Hardware solution to capture video of my pc?

[Red Squirrel]

I've tried tons of programs, most are not scalable or don't capture properly (ex: super choppy, or too fast, etc).

Basically I want to be able to capture large (1024*768 and higher) screen to video. I have a dual core fairly modern cpu so I'm sure cpu wise I'm ok, just no software seems to be able to do it properly.

Is there perhaps any kind of hardware solution to do this? Would a DVR work? Or is there a special type of video card I can buy, then I just clone my screen but instead of outputting to a monitor it outputs to a device that creates AVIs?

 

[Concillian]

One of the main issues is 1024x768 x 24 bits per pixel @ 30 FPS is like 65 MB/sec worth of data. This is not the kind of thing that gets handled easily. You either have to have a RAID array to write that fast or you have to have some very serious compression that can keep up with that kind of throughput.

People sometimes get lost in how much information is really displayed on a screen during gaming.

DVRs are not the same. Cable / satellite is transmitted in pre-compressed format and the cable box has an MPEG-2 and / or MPEG-4 decoder chip to handle the decompression realtime. DVRs capture this pre-compressed data. And decompression is a hell of a lot easier than compression. DIY DVRs either find a way to capture and decompress these pre-compressed (and encrypted for cable channels) data streams, or they only capture at SD resolution.

There were no consumer level capture options for greater than SD resolutions last I checked about twelve months ago. The only stuff I could find were professional grade stuff with funny input connectors and the cost was measured in the thousands of dollars.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm so there's no decent way of doing this then? I would have figured with the speed of today's hdd's 65MB/sec is not all that much. I have a sata2 disk I capture to and it's seperate from my os.

Do you think getting a 3 disk raid 0 would do the trick? Is disk IO my main issue that hypercam captures are all out of sync and too fast? Since with the cheap price of hdds I could easily setup a windows software raid. Then again would software raid slow things down more?

 

[apoppin]

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

i believe that HW will do it just fine
-- or the full version of FRAPS is as close as you are going to get in SW. ASUS also has some SW that supposedly captures OK but i have yet to try it; it was included with my 4870/1GB

 

[vj8usa]

Did you ever try FRAPS? If so, what was wrong with it? If you ended up getting choppy video, odds are it's because your hard drive can't keep up, not because of the program.

I just tested FRAPS by capturing a few seconds of 1680x1050 @60FPS (free version), and it was fine (bit choppy, but that's just because my hard drive can't keep up - I dropped to 30FPS and it was smooth).

 

[Red Squirrel]

I never was able to get fraps to even start a capture - no button or anything, and the shortcut key was probably intercepted by the OS or something. But I'm trying to capture non directx game stuff so don't think that works for general desktop captures does it?

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
I never was able to get fraps to even start a capture - no button or anything, and the shortcut key was probably intercepted by the OS or something. But I'm trying to capture non directx game stuff so don't think that works for general desktop captures does it?

? What are you trying to record? FRAPs supports OpenGL also and is probably the best/cheapest video capture software available. Check the record key bind, make sure your game window is focused and hit the record key, its that simple.

Also, full quality recordings are *VERY* big with an extremely high bitrate and can be a problem with slower HDDs. 65MB/s is actually very close to the sustained transfer/copy rates of the fastest 7200RPM drives in Vista. FRAPs is also very CPU intensive and will peg a single core @3GHz to 100% by itself, so keep that in mind if you're getting choppy recording.

For best results, use a fast CPU (Quad is better) and 3 HDDs: OS, game, FRAPs.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
I never was able to get fraps to even start a capture - no button or anything, and the shortcut key was probably intercepted by the OS or something. But I'm trying to capture non directx game stuff so don't think that works for general desktop captures does it?

? What are you trying to record? FRAPs supports OpenGL also and is probably the best/cheapest video capture software available. Check the record key bind, make sure your game window is focused and hit the record key, its that simple.

Also, full quality recordings are *VERY* big with an extremely high bitrate and can be a problem with slower HDDs. 65MB/s is actually very close to the sustained transfer/copy rates of the fastest 7200RPM drives in Vista. FRAPs is also very CPU intensive and will peg a single core @3GHz to 100% by itself, so keep that in mind if you're getting choppy recording.

For best results, use a fast CPU (Quad is better) and 3 HDDs: OS, game, FRAPs.

agreed, FRAPS works!

however, now matter what, if you are recording a demanding game at 19x12 [for example] - and your rig can just manage it - you will not be able to record successfully with fraps .. it will slow it down. That is what a HW solution would be for. And ASUS does have a similar program to FRAPS included with my 4870 .. i intend to try it [as soon as i need to record something]

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
I never was able to get fraps to even start a capture - no button or anything, and the shortcut key was probably intercepted by the OS or something. But I'm trying to capture non directx game stuff so don't think that works for general desktop captures does it?

You need something like Camtasia.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

I've been using FRAPS for a long time but it's not the be-all-end-all for everyone if in-game is not what your after.... I"m suprised that there insn't a product that you can output your DVI straight into digitally and then that have a DVI out to your monitor....

This is a total PC forum you may want to check some other specialty sites that focus on Video editing etc. I'm curious now myself.

LOL apoppin posted what I found too

That may be your only option. The other sites I found that do this don't even list the prices for their h/w.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If your video card supports HD component out, you can get a Hauppauge HD PVR device and capture the video stream that way. It will encode it to H.264 and will do 720p or 1080i video resolution.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I tried camtasia as well, it was ALMOST good enough, the issue is when you complete a capture it does this weird processing thing, before you even get to save the file, then it just randomly stops/freezes/never ends. I was only able to capture like a few minutes. Think it tries to keep it all in ram.

It's also not only games I need to capture so fraps wont work for me.

As for HDMI, how does the screen res translate when doing a capture to a DVR? Since it's a different aspect ratio and all. I don't want to spend too much money or any at all, but just looking at my options right now.

I can use camtasia or evne snagit for small stuff but anything big, those programs wont do. Snagit even refuses to TRY to capture anything bigger then 480*360. I like capturing full screen then cut out the sections I want in my final render, and then compress. It also gives me the option to pan as opposed to if I captured at 480*360 (which is the size of the final video as most of the stuff I do is for youtube). One thing I have not tried yet though is capturing at lower frame rate like 15 instead of 25. Wont be as natural looking but for fast paced videos with music and headings showing many 5-10 sec clips, probably wont really show.