I have on and off spent quite a bit of time googling various combinations of wording to try to get an answer for this but what I invariably get are…
Software that records screen activity, but runs on the same computer.
Hardware that records screen activity from a TV onto a computer.
The first is problem because I am looking for something that has no effect on frame rate, and so far all software that runs on the same computer who’s screen it is recording has a detrimental effect on frame rate.
The second, well, it’s not a TV I want to record from!
I have a second PC if that helps. I can imagine (fantasy world) a small device that intercepts the signal between the graphics card and the monitor of the pc you are trying to record. This device plugs into the second computer which does the work.
I’ve tried to record my computer game activity using various software. the fluidity of the game is affected. It is very slight but it is enough to reduce the ability of me, the player, by enough that the video doesn’t reperesent my ability in the game
To give you a specific example - in Modern Warfare 2, if two people meet in close quarters each player will try to knife the other. Normally I am quicker at this and usually win (and succeed in killing the other player)
But when recording, the tiny frame-rate reduction and resource delay causes me to lose those encounters, so the video ends up being of an average player.
Same applies to most aspects of the game.
Console players don’t have this problem because they are using a seperate piece of hardware (a PVR) which uses NONE of the console’s resource and allows their gameplay to remain unaffected.
I know what I am asking is a long-shot, but it’s worth trying eh?
And I’m not specifically looking for the fantasy device I described above. I am looking for anything or any method that will allow me to record what my pc screen is doing without affecting the performance of it.
Do you both mean point a camcorder at the screen? I could point it to one side, resulting in a warped image. Or centrally, resulting in it being in the way.
You need a second computer with a HD capture card, like the Blackmagic Intensity Pro or you need to dump video from a gameplay demo file (not supported in MW2)… or a PVR with HD in. Hauppauge makes one, but the capture card is better.
Or play a game light enough that it isn’t affected by your capture software.
My thinking was to put some kind of splitter on the video output of the card. I did a quick search and found splitters for VGA, DVI, and HDMI. Then I realized I couldn’t think of any recorder that could use those connectors as an input source.
Does your video card have any kind of alternate output, maybe S-Video? There are a lot of recording devices that will take S-Video.
Put in a second video card.
Configure the graphics properties of the second card to be something suitable for your recorder.
Configure the OS (graphics properties or display or monitor) to “clone”/duplicate your desktop on the second video card.
Profit!!! (Well, spend less than a DVI splitter).
Yes, that’s what I meant. I admit that the recording won’t be of the best quality, but it does have several advantages: It is very simple to set up. It is guaranteed not to affect anything in the game. You might even already own all the needed equipment, if you have a digital camera that takes movies.
Get a video VGA to NTSC converter, which inserts between the computer and the monitor. They usually come with a pass-thru connector so your desktop screen is unaffected. The secondary output from the converter goes to a VCR, DVD recorder or 2nd computer as a NTSC video input, not a monitor input.
If quality is important, do NOT use a camcorder pointed at the screen.
It seems like any solution that’s going to yield acceptable results will involve plunking down some cash, so I wonder if you might not be better served for the cash by just upgrading your system so it’s not bothered by the slight extra load of a recording program. Although obviously then you’ll want to play whatever game is taxing the upgraded system, and so on…
I’d presume though that as computers get faster eventually it’ll get to a point in which the system load of recording a video becomes completely negligible. So it’s sort of a crap-shoot whether you want to invest in AV stuff or just try to keep up with your system specs until we reach the point that it’s moot.
I’d say if you were really going to invest in a standalone solution, an HDMI splitter (or a video card with 2 HDMI ports) and a DVR would be the best solution in terms of something that will produce okay results and still be useful (and possibly resellable) if you don’t actually end up using it that much.
This depends a lot on what graphics card you have. An output splitter to a DVR or HDDVR is probably your best bet in terms of not affecting gameplay, but it depends entirely on what graphics card you use.
Don’t at least some of these games have a recording facility built into the game (not recording rendered frames, but recording the position/action of objects in the game, etc)? - I’m sure I’ve seen online footage of winning FPS gameplay replayed from several different angles…
Modern Warfare 2 doesn’t, unless they’ve stopped banning people for the console-enabling hack. That’s generally the way most people do this though, especially with Source-engine games, which will actually render video from the demo file.
NTSC resolution is way below what Lobsang wants to do. It’d be better to just drop the game resolution and record at 853/768/640 x 480 directly, instead of 320 x 240 with no load.
Pretty much every video card will clone the signal over all its output, so a splitter isn’t necessary. It’s finding an input that matters.
Consumer-level hardware that can record without frame drop is a long way off, at least when it comes to high-end games and 1680x1050@60 FPS. Recording less demanding stuff like older games and 720p@24 FPS is doable though, but that’s pretty choppy.
It sounds like Lobsang just wants video evidence of his abilites and doesn’t need a high resolution archive of it. 720p@24 FPS is plenty of resolution for a YouTube video. So the capacity to accomplish his goal exists. Now its a question of what quality output he needs, and how much he is willing to spend to get it.
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 295.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4ghz
8gb Ram.
I think the problem is less the ability of the hardware, more the fact that recording software has to ‘look at’ what the graphics card is spitting out before it shows me. So I get second-hand images. Anything that has to do some work with something that is operating at such a high rate… full screen pictures being updated 80 or 90 times a second… is bound to have an effect.