VirtualDub Game Recording Guide

[Xtreme_Rampage]

Apologize (again) for posting after a long time :) It seems my old PC (or perhaps HD) just isn't up to the task. :| I've run Defraggler to defrag the HD but there's no noticable difference. As before, the PC couldn't even record plain desktop screen (no applications or games) without struggling.

What codec are you using?

IIRC I used Xvid MPEG-4 Codec, DivX, and Cinepak.

You desktop P4 CPU is old and weak compared to the C2Duo in the laptop--it might be choking on the task of running a game and encoding video at the same time.

How dare you call my CPU old and weak! :shock: :D Just kidding...I was wondering because it can run Crysis and Frontlines: Fuel of War fine, but can't run a simple application like VirtualDub :doh

[kurtz]

Sorry for posting on a old topic but can anyone point me another compression codec I can use that wont leave a watermark unlike PICvideo Mjpeg?

[GeneralAdmission]

Sorry for posting on a old topic but can anyone point me another compression codec I can use that wont leave a watermark unlike PICvideo Mjpeg?

No apologies needed. This is why the thread is here! ;)

Did you install the PicVideo codec from the Afterdawn Showshifter demo I linked on the site? It shouldn't leave a watermark with that version.

If you are interested in trying some lossless capturing I've been impressed recently with the UTvideo codec. The newest version for download will be on the last page of the thread.

[kurtz]

[quote]Sorry for posting on a old topic but can anyone point me another compression codec I can use that wont leave a watermark unlike PICvideo Mjpeg?

No apologies needed. This is why the thread is here! ;)

Did you install the PicVideo codec from the Afterdawn Showshifter demo I linked on the site? It shouldn't leave a watermark with that version.

If you are interested in trying some lossless capturing I've been impressed recently with the UTvideo codec. The newest version for download will be on the last page of the thread.

Oh I missed that one.
Tried it and yea it removes the pegasus watermark. But there is still another one: "www.xsplit.com" probably from VH screen cap (?), any ideas on how to remove this one?

Thanks for helping and quick answering




EDIT: yea this last watermark as from VH screen cap, got the other version that you recomend on your guide hehe

[GeneralAdmission]

Bummer. Looks like the entire VH product line has gone commercial. It's a good thing I have an archive of all the previous free versions. ;)

The VH Screen Capture Driver license specifically allows redistribution, so I'll host it on my site and you can grab it from there. Should have that available for download today some time.

[GeneralAdmission]

Download is live on my site. Clear your cache if the page doesn't refresh with the new link.

[kurtz]

Alright, thanks a lot for all the help :)

[GeneralAdmission]

If anyone runs into problems/crashes using the latest version of the VH driver, here is a download of an older version that you can try:
http://generaladmission.home.comcast.net/files/VHScreenCaptureDriver_1.5.0.exe

There are no essential features or performance lost by using this version.

[sally]

Hey and thanks for an amazing guide.

I'm completely new to this and by following your guide I've now set it up to record for me! I'm recording World of Warcraft with little to no FPS loss (as opposed to FRAPS where I dropped to 30 FPS first because of the cap and further down to 20 FPS at graphicly heavy moments).

Now, like many others I've had to run in windowed mode to surpass the overlay problem but I'd really like to be able to record in full-screen.
After extensive googling I've learned you can turn off the overlay by disabling your graphics hardware accelerator, either on a single program (if the option is available) or globally on your system (I've no idea how much of a performance loss, if any, this would cause). I'd love to try this at least, but my graphics card drivers won't let me (apparently no ATI drivers will) so I'm wondering if anyone's stumbled upon another way to fix said overlay problem?

I use ATI Radeon HD 4850 btw.

[GeneralAdmission]

Hi Sally. Glad you found the guide useful.

As to your question, you should be able to customize/disable hardware acceleration via control panel->display properties->advanced button->troubleshoot tab, wherein there is a slider control from None to Full.


I'm on Windows XP, so Vista or W7 might be a little different, but I think the control should be in there somewhere.

The major drawback to this is that many if not most games will cease to work completely if you disable hardware acceleration, so it's somewhat self-defeating. If you manage to get something to work I'd be interested to hear how.

One thing I've noticed that I don't think I included in my guide is that some games record perfectly in fullscreen when using OpenGL for rendering instead of DirectX. Sadly, OpenGL is not featured in most modern titles, or it only gets beta or 'unsupported' implementation. I don't have WoW, but a quick Google turned up OpenGL information:

Code: Select all

Go to the WoW shortcut on your desktop. right click, click properties. At the end of the target path, where it says something like: ""C:Program FilesWorld of WarcraftLauncher.exe"" change it to this:

   "C:Program FilesWorld of WarcraftLauncher.exe" -opengl

Try this in fullscreen and see what happens.

[sally]

Hey again, and thanks for the quick reply!

Yes, I found that from googling, but my ATI drivers (apparently any ATI drivers) won't let me fiddle with the graphics hardware acceleration. I also figured turning off something that sounds pretty important wouldn't be a good idea but thought it was worth a try, well I guess I won't know until I buy a new graphics card..

I tried running WOW in OpenGL but the footage is nothing but black throughout the whole video.

Thanks again for the guide and support, I'll be popping by here regularly to see if anyone discovers a way around the overlay :)

[Xtreme_Rampage]

Hey...it's me again :) I noticed the links of sample footage near the end of the guide lead to invalid link at FileFront. Do you have a working link to the footage? I am particularly curious about the Battlefield 2 video (640x400, XviD+MP3, 0:18, 2.5MB). 18 seconds under 3 MB? That looks very interesting :D

[GeneralAdmission]

Hey Xtreme_Rampage.

Sorry about the offline footage. I think all my files got dumped off Filefront sometime after their chaotic death/resurrection experience last year. I will actually be moving my site to far more robust, dedicated hosting in the near future (I hope), but until then I have uploaded the file you requested here:
http://generaladmission.home.comcast.net/files/BF2_640x400_Xvid%2BMP3.avi

[Xtreme_Rampage]

http://generaladmission.home.comcast.net/files/BF2_640x400_Xvid%2BMP3.avi

Thanks a lot, GeneralAdmission. I was impressed by this particular video because of its tiny size compared to others. I knew and saw the quality was not the best, but I do have plan to record gameplay as small as possible without sacrificing too much video quality.

Other things I noticed are this particular Battlefield 2 video is recorded with XviD+MP3 codec and with 640x400 resolution, while the other videos are recorded with MJPEG codec and with larger resolutions. Do you think that if you use XviD+MP3 codec for other recorded videos, for example the Call of Duty 4 video, it will reduce the size significantly from 148 MB?

[GeneralAdmission]

[quote]http://generaladmission.home.comcast.net/files/BF2_640x400_Xvid%2BMP3.avi

Do you think that if you use XviD+MP3 codec for other recorded videos, for example the Call of Duty 4 video, it will reduce the size significantly from 148 MB?
Yes, the codecs will make a significant difference. Xvid by nature uses lower bitrates than MJPEG, and the CoD4 video has no audio compression at all. There are other factors in play, so to get a good idea of the influence the codec(s) will have we need to level the comparison.

Code: Select all

CoD4 video = 43 seconds. BF2 = 18, approximately 42% the length of the former. 42% of the CoD4 video would be ~ 62MB.

   

   CoD4 res = 1272960 pixels. BF2 = 256000 (20%). 62 * .20 = 12.4MB.

   

   2.5MB / 12.4MB = 20%

This is quick and dirty math, but if you use bitrates similar my settings then capturing to Xvid+MP3 will result in filesizes about 80% smaller than MJPEG+uncompressed.

Remember, if you intend to perform on-the-fly compressing to lossy, final-format codecs such as Xvid and MP3, expect to capture at lower resolutions to compensate for the increased performance hit to your CPU. This is why my BF2 video is only 640x400--anything higher impeded performance too much.

[Ty2903]

Hi, I know this topic is several years old but I'm hoping it's still supported. I followed the guide that was posted and was able to record Men of War while in window mode. The file size of the recordings are significantly smaller than Fraps when I use 1920x1080 resolutions and I'm extremely excited about this.

I'm wondering how you go about editing your video after you've recorded it? I'm new to virtualdub so I tried some experimentation by trimming the clip and exporting it with different settings but they all seem to expand the beautifully compressed file to an absurd size. I'm also using Win7 which won't allow me to record the game audio w/ virtualdub but I found a nice free 3rd party program that does.

So I guess my real question is... How do I take that nice compressed clip, trim it and add the audio that I recorded with the other program while still keeping the clip's high quality and small size for upload to the internet?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Ty

[Rhythmic88]

Hello, General Admissions I am hoping you can help me out.

I followed all of your instructions, but virtual dub is recording my desktop even while I am tabbed into a full screen game. Also my start recording works but stop recording will not work and the path for the exe is the same in stop recording. Any ideas? Thanks for the guide I hope you can help.

[GeneralAdmission]

Hello Ty and Rhythmic. First off,
:welcome

@Ty
Yes! This topic is still supported and I'm happy to answer questions.

I'm wondering how you go about editing your video after you've recorded it? I'm new to virtualdub so I tried some experimentation by trimming the clip and exporting it with different settings but they all seem to expand the beautifully compressed file to an absurd size.

I edit videos in a range of applications from VirtualDub to Vegas. For basic trimming/cutting/joining, though, Vdub is more than enough and by far the most efficient tool IMO. To solve the huge file problem, make sure you select Video-->Direct Stream Copy in Vdub when trimming and saving clips of your video. This ensures that absolutely no recompression happens, and clips will save about as fast as your hard drive can write data.

So I guess my real question is... How do I take that nice compressed clip, trim it and add the audio that I recorded with the other program while still keeping the clip's high quality and small size for upload to the internet?

You should be able to accomplish this with Vdub. Vdub can add audio to a video file with Audio-->Audio from other file..., but the duration will need to match and getting things to sync might be a challenge. How exactly does your audio recording solution work?

@Rhythmic
If fullscreen game recording is failing you are probably hitting the hardware overlay problem. Have you tried recording in windowed mode at all? If not give it a shot and that will at least help narrow the problem.

If the start recording command works but stop recording doesn't, sounds like the stop record command isn't configured correctly (though it seems you checked this already) or VirtualDub is just not receiving the command for some reason. Have you tried a test recording of the desktop with Vdub using only the built-in F5 and Esc hotkeys? How about a desktop recording test using the hotkeys with HotkeyP? Have you tried different games? There are lots of variables to sort out, but the problem should be fixable.

[remedy]

Hello!

I'm really happy that you're still helping people out. Your guide was really helpful to me,but i have few problems and hope you can help me with it.
I've tried recording World of Warcraft,and while in fullscreen, it captures my desktop instead of the game. It's recording normally when i switch to windowed mode,but the game's performance is much worse in windowed mode whether i record or not,and i can't really get used to it. So i'm forced to capture in fullscreen.

I've also tried running wow in opengl,but the recorded video just ends up being black.
Playing WoW version 3.5.5, with intel i7 and radeon HD 5770.

Hope you can help me out (:

[GeneralAdmission]

Hello!

I'm really happy that you're still helping people out. Your guide was really helpful to me,but i have few problems and hope you can help me with it.
I've tried recording World of Warcraft,and while in fullscreen, it captures my desktop instead of the game. It's recording normally when i switch to windowed mode,but the game's performance is much worse in windowed mode whether i record or not,and i can't really get used to it. So i'm forced to capture in fullscreen.

I've also tried running wow in opengl,but the recorded video just ends up being black.
Playing WoW version 3.5.5, with intel i7 and radeon HD 5770.

Hope you can help me out (:

Hello remedy!

The problem you describe is the one major drawback to this recording method: hardware overlays. Overlays are the reason you get black screen/flickering/desktop instead of game footage in your recordings. Currently I still have not found an easy/free/functional way to deal with this issue. Windowed mode, OpenGL rendering and such are just workarounds. Hopefully one day I will find a solution or learn enough coding to make one myself. I do have a GUI control tool in early development that will significantly streamline usage of the Vdub recording method, but it doesn't solve the overlay challenge.

Sorry I don't have an easy fix for you. I would recommend trying MSI's Afterburner tool, which I recently discovered offers excellent video recording and screenshot functions for free:
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Performance beats Fraps hands down, plus they offer codec options, compression control, and more resolution choices. I wonder if someone on their dev team read my guide a while back and got some feature ideas from it. ;)