Better Video Recording Program then FRAPS? And using Sony Vegas Pro.

[Malgor]

Hi video makers. I want to use a better program then FRAPS for quality. Also one that doesn't restrict the size to the 32FAT limit that windows uses (if I'm understanding that correctly). What do other people use and why?

Also my output isn't always the best using a bought copy of Sony Vegas Pro 11 HD. Can anyone walk me through their output settings if they use Vegas Pro?

Thanks!

Mal

[MiRai]

I want to use a better program then FRAPS for quality.
That's going to be tough to come by unless you have a beast of a machine. Here's some numbers (I could be wrong):

FRAPS (Regular Recording) - 3.95GB/1:43 @ 39.3 MB/sec (314 Mbps)
FRAPS (RGB Lossless) - 3.95GB/1:00 @ 68.8 MB/sec (558 Mbps)
MSI Afterburner (Uncompressed) - 8.25GB/1:00 @ 138.2 MB/sec (1,110 Mbps)
BandiCam (RGB24 Codec) - 10GB/1:00 @ 169.8 MB/sec (1,360 Mbps)
YouTube (YouTube Codec @ 1080p) - 30MB/1:00 @ 599 KB/sec (5 Mbps)

(Note: Data rates read through Adobe Premiere and then converted to Mbps. All video files are 1920x1080 @ 29.97 FPS. EDIT: Using World of Warcraft footage.)

In my experience, FRAPS RGB Lossless will require a very fast single HDD to record properly. RGB24 in BandiCam and MSI Afterburner's uncompressed option will most likely require SSD-like speeds for recording and playback. However, all of that is moot because whatever you upload to YouTube gets re-encoded with its own codec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_codecs). So, you can output a nice lossless video to your desktop, but when you go to upload it YouTube is going to tear it apart anyway and do what it wants. YouTube recommends that you upload 1080p videos at 8 Mbps (http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=1728588&guide=1728585&page=guide.cs).



Also one that doesn't restrict the size to the 32FAT limit that windows uses (if I'm understanding that correctly).
I'm always curious to know why people don't like the 4GB file size restriction. Personally, it helps me get rid of gigabytes worth of useless footage. Let's say I have 100GB of FRAPS footage (25 files x 4GB/each) but, I only want to use 10GB of it (about 3 of those 25 files). I can just delete the unused footage right off my HDD and never look back. Where as, if I have a single 100GB file, I'm stuck editing a single 100GB file... which is a total pain and a waste of space (IMO).

[Ughmahedhurtz]

GameCam is what I used for a while. It compresses on-the-fly so 30-minute videos are nowhere near 4GB. As Mirai said, it does hog CPU when recording at high resolutions which will force a tradeoff between video resolution/quality and the number of clients you can run on your recording PC.

[Malgor]

Thanks!

I guess maybe my output was what wasn't very good. I recorded a 45 second video of my two sages in SWTOR taking down a mini boss, just to have some footage.

When I had it in Vegas Pro 11 HD it looked great. Then when I put it on a DVD it looked crappy. I'm sure it has to do with the format I'm using in Vegas pro and probably not what I was recording in FRAPS. I've always liked FRAPS, and as you say, it's probably better to get 5 - 10 4GB files as opposed to one 100gb one.

It's probably in the format I used for output that made it crappy.

[MiRai]

When I had it in Vegas Pro 11 HD it looked great. Then when I put it on a DVD it looked crappy.
Using a DVD preset (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Frame_size_and_frame_rate) is going to scale down your footage pretty hard. H.264 is the codec that I'll always recommend that people use for an output file. It's been quite some time since I last used Vegas and I don't remember if H.264 came standard with it or not.

[Malgor]

Thanks.

I actually reworked the raw footage for my YouTube channel and the output, when watched in 1080 or 720 is much better. I output it as a wmv file which was much smaller.



http://youtu.be/E_8h899gWJc

[Knytestorme]

I use Dxtory to send to xsplit and record raw across multiple drives at the same time when I'm doing recording, I just seem to prefer things that don't have the 4Gb limit that FRAPS has....prefer my recording to be a single file I can work with rather than lots of 90 second clips I have to worry about merging together during render.

[Malgor]

I'll check that out Knytestorme, thanks.