# Free video capture software for gaming



## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

Any recommendations of free software for making videos of stuff like guild events?  I vaguely recall having used Fraps some time back, but I suspect things have moved on a bit.


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## moon (Jan 19, 2016)

What exactly do you want to do? Capture footage of your screen and broadcast it.
If so you could try Open Broadcaster Software - Index I think there are others such as x-split, VLC may also have this capability.
If you want to capture footage from a camera, you could try UStream also have a look at the Twitch recommended software page, it should have a number of solutions for different setups.

I don't use any of these so can't really comment any further.


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## mwgdrwg (Jan 19, 2016)

I updated my AMD drivers last night, and some capture software was included in that.


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## mwgdrwg (Jan 19, 2016)

Also, for streaming on YouTube, they recommend some free software that I can't remember the name of right now. I installed it at the wekend, pretty straightforward. Go to youtube gaming and follow the guide for streaming. You can also record what you stream.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

moon said:


> What exactly do you want to do? Capture footage of your screen and broadcast it.
> If so you could try Open Broadcaster Software - Index I think there are others such as x-split, VLC may also have this capability.
> If you want to capture footage from a camera, you could try UStream also have a look at the Twitch recommended software page, it should have a number of solutions for different setups.
> 
> I don't use any of these so can't really comment any further.



I don't really want to 'broadcast' it as such and most certainly don't want to stream, just want something so I can capture footage of me and my friends in game when we are having a guild event (if it can also record us on teamspeak that would be great, but not necessary), and post it up on the guild website.  I'm not interested in making videos for wider viewing or anything like that, just want to record what we're up to, cut out the boring bits where we all decide it's a good time to have a 'bio-break' or breaks where one or more of us is removing a pet from the keyboard, and then share it with people who were involved.

Forgot to mention, talking about PC gaming, so something that will work on my PC (Win 7).


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## moon (Jan 19, 2016)

Can you use the Quicktime screen record function, then edit in Windows Movie Maker?
Or upload to youtube and use the youtube video editor.. you can make the video private or unlisted so only people with the url can see it..

Actually if you are on a PC the quicktime screen record may not work.. try VLC instead.
Details here
How to Record Your Desktop to a File or Stream It Over the Internet with VLC


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think that's what I'm looking for, I don't want to record my desktop, I want to take in-game footage (preferably recording teamspeak at the same time).


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## Crispy (Jan 19, 2016)

Epona said:


> I don't really want to 'broadcast' it as such.


The name is misleading, but OBS is quite happy "broadcasting" your screen & audio to a file on your computer. Best if it's a separate drive to the one with your games on. I've done this myself, but I don't know about teamspeak. If it's all coming out of your speakers, then you'll record it.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

Crispy said:


> The name is misleading, but OBS is quite happy "broadcasting" your screen & audio to a file on your computer. Best if it's a separate drive to the one with your games on. I've done this myself, but I don't know about teamspeak. If it's all coming out of your speakers, then you'll record it.



Thanks, yeah, if I unplug my headphones then people talking on teamspeak comes out of the speakers.
Not sure I can do it on a different drive mind you, this game is large so it's on my mechanical drive, and I don't fancy recording stuff and saving it to a file on my (rather small) SSD.


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## Crispy (Jan 19, 2016)

Epona said:


> Thanks, yeah, if I unplug my headphones then people talking on teamspeak comes out of the speakers.
> Not sure I can do it on a different drive mind you, this game is large so it's on my mechanical drive, and I don't fancy recording stuff and saving it to a file on my (rather small) SSD.


USB drive?
If you record to the same drive, you'll end up skipping frames when the game's reading the disk.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

Crispy said:


> USB drive?
> If you record to the same drive, you'll end up skipping frames when the game's reading the disk.



Ah OK, that makes sense - yeah I have plenty of external drives, I could probably shift some files about to make some space


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

I actually have some external drives here that are (by today's standards) quite small, I reckon I could just shift everything off one of those onto my OH's internal data drive and make a bet with myself about how long it takes him to notice


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## stdP (Jan 19, 2016)

Another hat in the ring for OBS, it's pretty much perfect for doing all sort of captures. If you've got an intel CPU with the quicksync functionality enabled (I think OBS makes this fairly obvious when you set it up) you can save yourself a boatload of CPU in encoding the video before it hits the disc; the quality is marginally worse than using software encoding but you need to be looking _really_ hard to spot the difference. Depends on how much CPU and disc IO you have to play with.

Be warned that a 6hr long 1080p capture is likely to chew a _lot_ of space.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

stdP said:


> Another hat in the ring for OBS, it's pretty much perfect for doing all sort of captures. If you've got an intel CPU with the quicksync functionality enabled (I think OBS makes this fairly obvious when you set it up) you can save yourself a boatload of CPU in encoding the video before it hits the disc; the quality is marginally worse than using software encoding but you need to be looking _really_ hard to spot the difference. Depends on how much CPU and disc IO you have to play with.
> 
> Be warned that a 6hr long 1080p capture is likely to chew a _lot_ of space.



Oh god, I'm not going to do 6hrs of anything, I barely have the energy to stay awake for long enough to play for that length of time.

Alas I have a slightly aged AMD CPU, I know I need to upgrade, but I won't be able to do any of that stuff that you mentioned.


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## stdP (Jan 19, 2016)

Well CPU speed hasn't exactly been progressing in leaps and bounds like wot it used to, and OBS gives you plenty of options either way anyway; you can encode in something less CPU-intensive than H264, or you can downscale the capture before encoding (e.g. it captures your 1920x1080 screen, scales it down to 1280x720 and encodes that instead). The instructions pages are pretty thorough in explaining all of this.

Getting started - Open Broadcaster Software - Help Files

It's free anyhoo so you've very little to lose by taking it for a spin to see what it can do for ye, and it definitely whips the arse of stuff like FRAPS.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

I'll give it a go, given by what you have said though it is likely going to beat my CPU into submission trying to run it at the same time as my game, and I'd rather just play my game when it comes down to it.


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## stdP (Jan 19, 2016)

If you know the vague pedigree of your CPU and GPU they have a handy cow-queue-later here: Open Broadcaster Software - Estimator; put in summat like 2500-3000kb/s for a 720p or 1080p encode.


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## Epona (Jan 19, 2016)

stdP said:


> If you know the vague pedigree of your CPU and GPU they have a handy cow-queue-later here: Open Broadcaster Software - Estimator; put in summat like 2500-3000kb/s for a 720p or 1080p encode.



Vague pedigree haha, I build/upgrade my PC myself, I know exactly what is in there 

Thanks for the link, I will have a look


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## Vintage Paw (Jan 20, 2016)

nvidia has its own Shadowplay. It used to be a hog by all accounts but is now much better. I hear it's very low-profile and doesn't command a lot of extra processing power and the like, just sits in the background. There should be a tab for it in GeForce Experience (if you have that).


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## Vintage Paw (Jan 20, 2016)

Here's its webpage: ShadowPlay PC Game Capture Software | GeForce


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## mwgdrwg (Jan 22, 2016)

This is what we're using, we've already made a Minecraft and a ROBLOX video:

*XSplit - Free Easy Live Streaming and Recording Software*


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## Vintage Paw (Jan 22, 2016)

Shadowplay, btw, works a little like the PS4 video thing, in that you can set it to always be recording, but it only keeps the last 20 minutes when in that mode, so you can capture unexpected moments. Or you can just set it to record normally.


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