Capturing combos from computer

[Toxy]

Hey guys, im making Breaking the Universe 2 but i have no one to edit or capture my combos for me this time, and i dont really know anything about good settings to capture, everytime i do it the videos turn out either really big file size or really shitty quality, im using camtasia 3, if anyone could tell me the settings to make my video decent quality + size that would be cool, thanks.

[Maj]

Actually i asked NKI almost the same question about a week ago. A long time ago, he mentioned capturing ST combos from emulator for his Evolution 2006 Special and it looked sharp. Here's what he said:

I use HyperCam 2 to record from Kawaks. My computer isn't that buff, so I have to go to the Display properties in Windows and turn colors to 16-bit and change Hardware Acceleration to the lowest possible setting (without turning it off). I suppose if you're computer is super buff that wouldn't be necessary, but I dunno.

My computer definately doesn't qualify as super buff. So i got HyperCam 2, turned off all other unimportant programs, reduced my colors to 16-bit and even reduced the screen resolution to a lower setting. Then i reduced Hardware Accelleration to the second-lowest setting. In case you don't know how to find the Hardware Acelleration slider, open the Display Properties window, click on the Settings tab, click on Advanced, then click on the Troubleshoot tab.

Then i turned on Kawaks, turned on HyperCam 2, and tried a whole bunch of different settings so to find the one that gave me the best quality. The best method turned out to be capturing uncompressed video (listed as Full Frames (Uncompressed)). The weird thing is that whenever i try to capture, it says that my computer isn't buff enough to get away with that. Then i try again, and it always works on the second try. Anyway, once it's done capturing, it tells you how many frames were skipped, so i do this a few times until i get lucky and that number is low. Sometimes i get 0 skipped frames, but if i'm capturing like 300 frames then i'm happy with under 5 skipped frames. Once i have the uncompressed AVI, you can convert it into a smaller file using TMPGEnc or whatever codec you want.

[Toxy]

I've allways been using camtasia and getting horrible results, all laggy, even in a small window.
Just got hypercam now and it works fine, even with a big screen it doesn't lag but it still doesn't look as good as i expect it to, im thinking maybe i got the wrong frames setting or something.

This is how the 4 options look right now, if anyone can help me with them it would be great.

Rate in Frames per second, Record [ 10 ] Playback [ 10 ]
Cursor/Full Frame capture ratio [ 1 ] (1 capture every frame)
Key frame every [ 100 ] Frames

Making combos is fun, too bad editing is a pain in the ass.

[desk]

I think you should bump up the frames per second. I have mine on 30 and it seems to work fine. Actually I'm not sure how that effects the second option, as i always capture full frames uncompressed.

[Maj]

My settings are at 30 fps too, both on record and playback. Though i'm not sure what the hell playback fps is supposed to mean. Once you raise the capture fps, it's going to take more processing power and you might run into a little trouble. Just make sure you try everything (more than once) and maybe you'll figure something out. My computer is pretty old too, but i tried a bunch of different settings until something worked. Good luck.

[Blazt The Speakerz]

CSVagrant and I have been using Snagit for some time now. It's a great tool, however we end up losing frames when recording our kawaks replay files. I'm wondering if there are any loss of frames when recording using hypercam?

-BTS

[Keiko]

CSVagrant and I have been using Snagit for some time now. It's a great tool, however we end up losing frames when recording our kawaks replay files. I'm wondering if there are any loss of frames when recording using hypercam?

-BTS

I use Hoekey to capture Kawaks replays in 60fps, highly recommended.

[Blazt The Speakerz]

Hoekey comes up as a program for hotkeys?

[Keiko]

Hoekey comes up as a program for hotkeys?

Being honest, never really understand what it's the real purpose of the program besides replay captures. If u wanna know something about it (how to use it, etc etc) i can make some quick tutorial for you, it's a really good tool believe me.

[Doopliss]

There must be some way for me to disable my capture card when I'm not using it. Since I installed it I've been unable to use fraps, since my computer can't handle it anymore. Before I installed it fraps would only yield minor lag spikes once in a while, now I get massive slowdown/frameskips, as you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GPdV2NVwuQ

Does anyone know? I have a Hauppage HD PVR Colossus.

[error1]

you should be able to disable it in device manager

[Doopliss]

Tested it now, didn't work. The issue might be that some WinTV subprogram or something (WinTV is my core recording program.)is running contantly, I can see it booting up every time I start the computer, any way to disable this (I know you can change which programs are started when the computer is booted up, but not where), and can I do this without screwing up my recording completely? The process that is running is called "WinTVTray.exe".

[CPS2]

Which operating system are you using?

[Doopliss]

Which operating system are you using?

Windows 7 64-bit. I never had any problems before installing the card though.

[error1]

run msconfig, type it in in the start text box.
Mostly the bottleneck for fraps is the hard drive

[Doopliss]

run msconfig, type it in in the start text box.
Mostly the bottleneck for fraps is the hard drive

Thanks. Didn't help though, maybe it got a LITTLE better, but still bad. I can't remember the last time I actually managed to solve a computer-related issue *sigh*

But the weird thing is it worked just fine before. And back then I'd sometimes have a lot more files on my hard drive since fraps files tend to be 1-2 GB each and I usually have like 50 combos in my largest vids. I'm planning to buy new hard drives and a new graphics card though, but it's expensive, and I'm fidning it hard to justify with this being the only reason.

[error1]

yeah it's a really complex issue. Partially beacuse the hard drive changes speed depending on where the sector it's reading is physically located, and larger hard drives are more effected by it.

[onReload]

make sure you have enough RAM as well. it's not super expensive, i'm buying myself some more soon

[Doopliss]

make sure you have enough RAM as well. it's not super expensive, i'm buying myself some more soon

I have 2x2 GB RAM or something like that iirc, the graphics card and hard drive are my main bottlenecks. My processor is also on the weaker side, but it's hard to find processors that fit my motherboard apparently.

[Dark_Chaotix]

So i want to record something off steam, what is the best for this?

[Doopliss]

So i want to record something off steam, what is the best for this?

If the software and your computer allows it (Pretty big "if" tbh, but if it's on steam the software is hopefully supported. Other than that I'm pretty sure you need a NVidia graphics card and it requires you to play in fullscreen when recording.), ShadowPlay worked wonders for me when recording USFIV since it gives you nice and small files and the graphics card takes up some/most/all of the extra processing. For other things I use Fraps, although it's pretty demanding and the files are huge since they're (to my understanding) source quality uncompressed avi files.

[onReload]

I use dxtory. Offers more options than Fraps

[Dark_Chaotix]

Any link at all?

Is it user friendly (pc resource wise)? 30 or 60fps rec?

[onReload]

It's tweakable so you can make it easy on your PC. As far as user-friendly, eh, you should look up a good tutorial on how to use it.

http://exkode.com/dxtory-downloads-en.html

I don't remember which video I found, but "dxtory tutorial" on youtube gives me a bunch of results; some with 6 figures of views with not a lot of thumbs down. I'd just listen to them but scale it down to meet your needs. Remember that 60fps is more intensive, will eat more space...but depending on what you're capturing, you might not need the highest resolution with the highest framerate.

[Dark_Chaotix]

Thanks, ill check it out

[error1]

I've been using nvidia shadow play recently, but you need a nvidia video card