; ie, 30 sec. Thus you'd have to register the program by paying for it (usually $30 US) to get the license code to unlock/get rid of them. But if you don't mind the watermarks, you can use the free version forever.

I don't know anything about opensource/linux possibilities.

 

VirtualDub is a common seperate program for editing/compressing video game videos. It can also supposedly capture some video, but I've never tried to get that to work (there's some requirements), so I don't know what that really means/entails.

 

G'luck.

[Magister Lajciak]

Thanks for the advice!