Looking For Good Video And Audio Capture Programs
 

well when I originally started using Frapps it did excellent and heard others say good things. So was worth the purchase

However for some reason it isn't recording my audio anymore. Might have something to do with me using XP and driver issues.

XSplit is fantastic, and also allows for direct streaming as well as local recording.

Its still free for a bit, until it leaves beta, but the price is pretty reasonable, especially if you buy it before the beta ends.

WALL O TXT
 

What you need depends on what you are planning on doing.

FRAPS works beautifully for PC games and emulators that run at fullscreen, but takes a monster sized hard drive to record for lengths of time. (It varies from game to game and with settings, but the average is about 1 gigabyte per minute of footage. You can record at half size to decrease this, and also at lower resolutions) FRAPS is also decently resource intensive. If you can barely run a game without it on, you WILL NOT be able to run it at all. Like I said before, fiddling with settings can really help here.

Hypercam2 is a great program to use on the emulators that do not run in fullscreen, as well as pretty much anything that runs in a smaller window (1024 x768 or smaller) File size isn't as big as FRAPS if you get the right codec. the Camstudio Lossless codec is probably the best one to get, but you can probably fiddle around with what you got to get a decent quality/size ratio. Desync is a worry with this program, especially with longer recordings, but you can mitigate it to almost nothing by setting the color depth of your desktop as low as possible.

Capture devices are option 3. Basically, you run the input from a console directly into your PC and capture it somehow. Lots of capture devices come with software that will let you see your picture, and in most of those cases even capture it. Most of the time if you go this route you are gonna have to record the video and your voice separately and then sync them up in post.

FRAPS costs $37, unless you... you know.

Hypercam2 is actually now free, no watermarks or anything. The company switched up to Hypercam3 and basically said have the old one for free.

Capture Devices range in price, but a basic one will probably net you from $20-50, with the high end running upwards to $500 for a HD PVR. Just make sure whatever you decide to buy works with whatever version of Windows you have before you buy it, because some of the cheaper ones DO NOT work with 7. Going this route is good if you plan on doing modern console games, and if you have a weaker computer as it takes the stress of running the game off the computer, leaving nothing but the recrding work to do.

You will also need a way to edit the video. Windows comes with Windows Movie Maker, which is a simple to use and fairly decent video editing software. It lacks many of the powerful effects of high end editing software (which can cost hundreds of dollars) it is: Free, and fairly easy to use. Note that it DOES NOT come with Windows 7. It comes with a very much inferior Windows Live Movie Maker. You can download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from the Mircosoft website, but the Windows Movie Maker 6.0 is the best version and can be found with a bit of Google-fu.

I personally use FRAPS for PC games and ePSXe, Hypercam2 for NES, SNES, and Gameboy emulators as well as older lower resolution games (Old SCUMM games for example) and a basic $50 off brand external capture card run through VHMulticam Studio to pick it up because it picks up FRAPS and I can just record the picture and my voice in one go.

Just to update, there's also Hypercam 3 out.

I've used WeGame which is more of a service than anything else. You get a free recorder along with access to a place to access everything.

But if you are going the free route, there's the open source Camstudio which is a lightweight alternative to FRAPS. I haven't used it much but it's worth a shot.

Other alternatives include Microsoft Encoder and Microsoft Encoder Screen Capture, which can be used to capture footage at 10 minutes at a time, include audio, and encode it into wmv and other formats. These are free alternatives that I use, and I have to say I like Microsoft's offering. Of course, if you want more time than 10 minutes a shot, you have to pay for it, but for a let's play, just doing 10 minute shots might work better for you.

speaking of capture devices, anyone know of one that lets you capture HD? I have one, and it works well, but it uses RCA cables so the resolution isn't too good. Also low resolution plus small screen basically makes it impossible to read text as I'm playing

Why do you need 1080p? You might be better off with just 720.

because I cant get 720, only 480. even that might not be too accurate as it still looks fuzzy

If it's RCA, you can only get the 480. The RCA doesn't do 720p, and there's no significant difference between 720 and 1080 to justify the difference in price IMO. If you have to go for one, it may be better to find out what price you're looking for because I've heard of a HD Capture device for $99. But it may help to figure out which system you're looking for one in particular.