Screen recording!

jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member
edited March 2012 in Gaming
I for the life of me can't seem to get a working screen recorder for my games. I have tried fraps, camtasia studios, DXtory, MSI afterburner and many others whos names I can't remember and none of them work. It will record and my game will run fine with little to no drop in frames but when I watch the recordings back it plays at what looks like about 3 frames per second. Before anyone goes and says it's my CPU, I can run origin, steam, BF3, firefox with about 14 tabs open, MSN, skype in a call, iTunes, Hotmail and winrar at the same time while still maintaining ~92 frames on BF3. And that is not an exaggeration either

System specs:
Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 2300 @ 2.80GHz
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 686MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P8H67-M (LGA1155)
Graphics
Generic Non-PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
1280MB GeForce GTX 570 (Gigabyte)

Comments

  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited March 2012
    Hi,
    I'm actually developing DirectX screen grab technology right now and I for once know how something works.
    Basically, these programs hook themselves in to your game which gives them access to your video cards frame buffer while it runs applications in full screen exclusive mode. So that presents your first potential issue:
    - You might have security software that is constantly checking what the hook is doing because hooks are generally considered dangerous -- try disabling your security software while you play the game and record

    If that doesn't work there are additional items to consider:

    - Grabbing the screen of AntiAliased games is extremely difficult. This is because AntiAliasing works by rendering multiple surfaces, meaning that if you have a game running in 1920x1080 and you have AA enabled you are literally trying to grab at least 100 uncompressed 1080 resolution frames every second and write them to an AVI container or otherwise ... while you render all these frames to screen. It is not easy for any computer to do.

    - Finally, most of these programs have an option to use some sort of compression codec in real time while grabbing frames from the video cards buffer. This slows things down incredibly, so if you have an option in any of these programs just disable the codec BUT BE WARNED that if you do disable the codec you can easily expect 50+ Gb uncompressed AVI files to write out.


    TLDR:
    - Disable security software while capping
    - Disable Anti Aliasing
    - Disable compression codec options in screen capture program - or use high performing low compression codecs, be cautious about drive space

    Still doesn't work? What kind of hard drive do you have?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    What movie player are you attempting to watch it with?
  • jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member
    What movie player are you attempting to watch it with?
    I have tried VLC, media player classic, quicktime, media player (latest) and even when I put it any editing program (adobe bridge, iMovie, Adobe premier pro)
  • jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member
    Hi,
    I'm actually developing DirectX screen grab technology right now and I for once know how something works.
    Basically, these programs hook themselves in to your game which gives them access to your video cards frame buffer while it runs applications in full screen exclusive mode. So that presents your first potential issue:
    - You might have security software that is constantly checking what the hook is doing because hooks are generally considered dangerous -- try disabling your security software while you play the game and record

    If that doesn't work there are additional items to consider:

    - Grabbing the screen of AntiAliased games is extremely difficult. This is because AntiAliasing works by rendering multiple surfaces, meaning that if you have a game running in 1920x1080 and you have AA enabled you are literally trying to grab at least 100 uncompressed 1080 resolution frames every second and write them to an AVI container or otherwise ... while you render all these frames to screen. It is not easy for any computer to do.

    - Finally, most of these programs have an option to use some sort of compression codec in real time while grabbing frames from the video cards buffer. This slows things down incredibly, so if you have an option in any of these programs just disable the codec BUT BE WARNED that if you do disable the codec you can easily expect 50+ Gb uncompressed AVI files to write out.


    TLDR:
    - Disable security software while capping
    - Disable Anti Aliasing
    - Disable compression codec options in screen capture program - or use high performing low compression codecs, be cautious about drive space

    Still doesn't work? What kind of hard drive do you have?
    Alright I'll give the disabling AA a try, I don't feel comfortable disabling my virus scanner and I have a 1TB WD black gaming edition plugged intoa 6Gb S-ATA port and a second 2TB western digital caviar green HDD plugged into a 3Gb S-ATA port. I have tried recording to both plus my seagate goflex 500GB external hard drive through USB 3.0. Also I always choose the uncompressed formats with them so yeah
  • jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member

    Alright I'll give the disabling AA a try, I don't feel comfortable disabling my virus scanner and I have a 1TB WD black gaming edition plugged intoa 6Gb S-ATA port and a second 2TB western digital caviar green HDD plugged into a 3Gb S-ATA port. I have tried recording to both plus my seagate goflex 500GB external hard drive through USB 3.0. Also I always choose the uncompressed formats with them so yeah
    It recorded nicely, but my frames in game went to shit on lowest. but the opposite for high. High graphics maintained frames but recorded badly even with AA off.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    I wonder if the integrated GPU on the i5 might be causing some issues?

    I'm not up on the Intel side of things lately, so it's just a spitball guess in this case.
  • jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member
    Any ideas on how to find out/disable it at all?
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    ASFAIK, all these capture programs work the same way - since there is only one way to make them work - they grab frames directly from your GPUs memory. Given that you are recording games that otherwise play smooth at 1920x1080 on your system you pretty much have to be using the primary GPU, not the built in i5.
    In other words, only one GPU will render frames to your screen at a time. If you were using the i5's GPU you would have a very choppy output playing any DirectX9+ game at 1080p, therefore I don't think you are using it and I wouldn't worry about it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    The Intel GPU is automatically disabled at the silicon level the minute a discrete card is inserted into the system.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    I figured that would be the case, but as I said, I'm not up on the Intel side of things these days.
  • jumpstylerzjumpstylerz Member
    Ah okay then that's good. Otherwise I have no idea how to record my screen. I was experimenting with my mates capture card plugging it into my TVout ports and it records beautifully only problem is I need my own capture card (lol) I would have liked to be able to just use fraps or something but eh, it's unavoidable
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