Newcomer / Intro Is it possible to record video from just the central monitor (out of three)?

[TopCat160]

Not really a newcomer, as I've been playing for a while now, but this is a bit of a noob question...

I mostly play Elite using three HD monitors in surround mode (which acts like a 5760 x 1080 single monitor). However, it seems that the only way of using the Nvdia GeForce Experience software to record video is to make two changes, neither of which I like:

- I have to play Elite in full screen mode, rather than borderless. This is a PITA, as it makes it impossible to still see the Elite screen in the background when using a foreground app like a browser.

- I have to switch to one monitor. Obviously this makes the visuals much less immersive.

So ideally I'd like to be able to stick with borderless, stick with three screens, but record video only from the central one.

Is this possible?

 

[Zieman]

Don't know about the Geforce Experience, as I don't use that, but maybe OBS or FRAPS or somesuch has the config to record active window only?

 

[Chris Simon]

You can't capture just a part of borderless window in any software I know. It isn't like the software would see the "monitor 1" and "monitor 2" and you could tell it to capture just one. Borderless window simply spans the width of the monitors.

 

[TopCat160]

You can't capture just a part of borderless window in any software I know. It isn't like the software would see the "monitor 1" and "monitor 2" and you could tell it to capture just one. Borderless window simply spans the width of the monitors.

As soon as you said "capture just a part of borderless window" I realised I could probably do it with some software I already have!!

I already use Camtasia Studio for work (recording software training videos) - I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that straightaway, as it lets you snap the recording area either to a windowed application, or a customised rectangle that you can put anywhere on the screen you like. While it's recording there are green corner markers on the selected area, but it's not too intrusive.

So I gave it a go - resized the recording area on the central monitor, it turned out as 1912 x 1068 - I could probably get it closer to 1980 x 1080 with a bit of fiddling. Then I flew a quick delivery mission and recorded the screen over the 7 minutes it took to pick the mission and complete it.

This generated a 740 MB mp4 file using the default settings, which I've uploaded to YouTube.

If you're interested in seeing how it turned out, here's the vid. It's turned out as only 720p, which I don't understand, since the original is much more than that. Anyway, take a look if you like - not bad for a first go, I thought. Warning: boring content alert!!

[video=youtube_share;30OLLo9jYYk]https://youtu.be/30OLLo9jYYk[/video]

 

[Chris Simon]

Oh, awesome!
Gonna look it up.

As for the 720p thing, I guess it's Youtube's fault. Upon upload it takes a vertical resolution and rounds it down to closest standard, and as yours wasn't whole 1080 pixels "high", it ended up as 720p.

 

[TopCat160]

As for the 720p thing, I guess it's Youtube's fault. Upon upload it takes a vertical resolution and rounds it down to closest standard, and as yours wasn't whole 1080 pixels "high", it ended up as 720p.

Indeed. I found another setting in Camtasia Studio where you can specify 1920 x 1080 as the resolution. This gives you a fixed size rectangle that you can slide to wherever you like - the central monitor in my case.

This one worked out better it has 1080p in the list of available HD resolutions - and not only was I able to buy some meta-alloys for Felicity Farseer when I got to Maia, I also found some Data-mined Wake Exceptions as well!

[video=youtube_share;Buf5GUHHw6k]https://youtu.be/Buf5GUHHw6k[/video]

Content still pretty boring - I'll need to do some editing if I do any more of these

But the quality is a lot better at 1080p than 720p.