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what is the best tool to capture video of a pc demo

category: general [glöplog]
 
Hey everyone, sorry if this is a dupe thread,

I recently released my first pc demo and tried to provide a video capture of it on youtube as well. But running the capture tool and the demo on the same machine didn't perform too well, even though my demo is pretty light on the CPU. I tried Cam Studio and Camtasia tools and could barely get a <15 fps 400x300 capture.

What do you guys use for this? is there a better way/tool

Thanks
added on the 2010-01-15 02:15:52 by nightlord nightlord

Kkapture

repacking with VirtualDub makes sense tho, to reduce the filesize even more !
Short version:

Best way: code a video/image sequence writer into the demo, encode using your favourite video software
Second best way: use .kkapture (see hardy's link), capture in a lossless format (huffyuv or lagarith), then use virtualdub et al. to postprocess (cut, crop, resize, etc) and encode.

Don't encode directly out of kkapture tho. For good quality you will want to employ 2-pass encoding and trying to do that out of kkapture is a royal pain in the ass.
added on the 2010-01-15 03:04:26 by kb_ kb_
You could try Fraps?
added on the 2010-01-15 03:20:26 by biasz biasz
Fraps does realtime capture exactly as Camtasia, Cam Studio, Hipercam, etc etc., so it's not what he needs.

--> Follow kb's advice. REALLY.
added on the 2010-01-15 06:13:53 by iq iq
if you go for his first advice, the the easiest is probably to save every frame of the demo in .tga format. Virtualdubmod can read sequence of .tga's and produce a clip for you.

Code: // save XRES*YRES rgb (24Bpp) buffer to disk as a tga bool saveBuffer( const unsigned int *buffer, int xres, int yres, const char *fileName ) { unsigned char head24[18] = { 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, XRES&255, XRES>>8, YRES&255, YRES>>8, 0x18, 0x00}; FILE *fp = fopen( fileName, "wb" ); if( !fp ) return false; fwrite( head24, 18, 1, fp ); fwrite( buffer, 3*XRES*YRES, 1, fp ); fclose(fp); return true; }

added on the 2010-01-15 06:22:07 by iq iq
hey thanks a lot for the info guys. outputting video (tga or other) looks like the highest quality. I will have a better capture next time :)
added on the 2010-01-15 07:15:49 by nightlord nightlord
Use kkapture, man. and take a look at this (and the page in general) too.
added on the 2010-01-15 10:17:22 by raer raer
Quote:
a royal pain in the ass


iam quite impressed !
added on the 2010-01-15 11:23:29 by _H2o_ _H2o_
I'd vote for kkapture too. when something is well done, use it. :)
added on the 2010-01-15 12:52:58 by nystep nystep
Unless, of course, it is your demo, in which case dumping the frames makes much more sense.
added on the 2010-01-15 12:57:14 by gloom gloom
gloom: ...just like kb already suggested would be the best option ;)
added on the 2010-01-15 13:15:55 by kusma kusma
kusma, i'd just code the frame dumping myself and then compress it with virtualdub.
added on the 2010-01-15 21:00:54 by skrebbel skrebbel
The best tool to capture a pc demo? A PC!
added on the 2010-01-15 21:12:27 by Joghurt Joghurt
kusma: That was sort of my point. :) After both kb and IQ already suggested the best solution, going "use kkapture!" seems like a weird thing to say.
added on the 2010-01-15 21:17:45 by gloom gloom
thanks, i laughed :D
added on the 2010-01-15 22:29:29 by nystep nystep
dumping n per second hires TGAs... well, i hope you have enough free diskspace :D
Just use libpng and dump pngs... I did that yesterday for timeless, 30FPS at 1280x720, 3:20 mins of video, made about 2,60GB of PNGs. That's bareable.
added on the 2010-01-15 22:39:51 by xTr1m xTr1m
skrebbel: perhaps one could simply dump the frames manually from the code, and compress the stream afterwards?
added on the 2010-01-15 22:45:58 by kusma kusma
sure! you can also code a 3D DCT codec while you're at it! and it's kusma who said it so it's the best!
added on the 2010-01-15 22:56:11 by nystep nystep
bearable
hem... for all the manual dump fan club... are you sure it is straightforward to capture the song in sync with the frames? :p
added on the 2010-01-15 23:05:52 by xoofx xoofx
Only if you use patented GNU Rocket technology.
added on the 2010-01-15 23:09:42 by kusma kusma
I vote for pressing PrtScr as fast as you can while the demo is running.
added on the 2010-01-16 00:40:57 by kurli kurli
perhaps even automating the prtscr-presses with windows scripting host!
added on the 2010-01-16 00:43:46 by kusma kusma

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