Anyone have some tips on computer-screen video capture?

[AG-wolf]

I know there's the other thread about video recording for games, but this is kind of separate... I'm trying to record video of my computer's screen; like crop out an area (or full screen).

I know there's a free app, CamStudio, and I tried it... but its output video was only 16bit color (not 24/32bit), and the frame rate was only down around 20fps when I tried to capture an 800x600 area

Does anyone know a better program out there to use? Or do you know how to increase the recorded framerate? ...any tips in general? lol

[Lance]

I'd like some solution for computer-screen capture of video, too, though in my case it's because I want a couple of videos from Jay Leno's Garage.

[blackwiggle]

If you are using Firefox browser ,there is a freeware ad on that will capture video of all sorts,called download helper
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

If you want to pay a small premium you can have the same software convert one video codec into another.

[Lance]

Well, I suppose for just this limited purpose, and for a very very short time, I could stand to downgrade temporarily to a lesser browser than Opera. :g

[blackwiggle]

With Download Helper,as soon as you hit a video that might be of interest you will normally see that when in a YouTube site/video,that depending on the person that has uploaded the video .
Once clicked on download helper,it will tell you of the different codecs available ,for the same video, before you view/download it.
Some videos have up to 4 different video replay codecs,worth a look beforehand as "Best Practice"

[brainbeat]

lance im pretty sure it works with opera, you can get a standalone version.

[rdmx]

You may be able to use either hypercam or virtualdub (http://www.genadmission.com/vdubguide.html) for your screen recording needs. I don't think you're trying to record a game so i dont think fraps is suitable.

[AG-wolf]

well I was trying to use fraps, but there's a possibility im gonna be recording other things too so yeah, i need to get an idea of all possible alternatives. Fraps worked pretty good in a PSX emulator I used, but I dont like its 4gb file size limit

[rdmx]

Well if you're running FAT32, 4gig is the maximum file size - they probably hardcoded fraps to cutoff every 4 gig to avoid issues with file systems.

[AG-wolf]

lol no trust me, I'm on ntfs, and have been for a looong time. that's why I Was like "WTF?!" When I saw a video I was recording suddenly split into a second file once the first one reached 4096690kb x_x

I'm gonna play around with a couple apps later after my afternoon lecture, see if there's any kind of program/script to stitch videos together too

[rdmx]

From my experience though, the fraps video files join together pretty neatly when you plop them in a video editor - there's no visible sound jitter or frame freeze or anything like that - just something to keep in mind if you've got the hard drive space ;)