Screen Capture and Recording

[Lucheek]

I'm looking to record a 'lets play' of a PC Game. I'm trying to find an appropriate screen capture program. Specifically what I'm looking for is something that is free, can record for long periods of time (perferably just unlimted), and can be set up to save the file so it can be edited and uploaded later on.

Since I know a couple of people 'round here do the sort of play-through thing, I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions for program/method to use.

[Suwako]

Generally the ones that are cheap are limited, however if you are going to do this to a game you should note that much screen capture software ( free software anyway ) does cost a relatively large amount of system memory and/or cpu power. From the top of my head I remember hypercam as being unlimited, however it does have a watermark in unregistered versions, which undoubtedly you might want to avoid. 

[Tapewolf]

I have used two pieces of software.  First is ACA Capture Pro, which has a 30-day trial and no watermark.  However, it is a pig to use sensibly and is frankly not worth the $60 or whatever that registering it cost.

It is limited to 4GB AVI files and when it exceeds this limit it will wrap around to the 0KB mark and overwrite the file, destroying it.  Keep a stopwatch handy.

You will also need to record the soundtrack with a separate program (e.g. audacity via digital loopback) and sync the piece together in iMovie or whatever, because its own internal recorder does not work correctly.

Finally, it will default to using the video codecs supplied with the OS, and in Windows 2000 and Windows 7, they are all garbage.  I had to install DivX or something similar to get anything approaching a sensible quality/recording time compromise.  I have not yet been able to do this in Windows 7 like I did in Windows 2000, so I haven't been able to shoot any Fallout 3 videos yet.

If you can poke it with a stick enough to make it do what you need, it's a reasonable piece of software, but I really wish I'd bought something else.

If the game runs in Linux - which I cannot get Fallout 3 to do - I tend use Yukon instead.
This will record all OpenGL output (including Direct3D games played through WINE).  It was a bit of a pain to build but once running, it works like a charm.
It does have a slight drawback that it records things raw uncompressed, so you will end up with 12GB .seom files which then have to be converted into some more sensible format for editing, and of course you have to record the soundtrack separately.

[superluser]

I've used recordMyDesktop in the past.

http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php

[Tapewolf]

I've used recordMyDesktop in the past.

It seems to work by recording things at the X layer rather than OpenGL, so I don't think that's going to work with many games.

[Lucheek]

The game itself is really low tech, I think it was made in 1994, so I'm not worried about overloading the CPU.

Does Yukon and recordMyDesktop only work in Linux, or can you get it to work on windows as well?

[superluser]

Does Yukon and recordMyDesktop only work in Linux, or can you get it to work on windows as well?

rMD works only in Linux, though you might be able to use a Linux live CD, run the game through Dosbox and record it from there.

[Tapewolf]

The game itself is really low tech, I think it was made in 1994, so I'm not worried about overloading the CPU.
Does Yukon and recordMyDesktop only work in Linux, or can you get it to work on windows as well?

I believe they're linux-only.  Yukon works by intercepting the library calls, a mechanism which I don't believe is possible in Windows.
What game is this anyway?  If it's DOS-based, run it in DOSBOX.  IIRC it has its own internal capture system, though last I tried it I had difficulty playing back the recordings.  (I make have used Yukon then too).

[Mao]

I made use of VH Capture (http://www.hmelyoff.com/index.php?section=22) (free) for desktop capture on windows.  It's a bit flakey and doesn't give good control over instances of the screen cameras, but it was otherwise pretty good and not too cpu intensive.  For the sound, it depends on which version of Windows you're running you should have access to a Stereo Mix of some sort that can be selected to pump out all of the sounds.

[superluser]

What game is this anyway?  If it's DOS-based, run it in DOSBOX.  IIRC it has its own internal capture system, though last I tried it I had difficulty playing back the recordings.  (I make have used Yukon then too).

Ooh, perfect!

If it runs in Windows 3.11, run it in DOSbox.  If it came out in 1994, it won't need Win95.

[Dekari]

Though I haven't used it personally, FRAPS is one that gets tossed around a lot in the gaming world.  And the full version is only $37.

[hapless]

There also may be the sorta roundabout way of using Livestream.com's free Procaster (it does quite good quality but is heavy on the CPU) with the "store recording" option enabled, then downloading the FLV file back. Of course, if they're still downloadable... too bad I can't check... 

[RobbieThe1st]

CamStudio for Windows(Free), seems to work nicely.
Note that it uses your Windows codecs for encoding, so you may have to install a pack of them if you want to record to h264 or xvid or another recent codec.

[ooklah]

A second vote to cam studio, I have used it before, though i don't know how the audio is for it as I was recording a tech demo and i had no audio to add to it.