Capturing cRPG gameplay

[v/onMega]

LoL.
You guys cant record in native 720p resolution?
The presented rigs should be enough for 720 p atleast.

Thats very strange, akward even.
Something must be all wrong.

Halfsize is not an option.
Even @ 1080p halfsize looks like a 360 p youtube vid, reuploaded after it was filmed of the screen with an old phone.

ANYWAYS- TRY PLAYCLAW FOR GODS SAKE-

[[ptx]]

Playclaw works amazing, recording at fullHD like a baws on a five year old PC.

[Vibe]

I belive the problem is that he is running Warband and Fraps from the same disk/partition. Will also try Playclaw, need something that doesn't use too much CPU.

[Miranda]

I belive the problem is that he is running Warband and Fraps from the same disk/partition. Will also try Playclaw, need something that doesn't use too much CPU.

Yeah the problem with Fraps is that like....a short piece of footage (an example) of 1 minute 26 seconds can be a file of around 2,8 Gigs (at 1080p at 60fps). So yeah, that takes quite a bit of processing.

[Teeth]

I belive the problem is that he is running Warband and Fraps from the same disk/partition. Will also try Playclaw, need something that doesn't use too much CPU.

So wait, installing Fraps on D and saving on D would help, with Warband being on C?

[Miranda]

So wait, installing Fraps on D and saving on D would help, with Warband being on C?

It reduces the strain on my pc a bit when recording. IF those are two different harddisks and not a different partition.

For example my H: is my external HD on wich i record.

[Teeth]

It reduces the strain on my pc a bit when recording. IF those are two different harddisks and not a different partition.

For example my H: is my external HD on wich i record.

Nah, just different partitions, it never made sense to me why a different partition would reduce strain anyway.

[Ptolemy]

I've tested the separate HDD theory and found that for me at least, it's balony. Never made one iota of difference to me.

[Ujin]

there's also bandicam, never tried it myself but many people say it's good.

[Apsod]

MSI Afterburner is the shiz. Generates almost zero lag for me

[Teeth]

With the advent of WSE I gave recording gameplay another shot. I installed PlayClaw 3 and the results are much better, being able to record watchable footage, a lolspear video would fare well by 60 fps though instead of 30. With my PC specs in the OP, does anyone happen to have any advice on settings inside the program for maximizing performance? If its necessary I'll look up my harddrive specs, I have only one harddrive.

For example:

Prerecording and prerecording buffer size, is that any use?
Compression threads, is that the number of cpu cores used for compression? With a quad core and Warband running what should this number be?
Should I get PlayClaw 4?
My usual ingame fps is 123, should I change that to my recording fps or does it change automatically?
Which encoder and encoder quality?
Should I lock fps?

Then the issue of one harddrive with 2 partitions, should I install PlayClaw and record to a different partition or is it no use?

Or if you have tried different recording programs and are sure one of em is the best, please do tell. Feel free to also add recommended settings.

[Kafein]

With the advent of WSE I gave recording gameplay another shot. I installed PlayClaw 3 and the results are much better, being able to record watchable footage, a lolspear video would fare well by 60 fps though instead of 30. With my PC specs in the OP, does anyone happen to have any advice on settings inside the program for maximizing performance? If its necessary I'll look up my harddrive specs, I have only one harddrive.

For example:

Prerecording and prerecording buffer size, is that any use?
Compression threads, is that the number of cpu cores used for compression? With a quad core and Warband running what should this number be?
Should I get PlayClaw 4?
My usual ingame fps is 123, should I change that to my recording fps or does it change automatically?
Which encoder and encoder quality?
Should I lock fps?

Then the issue of one harddrive with 2 partitions, should I install PlayClaw and record to a different partition or is it no use?

Or if you have tried different recording programs and are sure one of em is the best, please do tell. Feel free to also add recommended settings.

About compression threads : depends on what is your system load. For a quad CPU I'd say start with 8 threads and see what happens. If your CPU usage is too high even your windows explorer will start to stutter (and I'm not even talking about Warband). As long as you get lag, decrease. But I wouldn't go below 4.

My gut feeling is that if you can get 120 FPS ingame, you should try recording at 60 (any higher will be of no use to your viewers and will go nom nom nom on your disk space).

As long as you are using the same HD, you will be bottlenecked by the same bus so it won't improve much.

[Teeth]

I thought a quad core had only 4 threads?

[Vibe]

I thought a quad core had only 4 threads?

quad core has 4 cores, the number of threads varies

[Kafein]

I thought a quad core had only 4 threads?

A quad core CPU has 4 process contexts and can execute 4 threads simultaneously (aka true paralellism).

However, there are hundreds of threads running in semi-paralellism on your PC (even when it is seemingly idle). That is, they take turns to use the cores.

The ideal number of threads you need to make an application run as efficiently as possible depends on the nature of those threads. Threads that access your devices (such as HD) a lot (I/O bound threads) will often be blocked by those accesses and when they are blocked another thread can take their turn for the CPU. So you can usually have a lot of I/O bound threads around. CP bound threads do not use devices much but require computing power (extreme examples are like prime numbers search algorithms, which are often used as a testbed for CPUs), so they will use as much CPU as they can and you will quickly reach 100% CPU usage if you have a lot of them working.

I think compression threads are highly CP bound but anyway it's best to try different settings.