Game Recording Software?

[Rookie1986]

Not that my new PC is working or anything but I do plan on videoing some of my friends and I playing LoL, D3 and BF3 once it is and just wanted to know if FRAPS is still the best value for money games recorder out there?

Regards,
Rookie

[KeyboardDemon]

I use MSI Afterburner, it records and is free. Pretty good value IMHO.

[Phage]

FRAPS is still good as well.

[KeyboardDemon]

FRAPS is still good as well.

Yes, FRAPS is good too, but IIRC the free version was limited to 30 second clips and the clips were watermarked with the FRAPS logo, the paid version had no such restrictions but costs £24.95 to get this. I don't know if it does more than MSI Afterburner when it comes to recording either, but as I don't record very often I didn't want to spend the money to find out. I would suggest trying MSI Afterburner and the free version of FRAPS then going for the one you find best meets your needs.

[JamieH]

I always found FRAPS to be the best. Didn't xfire used to record? I haven't used it in well over 4 years.

[nightcypher]

Fraps still splurges watermarks all over it if you're using the free version. It's great if you've got the money for the full version, but the free version really isn't great.

[Bambooz]

Dxtory

http://dxtory.com/v2-home-en.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0KqsTa_HpM

One HUGE advantage over fraps is that you can use whatever installed codec you want to record video/audio with. You can use Dxtorys own one, which is sort of similar to what fraps uses, i.e. mostly uncompressed video/audio, so the files will be pretty huge, but CPU load is low. It also records into one big file, instead of the retarded 4GB snippets fraps does.

If you don't mind (or don't care) about the CPU load, you could also record directly into x264 (h264/AVC) video files with MP3 audio if you have those codecs installed. The files will be MUCH smaller (depending on the compression settings obviously), but CPU load will be higher. If the game you're playing doesn't max out the CPU, that's usually not really a problem.

With my current settings in Dxtory (x264vfw video codec, set to single pass lossless ; MP3 audio at 160kbps) I get about 10-15% extra CPU load while recording, but one minute of 1280x720 30fps video just takes up 300-450MB on my HDD, rather than over 2GB per minute from fraps.
If you set higher compression (anything that isn't lossless), the files will obviously be even smaller, but it'll cost you more CPU load while you're recording. For more modern/demanding games on not-so-highend CPUs, that might be a dealbreaker (too high CPU load from the game to have any realtime video compression load on top of that)

Another cool thing is that it can record videos in any resolution you want, independent of the resolution you're actually playing the game in. For example, I could play something like GTA IV in 1920x1080 at ~50fps, but record a video in Dxtory at 1280x720 30fps without it affecting my game or the ingame fps I'm getting (unlike fraps, which locks your ingame framerate to whatever your recording settings are)

Oh and you can record up to 8 seperate audio tracks as well.. For example one for ingame audio, one for commentary via your mic. As they're in seperate tracks, you can edit them independently in your video editor of choice later on to avoid problems like ingame sounds drowning out your microphone or something.

It's not free, but IMHO definitely worth the money.
It costs 3600 japanese yen, which translates into about 29gbp or 36eur.

Search around on youtube a bit for some reviews, comparisons etc.