Video Makers, what screen cap software do you use?

Kael Maliai · Jan 26, 2015

Trying to find a good screen capture software to make Elite vids with. It needs to be a full program, no trials. Also, needs to be legal. I just want to document my trips, so the program doesn't have to be amazing, but I'd like one that can record long videos without taking up more HD space than necessary. Tried Debut, but it's a trial version so it's not gonna work. Oh, and freeware is a must.

worldoflard · Jan 26, 2015

See https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=105118 - these options should work fine for just recording. I use ShadowPlay all the time.

Lodorenos · Jan 26, 2015

I use MSI Afterburner for my channel. Its free and awesome, makes it possile to record on my three year old laptop with minimal frame loss, and even has an option to prebuffer video sort of like a dashcam so you never miss anything.

An example of the quality can be seen in my Hypergiant video: http://youtu.be/vwVVPcyW0YA

Obsidian Ant · Jan 26, 2015

Shadowplay is great.

Derath · Jan 26, 2015

I stream to twitch and OBS makes a hardware copy mp4 at the same encode, works pretty well for me!

McCloud · Jan 26, 2015

Shadowplay user here. I also use Adobe Premiere to edit videos.

changtau2005 · Jan 26, 2015

Any sort of built-in util with your GPU is great, since it won't have processing overhead. I use nVidia's ShadowPlay. ATI's equivalent is Raptr. Buffer the writes to a RAM disk / HDD if you don't want to wear out your SSD.

JohnRoberts · Jan 26, 2015

picommander said:
Not sure it's exclusively for nvidia users though

Shadowplay is hardware accelerated by NVidia GForce GPUs. Even if you could get it running on other GPUs, it would not get the benefit of this hardware acceleration. The fact its done on the card makes all the difference.

I find the only draw back with ShadowPlay is the very limited audio support. It only records the main output channel, and if you want to do things like recordoing voice and game audio separately, you need to use additional tools like Virtual Audio Cable.

Morbad · Jan 26, 2015

I use OBS. Better quality at a given bitrate than any of the hardware encoders like NVENC (what Shadowplay uses), VCE (AMD's equivalent), or QuickSync, and minimal performance impact if you have CPU cores to spare.

Kael Maliai · Jan 26, 2015

Thanks everyone for the replies. Shadowplay unfortunately won't work with my card, it's NVidia, but too old. X.X but MSI afterburner is working like a charm.

Lodorenos · Jan 26, 2015

Kael Maliai said:
Thanks everyone for the replies. Shadowplay unfortunately won't work with my card, it's NVidia, but too old. X.X but MSI afterburner is working like a charm.

My card is a GTX 570m and is also unable to use shadowplay normally. It DOES work if I make a shortcut to the application with "-shadowplay" in it, so for example [“C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA GeForce Experience\GFExperience.exe” -shadowplay]. Even though that works, I still prefer afterburner because it does what I need it to and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

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picommander said:
This is also awesome quality. The video is >12 minutes, may I ask how big the file you uploaded was?

After editing with Sony Vegas it was less than 2Gb. The raw file was around 10GB.

neXib · Jan 26, 2015

I have found that DXTory is the best standalone solution, I used that before Shadowplay and it didn't give a big performance hit and recorded nice looking footage as well.

Nexolek · Jan 26, 2015

ShadowPlay is good BUT it only records in variable framerate. Editing suites (Premiere for example) don't generally support that and sound will get out of sync. I've seen it on countless videos. Sometimes it's ok if your framerate is steady in game, but it's definitely something to be wary of.

So, if you want to do some editing, make sure that you use something that records at a constant framerate. FRAPS is good but it's a resource hog.

xxThe_Dice_manxx · Jan 26, 2015

Highly recommend ACTION! , best I've ever used.

neXib · Jan 27, 2015

Nexolek said:
ShadowPlay is good BUT it only records in variable framerate. Editing suites (Premiere for example) don't generally support that and sound will get out of sync. I've seen it on countless videos. Sometimes it's ok if your framerate is steady in game, but it's definitely something to be wary of.

So, if you want to do some editing, make sure that you use something that records at a constant framerate. FRAPS is good but it's a resource hog.

My sound has never been out of sync, and it wouldn't have anything to do with variable framerate if it was, but that said, in the latest update I believe they mentioned an audio sync bug with certain setups. Can't recall exactly, should be in the release notes.

pdizzle · Jan 27, 2015

Derath said:
I stream to twitch and OBS makes a hardware copy mp4 at the same encode, works pretty well for me!

OBS is glorious! And free!

adoredtv · Jan 27, 2015

OBS. Stuff like ShadowPlay and AMD Raptr can only record in full-screen which is a bit of a deal breaker for me.