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[I_smell]

I'm making a showreel to show my animation. I want to include some game footage, but all the screen recording software I've tried really wrecks the framerate.

I've tried CamStudio, HyperCam2 and Adobe Captivate.

Actually, HyperCam2 would probably be allright if I could get it to stop outputting the video at a stupid sped-up framerate

[Chman]

FRAPS, maybe ? Works great, but it's not free.

[Kaelan]

I use CamStudio when I need to record windows UI, and Fraps for everything else. The latter costs money, but is good.

Taksi is an open-source alternative to Fraps that may meet your needs; it's not quite as good though.

[siiseli]

Camtasia. Only one that works for me.

[Cymon]

but all the screen recording software I've tried really wrecks the framerate.

You're using a piece of software that copies the screen buffer, frame by frame, on to the hard drive. If your hard drive write speed is slow or processor or memory is not up to snuff there is no software that will fix this problem. The only solution to your problem may be an upgrade. UPGRADE!

[Kaelan]

You're using a piece of software that copies the screen buffer, frame by frame, on to the hard drive. If your hard drive write speed is slow or processor or memory is not up to snuff there is no software that will fix this problem. The only solution to your problem may be an upgrade. UPGRADE!

Not strictly true. Recording a DirectDraw/Direct3D based game with an app like Fraps will be significantly more efficient than doing so with an app like Camtasia or CamStudio, because they use fundamentally different recording techniques.

You're still definitely going to be bound by the capabilities of your hardware, though. It may help to use a high-speed lossless codec like the ones provided by Fraps and CamStudio when recording if you're bound by hard disk throughput - most hard disks can't handle saving high-res uncompressed video at high framerates, so a lossless codec can help ease the burden without significantly impacting your recording framerate.

[Will Vale]

Another vote for FRAPS here

[J. Kyle Pittman]

I use Fraps as well.  I remember having trouble making it work with an old 2D game that used the Win32 GDI (I think I ended up using HyperCam to capture video of that one), but for everything else, it's been terrific.

[___]

I can never get Fraps to work properly unless I'm recording a 3d game.  Camstudio works well enough for me once I figured out how to capture at a decent frame rate.

[I_smell]

I fixed this problem yesterday by using HyperCam2, but making the actual size of the game window smaller. It fixed the framerate.

[Chris Polus]

I know this is a PC question, but should any Mac user read this, I heard people saying SnapzPro by Ambrosia Software, also Camtasia Studio by TechSmith is out for the Mac now, but I really grew fond of ScreenFlow by Telestream. It's a great software for all the basic editing and recording needs.

Cheers,
Chris