In Game Video Capture

[mattspencer]

I've used Bandicam in the past and it is decent (although free version is limited to <10 minutes I think, and has a advertising bar on screen) for recording and uploading to Youtube (although my upload speed is slow, so even with adjusting quality down, it takes forever (1 hour for 10 minute video to upload, or so). I noticed with a recent AMD Catalyst update that AMD Gaming Evolved includes the ability to record video (even after the fact, you can hit record and it will save your last 5 seconds to 14 minutes (at 1080p, or 20 minutes at 720p). I am wondering if anyone has used this and have any thoughts on quality, ease of use, and settings to use to get decent quality at a small file size (especially important for me with a slow upload speed when sending to Youtube). I am particularly interested in free options available, since I am happy with Bandicam, just wondering if there is a better option out there.

[Arathaert]

Heh I can definitely talk on this one :P But I'll spare you the long version and just go straight for the list:

Open Broadcaster Software
This is a great all-purpose software for recording and broadcasting video - I use it for my streams. You can customize scenes, and can control the game and mic audio live, and can see a preview of what's recording/broadcasting. Downside is that it takes up a lil bit much in the memory/cpu department. It only records while it's up, so no "after-the-fact" recording on this one. And - if you care about it - the audio goes only to one channel (i.e. mic and game audio are mixed together). Not an issue usually, especially if you're not using a mic. But if you want good quality commentary, it's nice to be able to pull the voice out and cut out noise, etc., or even record audio separately in something like Audacity and drop it in.

MSI Afterburner
It's officially an overclocking program, but it does so much more. If I'm just recording, I use this. It's a very light program that you can set to keep a file (or RAM) buffer and record "after-the-fact" video. High quality and very adjustable too. Even at 85% quality on a 1080p video, it looks great. That suite of programs also has the bonus benefit of being able to cap your framerate, which will improve performance; and you can monitor different aspects of your system on a lil HUD in-game (won't show up in recordings). Takes a lil bit of fiddling to figure out how to work it, but it's well worth the few hours you might spend. And - again, if you care - you can set it up so mic and game volume go to two separate audio tracks, so you can do post-production audio editing.

Handbrake
You'll want this program regardless of what you use. Essentially it does three things: 1. Convert files from one format to another. 2. Lock the framerate of video files (so you don't end up with weird audio/video sync problems). 3. Compress file sizes drastically. If you're just uploading to YouTube, definitely use this. YouTube already heavily compresses their video, so you may as well take up less time and space on your pooter.

Hope that helps! Any questions just let me know. Finally something in the guard forums I *know* I'm really really good at ;D

[PulseDiver2]

MSI Afterburner
+1

[mattspencer]

Thanks for the info Arathaert. I am probably going to try out Afterburner + Handbrake. Can you suggest settings to use? I normally play at 1080p and would like to record at that resolution. I am guessing you are suggesting to use 85% quality in Afterburner, and I think with Bandicam I used mp4 H264 VBR at only a 30 on their quality setting (which did look a little rough, but was what I had to do to get the size down and keep the quality watchable). For reference, my 8 min 45 second video of Iorbar's Peak T2C was 356 mb with (I think) those settings.

I tested out Afterburner and Handbrake briefly in game and I do like them. I used the following settings, let me know if there is anything you suggest I change or try differently...

Afterburner - Prerecord buffer limit 900 seconds and 2 Gbs to file, MJPG compression and AVI, 85% Quality, Full Frame, 30 FPS
also, I unchecked the show on screen display on screen and video captures, so you don't have the purple circle in the upper left in recordings

Handbrake - Video Codec to H.264 (x264), Constant Quality set to 30 instead of 20, Very Fast speed so it doesn't take too long to encode. I just did very small videos of about 6 seconds and it went from 92.2 mb to 2.85 mb.

[PulseDiver2]

Some recommendations on using external VFW codecs for video capture in MSI Afterburner.

Our personal recommendation is nice free x264vfw codec, which can be downloaded here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/files/

There are both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the codec available. You need 32-bit one only to capture video via MSI Afterburner, but you may additionally install 64-bit version of codec, if you need to edit videos compressed with it in 64-bit applications.

Is is recommended to use the following codec configuration:

Select "Ultrafast" preset
Set log level to "None"
Enable "Zero latency" option, otherwise audio and video str3ams may run out of sync.

[mattspencer]

I got the vfw and configured it with Afterburner. Would you suggest I stick with 23 Ratefactor (quality) or go higher (lower quality)?

[PulseDiver2]

I got the vfw and configured it with Afterburner. Would you suggest I stick with 23 Ratefactor (quality) or go higher (lower quality)?

i think 23 is ok.
just test several Ratefactor maybe you need more quality

[mattspencer]

Thanks for the help, I like Afterburner a lot. The size/quality seems to me about the same as Bandicam, but it crashes less and doesn't have the banner which is nice. I'm not sure if I even need Handbrake if I set the quality right the first time in Afterburner.

[Arathaert]

Thanks for the help, I like Afterburner a lot. The size/quality seems to me about the same as Bandicam, but it crashes less and doesn't have the banner which is nice. I'm not sure if I even need Handbrake if I set the quality right the first time in Afterburner.

Handbrake is mainly nice for locking down the frame rate so it doesn't go out of sync with audio. But aye, if you've got decent settings in Afterburner you can dispense with the Handbrake step and just go straight to editing.

[Zonflux]

I've been using FFSplit for local recording, though one could easily use OBS for local recording as well. If I don't care about laying out various screen objects on my game screen then I just use Bandicam.

The benefit of FFSplit is that it is free and perhaps a little bit easier to use than OBS.

I always lock my game fps at a maximum of 60 fps, and I set my game capture at 24 fps.

This is the xml settings file that I use for FFSplit;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Presentation xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" PresentationName="Presentation Name" EditorCanvas="Canvas" OutputCanvas="Canvas" EnablePreview="false" EnablePreviewOverstretching="false" EnableSnapping="true">
  <Canvas CanvasName="Canvas">
    <LayerList>
      <LayerText LayerName="Quick Text Layer" Visible="true" Locked="false" Alpha="1" LayerX="0.161718756" LayerY="0" LayerW="0.6734375" LayerH="0.0522041768" LayerAspectRatio="19.4" FontName="Segoe UI" TextType="0" FontColor="-1" OutlineColor="0" OutlineSize="0" ScrollBackAndForth="false" FontBold="false" FontItalic="false" ScrollHoldTime="0" Text="Experimenting with Blue Tank DPS builds / gear / essences." ScrollSpeedX="0" ScrollSpeedY="0" Warp="false" CropW="0" CropH="0" ReloadInterval="0" />
      <LayerDirectShow LayerName="Cam" Visible="true" Locked="false" Alpha="1" LayerX="0.7765625" LayerY="0.7027778" LayerW="0.2234375" LayerH="0.748251736" LayerAspectRatio="1.33444822" SourceName="BCC950 ConferenceCam" SourceWidth="320" SourceHeight="240" SourceFramerate="30.00" SourcePixelFormat="YUY2" SourceInputPin="-1" SourceOutputPin="-1" SourceFlipHorizontal="false" SourceFlipVertical="false" />
      <LayerScreen LayerName="Game" Visible="true" Locked="false" Alpha="1" LayerX="0" LayerY="0" LayerW="1" LayerH="0.5625" LayerAspectRatio="1.77777779" CaptureType="3" RegionLeft="0" RegionTop="0" RegionRight="0" RegionBottom="0" WindowName="The Lord of the Rings Online™" WindowProcessName="lotroclient" WindowClientArea="true" WindowAsRegion="false" CaptureCursor="true" CaptureLayered="false" />
    </LayerList>
    <WindowList />
  </Canvas>
</Presentation>

Of course you would need to play and tweak with that. FFSplit doesn't get updated often though which is a downside. I own Bandicam and still love using it too.