How to record a video game and get it online Updated 10-17-10

The software you will need is:

FRAPS - This isn't free, it's $37. It's worth every penny and more. I use it for every video and image I take. It's the only thing you need to purchase.

Virtual Dub (32-bit) - This IS free, make sure you use the 32-bit version. I can't get the 64 version to work. This makes your files a reasonable size.

The XVID codec. I typically install VLC Media player. It's the greatest program I know to view video files and DVDs on a PC. FFdShow should work too.

I'm currently running Windows 7 Home Premium x64 so some of the screenshots may look different. I've done this with the same settings in Windows XP and Vista 32-bit.

The FRAPs purchase, download and install is your average installer so I won't go into that. Once you have it running, check your settings for where you want to save these files. The video files created by FRAPS are HUGE. If you're recording at full size (to achieve HD quality) it's about 5 Gigs for every 3 minutes so have the necessary hard drive space. You won't need to keep these files after encoding.

IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2752/4410127198_d0fcf4d47b_o.jpg)

Next download Virtual Dub. If you have a modern OS like Vista or Win 7, your download will be zipped but will appear just like a folder like below. You need to copy and paste the files to another folder. With an older OS you'll need to use a program to extract the files. My favorite is WinRAR (I use 32-bit version).

IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2752/4410127054_ef3dabb926_o.jpg)

Record your videos, they'll create a bunch of AVI files.

Next run VirtualDub.exe and select Video -> Compression. Select XVID MPEG-4 Codec -> OK.

IMAGE(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4038/4409361739_23387411ab_o.jpg)

Next go to File -> Open Video File and select your first file. I suggest arranging them by date, earliest first like I show below.

IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2704/4410127092_469b23603a_o.jpg)

Next select File -> Append AVI Segment and select your next video file. Do this until you have all you want for a single continuous final movie. Note that if you're uploading to Youtube they only accept files up to 10 minutes long. My videos are recorded in full size at 1680 x 1050 which produces about 3, sometimes 4 files combined into a single file 10 minutes long. Update: Youtube now allows 15 minute videos.

IMAGE(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4410127166_df8fd5e7e8_o.jpg)

If you are only recording one file go to File -> Save as AVI and choose where to save it and what to name it.

So if you're recording into multiple final files you want to setup a batch operation. I usually run all my encodings at bedtime because it does take a while.

Go to File -> Queue Batch Operation -> Save as AVI and choose where to save it and what to name it. I suggest adding a P1, P2, or some other form of identifying it.

Next select File -> Close so you can go to the next video file you're going to make. Select File -> Open video file and go to the beginning of your next video file and repeat the Queue Batch Operation for each video file you want to end up with.

Once you have all your files queued up to be encoded go to File -> Job Control... and select Start. The image below shows a completed set of jobs.

IMAGE(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4410127224_a9096e3332_o.jpg)

You should end up with video files which are around 600MB to 1GB per 10 minutes if you're going for HD quality and used Full Size in FRAPS options.

You can upload these videos to Youtube or elsewhere. I've used WeGame before but I've ran into too many failed uploads with them.

Update: Found a great Virtual Dub short guide This in particular was very helpful:

Open the movie and move the slider to the beginning of the portion to delete. Snap to the next key frame by pressing button 4B. Mark the selection start (6A). Advance to the end of the portion desired, and again snap to next or previous key frame by pressing button 4A or 4B. Mark the selection end (6B) and select Delete selection from the Edit menu. Make sure you have selected Direct stream copy under both Audio and Video menus.

(the button numbers are show on a grid in the guide)

I would love to see more people's videos

Mine:
http://www.youtube.com/mrwynd
http://www.wegame.com/users/mrwynd/videos/

Nice, wynd. You're a prince among Goodjers.

mrwynd wrote:

I would love to see more people's videos

Mine:
http://www.youtube.com/mrwynd
http://www.wegame.com/users/mrwynd/videos/

I did one; I was trying to do something similar to "Freeman's Mind" for Bioshock but only ever did one. I wasn't very happy with it (I think I sound funny to myself) but here it is anyway. I keep meaning to go back and do a revised version but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I vote for this being stickied in tech and help.

tagg wrote:

I vote for this being stickied in tech and help.

Agreed. Great tutorial.

I would love it to be stickied in tech and help....I guess I should have posted it there in the first place.

mrwynd wrote:

....I guess I should have posted it there in the first place.

....I wasn't going to say anything.

Great job anyway!

Wow. What a pain in the ass. Thanks for doing all those Left 4 Dead vids, Wynd.

Not sure I could get through all that. My lazy kicked in about half way through reading the process.

It's awesome, and I'd like to get some recordings of L4D2 matches and BF:BC2 rounds, but my computer is a bit underpowered, it seems. What are your system specs, if you don't mind me asking MyWynd? (Of course, HD space is a factor too, but that's easier to fix.)

Did I do something wrong? All my videos captured by fraps uses the same audio codec, undf. I'm using free fraps.

WMP is the only program that will play the sound. I tried many converters and demuxing but all ended in errors.

Kannon wrote:

It's awesome, and I'd like to get some recordings of L4D2 matches and BF:BC2 rounds, but my computer is a bit underpowered, it seems. What are your system specs, if you don't mind me asking MyWynd? (Of course, HD space is a factor too, but that's easier to fix.)

AMD Athlon X2 5200+
4GB DDR2 800
Nvidia 8800GT 512MB

You'll need to turn graphics down further than what runs smooth without FRAPS running. I've found an increase in performance by having FRAPS save it's recordings to a different hard drive than Windows is on. I too have had a hard time with newer games like BF:BC2 and L4D2, just have to put settings lower.

cyrax wrote:

Did I do something wrong? All my videos captured by fraps uses the same audio codec, undf. I'm using free fraps.

youtube

WMP is the only program that will play the sound. I tried many converters and demuxing but all ended in errors.

I have no idea, I've never changed any of the audio options.

Excellent work mrwynd. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Great guide! Using it now

Thin_J wrote:

Great guide! Using it now :D

I look forward to watching your videos

There's a new version of FRAPS which has some cool new features I'm excited to try. Note that if you purchase FRAPS all updates are included free.

New feature for registered users - loop recording.

Press and hold the video capture hotkey to start a 30 second buffer.

The framerate counter will turn pink (magenta) to show that video is being buffered.

When you want to save the action simply tap the capture hotkey and the recording will continue as normal (including the previous 30 seconds of footage).

This is an awesome guide, thanks so much mrwynd. You are a scholar and a gentleman.

I followed it step by step and it worked like a charm on my first test run. If anyone else is interested in recording and posting their games this is the way to go. Not as complicated as it sounds as I went from having virtually none of these programs to having my first encoded SC2 replay in about an hour.

I can't stress enough, turn the settings down.

I run:

radeon 4870 iceq gpu
Core2 Quad 9300 cpu
8gig DDR2 800

I was overconfident and didn't bother lowering my SC2 settings before trying to FRAPS and it just crushed my framerate.

EDIT: I think I fixed my framerate issued. You REALLY want to have two hard drives to utilize fraps. I was having trouble even on low settings with my framerate so I plugged in my external hard drive and it immediately got rid of my performance issues.

Digging this up before I'll try to start recording some GWJ SC2 matches. I am not sure yet how to go about recording. I guess I'll reduce the SC2 resolution to 800x600 or something alike. My machine is rather weak, so I don't know if it'll work out after all.

Athlon X2 BE 2400 @ 2300MHz
2GB DDR2
Radeon X1950 Pro

Will this work with everything set to lowest in SC2?

Another question I have is this. I do own an older version of Fraps (v2.5). Do the newer versions actually put less stress on the PC or more?

Luggage wrote:

Digging this up before I'll try to start recording some GWJ SC2 matches. I am not sure yet how to go about recording. I guess I'll reduce the SC2 resolution to 800x600 or something alike. My machine is rather weak, so I don't know if it'll work out after all.

Athlon X2 BE 2400 @ 2300MHz
2GB DDR2
Radeon X1950 Pro

Will this work with everything set to lowest in SC2?

Another question I have is this. I do own an older version of Fraps (v2.5). Do the newer versions actually put less stress on the PC or more?

Sorry for such a late reply.

I record with

AMD x2 - 5200+ at 2.7ghz
4GB DDR2 800
Geforce 8800GT 512MB
Win 7 x64 Home

First, always save your videos to a different hard drive than C: for performance, if possible. I'm not sure how good performance would be on an external drive but the better your output hard drive the better things will go to a point.

Lowering your resolution will make the largest difference if nothing else helps.

In say Starcraft 2 I have settings on medium and in large battles while recording my FPS goes all the way down to 11! The output recording has a smooth 30 frames though in almost all circumstances. This is why I only turn on recording on replays or put settings to low which only gives me 25 fps so I'm not fond of that either. L4D gives a steady 35-45FPS while recording but L4D2 is around 20, barely playable. All output video is smooth or nearly always smooth.

I think the new version is more efficient but I haven't noticed a significant difference other than they've done specific performance patches to several popular games that had some issues.

There's added functionality in the newer version that's worth it. You can now queue up video so that when you hit the record button it starts the recording 30 seconds before you hit the button. This can really save you from hitting the button right after the action started. There's also an option to record audio from an additional input which makes adding microphone audio to game audio nice and easy. Also updating to the latest version is free as long as you have your registration info or access to that e-mail address.

Finally I've updated the original post with a few things:

This is a great short tutorial on editing files in Virtual Dub.

Youtube now allows 15 minute long videos!

Hey Wynd, I used this process to get my Minecraft video onto youtube.

However, initially I tried to use ffmpeg to transcode the FRAPS output into an avi. This didn't work properly; the resulting video was horribly discolored.

VirtualDub worked just fine though. I'm just curious if you know what it might be that gave ffmpeg trouble?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Hey Wynd, I used this process to get my Minecraft video onto youtube.

However, initially I tried to use ffmpeg to transcode the FRAPS output into an avi. This didn't work properly; the resulting video was horribly discolored.

VirtualDub worked just fine though. I'm just curious if you know what it might be that gave ffmpeg trouble?

I haven't used FFMPEG but typically this is because of the encoding software not designed or configured to handle such large video files. The raw data that FRAPS outputs is huge and some software doesn't cache enough memory for the new encoding from what I'm told. Also videos captured with FRAPS is with their proprietary codec called something like fp1 which installs when you install FRAPS. If possible see if FFMPEG is opening the source FRAPS video files using that codec.

Sorta on that topic if you record video with FRAPS then replay it in something like Windows Media Player and you get pop sounds and video distortion or starts/stops this is because the media player doesn't cache enough memory for the huge recordings that FRAPS makes. Your video is not damaged or distorted, it's just the player.

I'm going to tinker with this over the weekend and try to record our Sunday raid. Anyone know if it will record our Ventrillo chatter?

Anybody tried PlayClaw? It's supposedly better able to handle multithreading CPUs to put give less performance hit. It's also got overlays for Vent, etc. A bit cheaper at $30, but doesn't seem to have lifetime free upgrades.

Review.

Might try both and see how they run.

MannishBoy wrote:

Anybody tried PlayClaw? It's supposedly better able to handle multithreading CPUs to put give less performance hit. It's also got overlays for Vent, etc. A bit cheaper at $30, but doesn't seem to have lifetime free upgrades.

Review.

Might try both and see how they run.

I never had any performance issues when I used Fraps to record. Is that a normal problem?

Thin_J wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

Anybody tried PlayClaw? It's supposedly better able to handle multithreading CPUs to put give less performance hit. It's also got overlays for Vent, etc. A bit cheaper at $30, but doesn't seem to have lifetime free upgrades.

Review.

Might try both and see how they run.

I never had any performance issues when I used Fraps to record. Is that a normal problem?

In watching some youtube commentaries over time, some posters seem to see a performance hit with FRAPS on higher CPU load games like BFBC2. And that review I posted also mentions it. I know when I tried FRAPS on my old computer a year or so ago I did see some framerate impact. Nothing huge, but there when you watched the fps counter.

Still haven't bought one as I'm just experimenting with the trials. It does seem that PlayClaw has less of a hit on framerates according to the overlay, especially when I give it more cores to run on that the game's not fully using. For instance, in BFBC2, I can give it 3 threads (out of 8 on my i7 2600K).

Here's a minute or so from PlayClaw:

Thing that kind of sucks about both is that I can't really run at native resolution and record (1920x1200). I have to knock it back down to 1080 to look right.

I'm leaning toward buying PlayClaw over FRAPS. Originally when I started testing with PlayClaw I'd get audio sync issues, but the latest version that came out a week or so ago seems to have mostly fixed that. Supposedly 3.0 is coming next month as well.

Cool, let me know how it is. If it's good I'll pick it up and experiment!

mrwynd wrote:

Cool, let me know how it is. If it's good I'll pick it up and experiment!

You can record unlimited length videos with the trail, they just have the watermark. So you can experiment as to how it will run for you pretty easily.

There might be some audiosync issues remaining, I don't know. I think the main thing to watch out for is recording through loading screens seems to be a culprit. I've I'm just recording BFBC2 to watch my own game play to learn where I need to work on my game, that doesn't affect me. I just start once I've spawned and let it go until the end of the match.

3.0 is supposed to be released in June, and there's a thread in the forums saying that despite what the license says above versions possibly costing you money, the dev explains it's really only major infrastructure changes, such as would happen if Windows did a rendering update with for example Win 8.

Does Playclaw output enormous gigantic files like FRAPS does? You know, like 30 seconds of video = 9 GB or whatever. I have FRAPS, but it's kind of a pain to have work with the file compression.

Jeff-66 wrote:

Does Playclaw output enormous gigantic files like FRAPS does? You know, like 30 seconds of video = 9 GB or whatever. I have FRAPS, but it's kind of a pain to have work with the file compression.

If you want decent quality and performance it does. Real time encoding has to really be at minimum, or you're giving away way too many CPU cycles.

There is a "High Compression", but it's still going to be HD class video, which takes a lot of space.

Better to do the encoding afterwards when CPU/GPU cycles aren't at a premium.

That makes sense, MB, thanks.