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[UrbanwarfareStudios]

Hi Everyone,

I'm in the very early stages of developing a very niche game and I would like to be able to make a simple video of my progress this far to get my 600 fans on facebook excited

I'm struggling to find a screen recorder that is capable of producing a high quality recording, the ones I have are really reducing the quality, slow jerky and pixalated.

I just wondered what everyone else is using?

TIA 

[Christian Knudsen]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=225.0
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4537.0

I personally record the input while I play, then have the game play back itself and output each frame to a bitmap. These are then all joined into an .avi with VirtualDub.

[chainedchaos31]

I actually use Microsoft Expression Encoder (which includes a screen-capture program). You can only record 10 minutes at a time with the free version, but that's good enough for me!
The quality and frame rate are definitely adequate for what we need.

[James Coote]

Just for reference, for Android developers looking for screen capture / recording:

Use the Intel atom x86 emulator for ice-cream sandwich : http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/installing-the-intel-atom-tm-android-x86-emulator-image-add-on-from-the-android-sdk-manager/

This is a lot faster than the regular emulator, especially for 3D / opengl stuff, and beats recording a video of your phone by a mile. You can then use whatever screen capture software you like to capture the emulator running on your PC

[bluescrn]

FRAPS is great (www.fraps.com), if you've got a quick PC

I can record at 60fps at 960x640 (Win32 build of my iOS project). Then I use VirtualDub to compress the FRAPS output.

The limiting factor is YouTube, that doesn't support high frame rates

[Xienen]

I have found that FRAPS is worth every penny, if you have a speedy machine.  I'm able to record 1080p with no issues on my Corei7, GeForce 480, and my 2x 3TB Deskstar drives in Raid 0.  When recording RAW video(like FRAPS does), the most important factor is hard drive speed, as long as your CPU and/or GPU aren't fully taxed by the game you're recording.

[tacograveyard]

I've been using ScreenFlick recently. It's has a bunch of functionality that makes it good for recording screencasts as well. I'm on OSX so FRAPS wasn't an option for me.

[oByhring]

When making the trailer for my game, I used Camtasia. If you are just making a small video the 30 day free trial should be enough.

This was on a semi-new iMac.

[Schwiggy]

I also use FRAPS; now I use a PC with an i7 but previously had no troubles recording high res video with an i3 processor.

As a serious tip to people with low res games, stretch to full screen while playing and check the box record desktop. You retain more quality on YouTube with higher resolution - it doesn't matter that your 320x240 video has zero artifacts and looks perfect - YouTube will destroy it.

And Urbanwarfare, definitely make this video for your field hockey game (I assume). I recorded a very simple gameplay trailer of a game that I thought was very niche and then Pewdiepie played it and my own video alone has near 300k views. It was the first Slenderman game... Never underestimate niche fans  

[alts]

If sound isn't critical (unlikely, but maybe), what I do is just make the game write the buffer to disk every other frame. Then I used ffmpeg to string the screenshots together into a video.

[TheLastBanana]

If you aren't ready to shell out for FRAPS, Krut is also great. It doesn't automatically size to the game's window, but I've used it to record a few videos of my game (

) and, as you can see, they're consistently clear and smooth.

[UrbanwarfareStudios]

Thanks for all your advice guys

A very basic 20 second walk through

[RudyTheDev]

It would be best if your game window matched the aspect ratio of the video (or the other way around given you don't crop important bits), typically 720p or 1080p. It looks more professional this way, or rather it looks less professional with black bars.

[UrbanwarfareStudios]

Duely noted hopefully the content will be more professional for the next one

[ANtY]

Fraps

[UrbanwarfareStudios]

Hi Guys,

Here is my second video. With intro screen + credits + better aspect ratio just a shame the content is very boring but it will get better (I hope) as my project progresses.

Again thanks for the tips.

[JigxorAndy]

I've tired a lot of different techniques and pieces of software for recording videos. I'm still not really sure what's the best but I can show you what I do so far.

For a 720p YouTube video I use:

Record with:

Playclaw:
Low Compression
30 FPS
6 Compression Threads

And then put it through VirtualDub:
XVid 720p preset. Quality 1.0
with audio: CCITT u-Law 44.1k 8 bit stereo

That gives me a video of this sort of quality:



The filesize can be quite large. Perhaps 1GB of raw video for 5 minutes of recording which is compressed to 100-200mb.

Playclaw is decent, but I think something like FRAPS which most people use would probably be better.

One thing is I still haven't found any good editing software for this process. I'd really like to make a trailer video but I'm not sure what to use. Anyone got any ideas?

[Christian Knudsen]

I use kdenlive for video editing. It's really excellent. You'll need Linux or Mac OS X for that, though.

[AuthenticKaizen]

One thing is I still haven't found any good editing software for this process. I'd really like to make a trailer video but I'm not sure what to use. Anyone got any ideas?

I have listed a selection of proper video edting and recording software over here:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/#video-recording-and-editing

I use Sony Vegas for editing. Really good piece of software.
There are 3 versions (50$/100$/600$... the basic version is enough for normal editing).
Note that you can test the free trial of each version for 30 days without any restrictions.

[JigxorAndy]

One thing is I still haven't found any good editing software for this process. I'd really like to make a trailer video but I'm not sure what to use. Anyone got any ideas?

I have listed a selection of proper video edting and recording software over here:
http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/#video-recording-and-editing

I use Sony Vegas for editing. Really good piece of software.
There are 3 versions (50$/100$/600$... the basic version is enough for normal editing).
Note that you can test the free trial of each version for 30 days without any restrictions.

I've heard good things about Sony Vegas, thanks for the tip, I'll give it a go.

edit: I've been trying the trial of Movie Studio 11 (the cheapest option) and it seems really awesome! It's extremely intuitive and works straight out of the box with lots of great features. I'll probably be buying it. Thank you very much.