Ok, it's time for me to show my puzzlement and ignorance for a change.

When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother
is making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage
where they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and
sometimes even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web camera.)

Yet I have absolutely no idea how they are doing it.

I have been looking for such a software, and I just can't find it.
Being google-savvy isn't of much help. For example, searching for
"screen recording software" isn't, quite to my surprise, very helpful.
Yes, there are tons and tons of pages listing "screen recording software",
but all of them seem to be completely unsuitable for the purpose of
recording gameplay footage, or have stupid limitations.

Just as an example, one of the first hits is a page listing "Top 5 Free
Screen Recording Softwares For Windows".

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/win-screen-recording-softwares/

Selected quotes:

(From Ezvid) "There is no way to export the video you recorded."

(From BlueBerry FlashBack Express Recorder) "Although it requires you to
register (for a free account) after 30 days of usage, it still provides
you with all of its functions before you register."

(From Screenr) "You select an area on your screen which you want to record
(max: 5 minutes)."

(From Rylstim Screen Recorder) "This program does not record sound from
input devices like a microphone."

I have actually tried CamStudio some time ago, but I just couldn't figure
it out. It was completely horrible to set up, and when I tried to record
something, it created an empty video file and a .wav file which, it seems,
contained the actual video footage... in some odd format that couldn't be
played. I was unable to get anything usable from it. (Also, I doubt it can
be used to record gameplay footage.)

Yet, as said, youtube seems to be full of let's play and other similar
videos like it was nothing. I just don't get it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:04:31 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Yet, as said, youtube seems to be full of let's play and other similar
> videos like it was nothing. I just don't get it.

With all the YouTube videos with this in it, it seems that asking in 
reply to one of those videos what software they used might yield some 
useful information.....

Jim

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On 05/07/2013 9:04 PM, Warp wrote:
> Yet, as said, youtube seems to be full of let's play and other similar
> videos like it was nothing. I just don't get it.

In a moment of madness I said that I would record a tutorial for the 
Blender, PovRay exporter, addon. I tried CamStudio but the output video 
was flipped in the horizontal. BlueBerry was the next one I tried and it 
was better. The only problem with that is that you cannot edit out 
frames with the free version. But I have other software to do that.
So look out for a link to my dulcet tones later. With any luck I will 
dub on the sound track this weekend and post the link on the newsgroups.
But to answer you. I had little trouble recording with either they did 
what it said on the box.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:11:57 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:04:31 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> Yet, as said, youtube seems to be full of let's play and other similar
>> videos like it was nothing. I just don't get it.
> 
> With all the YouTube videos with this in it, it seems that asking in
> reply to one of those videos what software they used might yield some
> useful information.....

Having just had to do a video grab of a process in Windows, I found that 
Snagit 11 does this pretty well.  Don't know about the webcam-in-a-corner 
piece, but it worked well here.

Demo version does it too, and doesn't seem to watermark the file.

Jim

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Am Fri, 05 Jul 2013 16:04:31 -0400 schrieb Warp:

> When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother is
> making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage where
> they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and sometimes
> even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web camera.)
> 
> Yet I have absolutely no idea how they are doing it.
> 

I think a lot of people use "Fraps":

http://www.fraps.com/

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On 06/07/2013 04:48 AM, Florian Pesth wrote:
> I think a lot of people use "Fraps":
>
> http://www.fraps.com/

Indeed. That is what I found when I researched this question. I also 
found that Fraps is rather expensive too... Then again, that was ten 
years ago, so the price may have changed now.

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I was wondering about this. Specifically, I was wondering what kind of 
hardware you would need to connect the DVI output from one PC to some 
kind of capture device on another PC and record video that way...

Post a reply to this message

Florian Pesth <fpe### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> I think a lot of people use "Fraps":

> http://www.fraps.com/

Fraps is probably really competent at precisely this, but I'm not sure
I want to spend 30 euros on something that I might not end up using
after all... (I'm just thinking about trying some let's play, but it
might just as well not work out well at all. I'm not very talented.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother
> is making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage
> where they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and
> sometimes even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web camera.)

Then again, there's always Source Film Maker. [Which, obviously, only 
works for Source-powered games.] It's not really optimal for recording 
normal gameplay [although it can], it's more for if you want to get the 
characters from TF2 to act out that scene from The Shining or something...

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Ok, it's time for me to show my puzzlement and ignorance for a change.
> 
> When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother
> is making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage
> where they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and
> sometimes even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web
> camera.)
> 
> Yet I have absolutely no idea how they are doing it.
> 
> I have been looking for such a software, and I just can't find it.
> Being google-savvy isn't of much help. For example, searching for
> "screen recording software" isn't, quite to my surprise, very helpful.
> Yes, there are tons and tons of pages listing "screen recording
> software", but all of them seem to be completely unsuitable for the
> purpose of recording gameplay footage, or have stupid limitations.

Maybe your graphics cards vendor has a tool for you. For example, Nvidia 
has Shadowplay. I think it is part of their "GeForce Experience".

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On Sat, 06 Jul 2013 08:34:36 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 06/07/2013 04:48 AM, Florian Pesth wrote:
>> I think a lot of people use "Fraps":
>>
>> http://www.fraps.com/
> 
> Indeed. That is what I found when I researched this question. I also
> found that Fraps is rather expensive too... Then again, that was ten
> years ago, so the price may have changed now.

10 seconds on the website to determine there's a free version and a paid 
version, and the paid version is $37.  Either you have a different 
definition of "rather expensive" for software, or the price has dropped 
significantly.

Jim

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> When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother
> is making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage
> where they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and
> sometimes even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web camera.)
>
> Yet I have absolutely no idea how they are doing it.

Sounds like you want to do it with free software for now:

Get the free version of fraps (sorry have no experience with 
alternatives as I have the paid version of fraps and it works extremely 
well), avisynth and xvid4psp. I assume you have something to record 
video from your webcam and audio from your microphone.

avisynth is the POV of the video editing world, once you have the video 
files taken from your game and from your webcam you can write a simple 
avisynth script to resize and overlay them and mix the audio levels.

List of built-in functions here (will give you some idea what is 
possible with avisynth):
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Internal_filters

Avisynth scripts (they are just text files with .avs extension) can be 
played in a normal media player, but obviously you will want to convert 
them to a more standard single-file video format. If you don't want to 
get involved with command line encoder options then xvid4psp is easy to 
use with a good GUI and plenty of presets for common formats. This is 
the only free converter I found that could reliably create video files 
the PS3 could play at 1080p, IIRC it has YouTube presets.

You could even use POV if you wanted more complex visual effects. 
avisynth will write out all the individual frames of a video to a 
folder, and do it the other way round too.

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Get the free version of fraps (sorry have no experience with 
> alternatives as I have the paid version of fraps and it works extremely 
> well), avisynth and xvid4psp. I assume you have something to record 
> video from your webcam and audio from your microphone.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't need video editing software.
I want something that I can use to capture videogame footage in real-time,
possibly with a voiceover.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't need video editing software.

You will if you want to add a voiceover or do a secondary stream (eg 
from webcam) - it's extremely unlikely the game capture software will do 
this for you.

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't need video editing software.

> You will if you want to add a voiceover or do a secondary stream (eg 
> from webcam) - it's extremely unlikely the game capture software will do 
> this for you.

What I mean is that video editing is not the problem. Getting the source
material in the first place is.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> You will if you want to add a voiceover or do a secondary stream (eg
>> from webcam) - it's extremely unlikely the game capture software will do
>> this for you.
>
> What I mean is that video editing is not the problem. Getting the source
> material in the first place is.

Sorry my misunderstanding then, I thought you meant you had no idea how 
they were creating the video, not just the screen capture bit.

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On 2013-07-05 15:04, Warp wrote:
> Ok, it's time for me to show my puzzlement and ignorance for a change.
>
> When browsing youtube, it seems that everybody and their grandmother
> is making "let's play" and other kinds of videogame playback footage
> where they both record their gameplay and often a voiceover (and
> sometimes even a secondary picture of themselves eg. from a web camera.)
>
> Yet I have absolutely no idea how they are doing it.

I've got a free account with Livestream that lets you dump a portion of 
your screen (up to and including the whole area) to a video file (while 
also streaming it), which I've used to record some running-around in 
Skyrim.  It also has a paid version, and from what I recall the free 
account wasn't the most straightforward thing to set-up, so caveat emptor.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com

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