I’m currently using the free/trial version of FRAPS to record gameplay videos. I was thinking about buying the full version, but it looks like it hasn’t been updated in years, despite it still being so popular.
Is there something more popular/better these days? What are you guys using for gameplay videos for posting to YouTube and Google Play store?
The main issues I have with FRAPS:
Can’t record Windows Store apps on my PC (it doesn’t record “metro” style windows)… this one’s not huge for my own games, since I can build as stand-alone EXEs and record those, but I might want to make videos of other games also, for tutorials and what not.
HUGE files and limited to 30 seconds… I think both of these are resolved if I buy the full version.
No streaming directly to YouTube… I’ve never tried this, but it sounds like a nice feature. Currently I record a 30 seconds video, then wait a couple hours for the huge file to upload. Probably less of a need once the file size is smaller.
Would be sweet if it could also record normal desktop apps on PC… for making programming tutorials and the such, but I understand I might be talking about 2 different apps at this point (Camtasia Studio I have used for this before, but not recently).
I prefer to record everything at full HD 1920x1080… why not, eh?
I know that Open Broadcaster Software (OBS - https://obsproject.com) is quite popular among streamers, and allows you to record as well as stream to many popular services. It might be able to fill all your needs, for a great price I might add, all you have to do is take a look.
I don’t know if it does 1 and I’m pretty sure the free version does not do 3 but I used the hypercam (http://www.hyperionics.com/hc/) to do videos of my games.
V2 is free with no watermark.
My son uses an Apple App ( AirPlay?) to duplicate his iPad screen to his laptop so he can record that also. I assume there is something similar for Android.
It creates AVI files which will always be huge. Buying a product will not fix that problem… HD video will always be huge.
Thanks guys. Now that I see the name again (been a few months since I looked before) I do recall seeing that OBS software mentioned a few times. Looks like I even downloaded it, but must have either never installed it, or couldn’t figure out how to work it. Will try again and see…
I’ve been using ShadowPlay recently, and been having a great time with it. It has a lot of great features, including full-screen and desktop recording, which makes producing tutorial videos a lot easier.
One of the big pros for ShadowPlay is that it is free. One of the big cons is that it is exclusive to Nvidia GTX 600+ video cards. If you’re not rocking Nvidia, and at least a GTX 600 card, you don’t have access to ShadowPlay. If you have a GTX 600+, definitely give it a look, I highly recommend it.
I agree with RichardKain. If you have an Nvidia graphics card, ShadowPlay is a no-brainer. It has absolutely no hit on framerate, it compresses the videos on the fly using h.264 encoder that’s inside the GPU and the quality of the videos are superb. That’s probably the best recording software I’ve ever used.
Alternatively, Microsoft has built in screen recording into Windows 10. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it’s supposed to be using GPU to encode the videos too and should have similar characteristics to ShadowPlay.
Editing is important to me. My latest videos have lot’s of annotations (callouts), have all the mistakes and pauses edited out, plus background music added.
I hadn’t thought about one that includes editing also… I haven’t used Camtasia Studio in a few years, but back then it seemed too laggy (resource intense) for video game capturing. I currently use Windows Movie Maker, I think that’s the name, the free product from Microsoft… not a lot of options, but it’s free, and it lets me piece together several short videos, which is nice when using the free version of FRAPS, since I’m limited to 30 seconds with it.
AMD also has dedicated encoders on their cards like Nvidia does. I don’t know how new the card has to be though. If you have an Intel processor, check if it has QuickSync support.
FYI - If anyone has problems with Open Broadcaster Software… it isn’t written to handle running from a non-admin Windows account very well… so your video files might be saved to the admin account instead of the non-admin you are logged in as… kind of pain, wish software could figure out these issues At any rate, I guess that was why I thought it didn’t work well before, but now that I figured that out, I’m giving it another try.
Sweet! I wish I had done this sooner… with FRAPS I’ve been spending hours uploading. For a 30 second video the file was around 500MB. I just made a 45 second video with Open Broadcaster Software and the video is 6MB!!! Already uploaded to YouTube in the time it took me to type this message… and that’s full HD too:
lol… just noticed, better disable the mouse capture, or remember to move the mouse off screen (FRAPS didn’t record mouse)
Actually, I’m using Camtasia for my gaming recordings and is very fast. Has a little effect on framerate, but it’s usually less than 10fps of difference.
