Video Capture Program

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slime
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Video Capture Program

Post by slime »

Hey all, does anyone know of a good video capture program for Windows Vista, that actually works on bz? I've tried some (most notably Fraps and Hypercam 2) but they don't seem to work. Most of the programs such as Fraps lowered my fps drastically while taking the video. This resulted in high lag and jitter while I was playing, as well as low fps on the video. Hypercam 2 just shows a black screen instead of the bzflag screen.

What I want to accomplish is to make a nice video of me playing bzflag, and maybe show others out there what bzflag is sort of like. If anyone knows of a good video capture program out there that works on bz and doesn't drastically lower fps, please let me know.

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Post by Winny »

I never found a good capture program for Windows. The best I could find was Windows Media Encoder, but it appears they've removed the capture part from the program. Could be wrong, though.

If you have access to a Mac, I highly recommend Screenflow. It's $99, but it has a very tiny impact on system performance, and allows for all sorts of cool post processing techniques.
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Post by slime »

Yeah, I don't think you can capture a video using WME. I believe you already have to have a video file for that to work.

And no, I don't have access to a Mac.
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Post by blast »

Fraps works pretty well if you have a decent video card. You can lower the resolution to see if that helps, or tell fraps to capture half resolution. (I think that's an option..been a while since I used it) Fraps also has a capture frame rate setting that by default limits the game to that FPS too. You could increase that if your system can handle it, or you can set fraps not to limit the FPS of the game.
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Post by slime »

When I use fraps, it lowers my fps in-game to around 20 whenever I try to take a video. This is when I choose half-size resolution, and is the same for all the fps outputs. My video card is pretty decent, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS. So, I'm not sure what the problem is..
lol_u died

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slime wrote:When I use fraps, it lowers my fps in-game to around 20 whenever I try to take a video. This is when I choose half-size resolution, and is the same for all the fps outputs. My video card is pretty decent, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS. So, I'm not sure what the problem is..
how big is your ram? What's your processor speed? And you can always just go to yahoo answers and get help there. And google is here also!
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Post by Winny »

If I recall, Fraps has a setting to limit the number of FPS your system outputs. Might wanna check the settings to see what it's set at.
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Post by tw1sted »

lol_u died wrote:how big is your ram? What's your processor speed? And you can always just go to yahoo answers and get help there. And google is here also!
I doubt RAM or processor speed would have anything to do with his lowered FPS when he runs Fraps.

By the way, it's: "How much RAM do you have?" not "How big is your ram?".
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Post by slime »

lol_u died wrote:
slime wrote:When I use fraps, it lowers my fps in-game to around 20 whenever I try to take a video. This is when I choose half-size resolution, and is the same for all the fps outputs. My video card is pretty decent, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS. So, I'm not sure what the problem is..
how big is your ram? What's your processor speed? And you can always just go to yahoo answers and get help there. And google is here also!
Trust me, yahoo answers doesn't have the answer to, "What video capture program works for bzflag?" or "Why does fraps lower my fps to around 20 while recording bzflag?" Plus, I've searched the internet many times for different video capture programs to try.

Winny - I've tried all the different options for fps output. The output fps didn't have anything to do with fraps lowering my fps in-game.
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Post by snick »

slime wrote:Yeah, I don't think you can capture a video using WME. I believe you already have to have a video file for that to work.

And no, I don't have access to a Mac.
WME9 definitely has the option. I'll find where it is next time I boot Windows.

Under Windows I use CamStudio in combination with ffdshow tryouts.

http://camstudio.org/
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

To get best performance, one needs to experiment with codec choice
and parameters. If you have a CPU bottleneck, try a lower complexity
encoding method where that is available. If you have a disk access
bottleneck, then a reduction of resolution (either pre or post capture)
and a higher compression codec can help. Etc, etc.
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Post by snick »

Winny wrote:I never found a good capture program for Windows. The best I could find was Windows Media Encoder, but it appears they've removed the capture part from the program. Could be wrong, though.
Here's the option:

http://my.bzflag.org/bb/files/option_119.png
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Post by slime »

snick wrote:
Here's the option:

http://my.bzflag.org/bb/files/option_119.png
Yeah, I managed to find that option. However, all I get is a black screen in place of the bzflag screen when I try to record with it. It's the same effect as when I tried Hypercam, Camstudio, etc.
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Post by Home Guard »

Screen capturing is very resource intensive. I've never tried to capture during gaming, but I capture a lot of desktop work for teaching purposes.
Generally, hardware acceleration needs to be off to avoid black screening. (Right-click desktop, properties, settings, advanced, troubleshoot, slider to no accel). Doing this may reduce your gaming graphics to an unacceptable limit.

If you want a short clip - capture raw video data (massive files) so your CPU isn't hammered trying to encode data and play the game. Record at as few fps as possible to reduce CPU load further. The capture prog is probably only able to record files up to 4Gig (or is it 2Gig on Windows - can't remember) so at raw data you might get only a few mins depending on fps.

Then encode the vid file later using something like VirtualDub or Windows Movie Maker, and don't forget to enable h/ware accel. again.

KRUT is a little-known but decent capture app, but the output is encoded to Quicktime (I think) so you'll need to be able to convert it.
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Post by blast »

Using a screen capture application that is designed for gaming tends to work better than ones more for capturing desktop apps. I use Fraps, and it works quite well.

If you are using NTFS, then you won't run into a file size limit. I think that Fraps still splits the file at 4GB segments though.
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Post by allejo »

i know this is a bit old but are there any mac apps similar to these?
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Post by Winny »

Ha You Got Shot By Me wrote:i know this is a bit old but are there any mac apps similar to these?
Read.
Winny wrote:If you have access to a Mac, I highly recommend Screenflow. It's $99, but it has a very tiny impact on system performance, and allows for all sorts of cool post processing techniques.
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Post by snick »

Ha You Got Shot By Me wrote:i know this is a bit old but are there any mac apps similar to these?
Winny has mentioned one. Let me add these:

SnapZProX: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
iShowU: http://www.shinywhitebox.com/

If you want to roll your own, here's some code to get you started:

http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/O ... index.html
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Post by 0x »

I found this one and its 100% free. and its only for macs.

http://www.pure-mac.com/downloads/copernicusdl.html
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Post by red-der »

To give a little conclusion:

I tried nearly every possible software (free and comercial), but the results are mostly the same:

You need a lot of CPU-Power and, more important, a lot of RAM. On my "old lady" (E2160, 1 GB RAM) its not possible to capture in good quality.

A little of topic but relevant too:

First, you have to lower the Resolution; I play at 1440x900 thats way to high to cap.
Second, if you look at video encoding, you get a smooth realtime DIVX encoding for stuff in D1 (thats 720x576 TV resolution and 25 fps).

I think a higher resolution or higher framerates needs really, really more horsepower.
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