Best game recording software?

[Aerothorn]

Hey all -

I’m about to undertake a project to record lots of game footage for various titles as part of a three-person team. I have a Shadowplay-capable graphics card and am thus probably set, but I wanted to see if you knew what the best of the Fraps successors are (I recall hearing that Fraps wasn’t all that these days) so I can recommend something to my teammates.

Thanks much!

[sabrage]

I’ve never used it myself, but the recording suite on Open Broadcasting Software seems robust. It can record directly using NVENC, the Shadowplay codec, although I found it was a poor substitute for h.264 when it comes to actual streaming.

[Procrastination_Giant]

Yeah, even though it’s primarily streaming software you really can’t go wrong with OBS when it comes to regular recording, whether you’re using NVENC (Pretty sure its settings offer finer control over bitrate and such than shadowplay… Not that it matters that much, since NVENC is pretty prone to nasty artifacting even at higher settings), Quicksync or traditional encoding.

It can be a bit of a pain to set up initially (due to the sheer plethora of settings and the streaming-centric layout), but you can find plenty of written guides or tutorials on youtube for either of the two versions. (And of those two versions you should probably pick OBS Multiplatform)

And when it comes to more “traditional” recording software… I think Dxtory is still the go-to program when it comes to recording uncompressed footage, but i’ve never tried that one myself since it costs about 40 dollars or so. There should be a demo version, though.

[ZakG]

And i recall that Bandicam was also one of the players in the market? I’m not sure there are any good free options, although you find a few demo versions sometimes. Maybe check youtube itself for any videos like ‘what you need to record games’ etc?

[retrodust]

I used Fraps a long time ago, then tried Bandicam for a bit but wasn’t impressed.
This was a HyperCam link.

EDIT: Nevermind.

[Heliocentric]

Shadowplay-capable graphics card and am thus probably set

Yeah, its pretty bloody convenient.

[Fumarole]

[quote=“Heliocentric, post:6, topic:12615”]
Yeah, its pretty bloody convenient.
[/quote]I use it and like it. It’s especially nice that it’s always running, so I don’t have to remember to start the software before playing. If something happens that I want to capture I just hit Alt-F10 and the last 16 minutes (this is user-defined) are saved. Easy peasy.

[Heliocentric]

I use it and like it. It’s especially nice that it’s always running, so I don’t have to remember to start the software before playing. If something happens that I want to capture I just hit Alt-F10 and the last 16 minutes (this is user-defined) are saved. Easy peasy.

Its the “Did you see what I just did?” button.

[Fumarole]

[quote=“Heliocentric, post:8, topic:12615”]
Its the “Did you see what I just did?” button.
[/quote]I’ve been playing Ubi games lately, so for me it’s more of a “Holy shit that was a hell of a bug” button.

[Katana]

So I didn’t post it because I assumed someone else would know it and post it before me. (Hypercam??? Really, folks?)

Dxtory is rumored to be better than Fraps at recording. (No link, because it’s downloadable from several spots but has no homepage) I still prefer Shadowplay because it’s more convenient in terms of running DVR mode.

AMD has their own equivalent to GeForce (Raptr), including a recording mechanism. I tried it out, but possibly because I use an NVidia card, it wasn’t quite as nice.

[Muzman]

Yeah Dxstory is the one recommended by Youtubers! (and comes with a free set of steak knives).
I don’t know really, but that’s the one I use. I know fraps gradually became a bit of a processor hog (will only use core number 1, from memory too. Although they might have fixed that), which you’d think would become less of a problem over time, but of course game processing requirements and video formats just get bigger. Plus it seems to throw up compatibility problems more often and fraps codec isn’t amazing.

Dxstory has a lot of options, autogenerates separate configs for every game you play for you to edit, and seems to take pretty much whatever you throw at it (although my habit of using huge lossless codecs makes thing easier). Plus it’s also regularly updated.
It seems worth getting to grips with if you’re embarking on a large project.

But I don’t really know anything about Shadowplay. If you’ve got that do you need anything else?

[Goodtwist]

How do you deal the size limit with Shadow Play?

I don’t remember any more where the size limit exactly is but effectively it’d cut my recording into several, let’s say, 3,5 GB files. Is there a dedicated programme to collate those files into one single flawless video?

[Procrastination_Giant]

How do you deal the size limit with Shadow Play?

AFAIK there’s no time/size limit if you use OBS instead of Shadowplay. Shadowplay really is mostly designed to use NVENC (the encoder that shadowplay uses) to capture footage after the fact, to be that “did that just happen?” button that’s easy to configure. If you use NVENC in OBS you shouldn’t have a filesize limit, should have slightly more control over the encoder itself while still having just as little an impact on overall performance as you would have if you’d use shadowplay. (In theory - i haven’t tested OBS’ NVENC implementation in a while since my machine handles x264 just fine)

[trjp]

For recording you choose to do ‘before it happens’, Shadowplay simply carves-up the files into user-defined chunks (not a bad idea - you don’t want 50Gb video files to edit)

The size limit only really applies to ‘did you see that’ videos - and obviously relates to how much stuff you want to save/resources your want to use doing that.

I love Shadowplay - although I am told that people with nVidia cards/GeForce Experience who DON’T use it should disable it’s services because they do impact on performance (even if it’s disabled, apparently)

Most PC gaming sites have articles on this - I won’t link em because they’ll be out-of-date before I’ve finished, most likely!!

[Goodtwist]

Is there a dedicated programme to collate those files into one single flawless video?

Does anybody have an idea about that issue? I like Shadow Play (=SP) in that it doesn’t require me installing additional (recording) software but rather it’s already (compulsorily) there with the video card driver. Also, you can configure SP to your liking but you probably already know that. Like, manually started recording, or automatic start when a game commences, etc.

[squirrel]

May I also purpose my own question in this thread. Last time I ask about how to use Fraps, turns out it won’t work well when I run both my game and writing of captured video data on the same HDD. Is there any video capturing software which will solve this problem?

Size of the raw file isn’t that much of a problem for me for now I think. I can use Handbrake to compress.

[Procrastination_Giant]

Does anybody have an idea about that issue? I like Shadow Play (=SP) in that it doesn’t require me installing additional (recording) software but rather it’s already (compulsorily) there with the video card driver. Also, you can configure SP to your liking but you probably already know that. Like, manually started recording, or automatic start when a game commences, etc.

The issue trjp is refering to has been fixed a while ago (3-4 months ago) as far as i can tell - These days disabling the Nvidia Streaming Service or outright uninstalling Nvidia Experience (or not installing it to begin with) doesn’t have nearly as big an impact on framerates as it did back then. Used to give boosts of 10-20% or more, now the difference is barely noticable.

Ah and Shadowplay is just as much an “additional recording software” as any alternative would be, by the way, since GeForce Experience is NOT compulsory at the moment. It’s bundled with the driver, yes, but you don’t *have *to install it/uninstalling it won’t negatively impact your driver. For now it’s merely an optional feature, though Nvidia are in the process of turning it into something compulsory in the near future.

[Fumarole]

[quote=“Goodtwist, post:12, topic:12615”]
Is there a dedicated programme to collate those files into one single flawless video?
[/quote]I use Windows Movie Maker to edit my videos. It is free and does what I need it to do.

[trjp]

The issue trjp is refering to has been fixed a while ago (3-4 months ago) as far as i can tell

It’s been back since then - it may have been refixed since (I’ve had 2-or-3 GE updates recently). I can’t really test it tho because I like Shadowplay and I’m not turning it off.

As for video editting - Windows Movie Maker is fine for basic stuff but I recommend Sony Movie Studio 13 (was Vegas) VERY highly AND we have a Steam Sale starting in 2 days and it’s on Steam and it was seriously cheap last time around (like under £10 cheap)

It does SO much more than WMM - supports more formats, has more toys and there’s a billion tutorial videos to get you up and running.

[Aerothorn]

I get the impression always-on Shadowplay is pretty bad for SSDs, giving how much writing it’s doing on a constant basis, so I leave it turned off; am I wrong to think this? Or is there a way to make it us HDD instead (and does that have its own issues)?