I don't own an NVIDIA card so I can't do Shadowplay. What would you recommend I do if I want to record while playing at 1080p, and why? I want to be able to edit and cut the video afterwards, so preferably some raw video format output instead of direct upload to twitch or something. Rig is in my sig, it should be able to handle recording at reasonable FPS right? EDIT: Yes, I can google video recording software myself. I'm looking for more detailed input regarding what software to use and why, preferably from people who have recorded PS2 gameplay themselves for further editing using a rig similarly powerful to mine.
I use open broadcaster https://obsproject.com it records quality footage. Can upload or stream as well as save as a file for editing. The big advantage though over others is its free.
You cant record a raw video format unless you have a fast dedicated hard drive with vast amounts of space available. You will want some form of compression, - bandicam's max is 20000kbps - FRAPS is auto set at,.. something similar but worse quality than Bandicam from what I could tell You can then edit them, save at the same rate and compress them with Handbreake. You will have to try out what works best for you.
What kind of settings do you record at (resolution, framerate, raw or compressed?) in PS2? Does recording hurt performance a lot? I'm thinking I'd like to record nearly every time I play, but I don't want it to hurt performance too much. Need to find a compromise between video quality and performance.
I could probably afford 3-4TB just for this. I kinda need more storage anyway. As far as I know, FRAPS records uncompressed? I've recorded some other games before using it but it was a different PC... I remember the file sizes were huge I wonder if RadeonPro is any good, or MSI Afterburner?
I'm pretty new to this myself, think I could probably up my own quality but currently. I'm recording at 1680x1050 as thats the resolution my monitor and ps2 are already at. Bilinear filter 30fps, quality balance of 10, max bitrate of 3000kb/s and a buffer size of 3000kb. Default bitrate was 2000 and quality as awful at that. Audio encoded with AAC codec at a bitrate of 128, 48Khz stereo. Its uncompressed, encodes on the fly into MP4 video format, I'm sure there will have been a performance hit but its so minor that I haven't noticed. It hasn't affected how I play. follow the link and you can see the quality I'm getting with the current settings I'm using.
Dxtory: http://exkode.com/home-en.html This does what you want, and then some. For starters, you can use just about any codec you want. Use h.264vfw if you want your file sizes relatively small, or Lagarith Lossless if you want insane quality footage. You can use the codecs they provide, but Lagarith is so much better you may as well just start with it. If you want raw footage you will need 2 drives. It's not so important that they're large (although they can't be small), what's important is that they're fast. Different apps hit the system in different places. Fraps hits cpu and gpu, which is why fps always tanks to 30 when using it. Dxtory hits the hard drives hard, which is why you want them fast, but fps doesn't suffer. Some games you won't even notice. OBS is good too; like Dxtory the fps hit is really small, and there's a way to save files locally. However, the catch with OBS is that you have to play in windowed mode. The only question is why are you insisting on raw footage? If you're going to be making super quality videos, then you're going to want to go Dxtory/Lagarith Lossless, and be prepared to spend a huge amount of time compiling the raw footage, then muxing in the audio tracks, then sorting through the footage... it's almost a full time job. Then of course come the rendering in Vegas, or something similar. Even if you output just an avi with Dxtory/Lagarith, you still have to mux the audio tracks and sort through the footage, which, although it's faster than having to compile the raw caps too... still... If you're just wanting to make game montages for youtube, then you can pick just about anything and use just about any codec you want. Youtube is notorious for killing quality, so consider that before you decide to spend hours making something superior... youtube will just end up crushing it anyway. Having said all that, if you have money to spend and your card has any age at all on it, I would seriously consider an nvidia card for shadowplay. I have used everything I just typed out, I just haven't used it since I started playing with shadowplay. The file sizes are insanely small and the quality is really nice. It's not quite Lagarith Lossless quality, but the 60 fps captures more than make up for it as you can start playing around with slow motion. When you start asking Dxtory/Lagarith to capture 60fps, not only do file sizes swell (and they're already large), but performance starts to take a hit too. **edit for links** Dxtory is ~ $40.00. You can try it, but there's a huge watermark. If you get it, try Lagarith Lossless: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html In the advanced settings, just use YV12 and check multithreading. It's the "lowest" (read: fastest) of the quality settings; however, in this case "lowest" means bit for bit reproduction of everything on your screen. You can choose higher quality options, but they capture so much data not visible than unless you're making movie quality videos it's just not worth it. If you want to try out h.264 for smaller file sizes, then get the latest builds here: http://komisar.gin.by/ Grab both the 32 and 64-bit VFW versions, then after you install them, make sure your settings match these: http://i.imgur.com/dAQIN.png
I want raw footage because quality>quantity. I'm even considering turning HUD off at times in order to capture a clean look. I'm aware that Youtube is a quality killer, but I still want to have the option to encode and release higher quality versions. I tried MSI Afterburner yesterday, it can record raw footage and is free. Thing is it seriously hurts performance. Just sitting at the warpgate my fps goes down from 90 to 60, and it doesn't matter if I'm recording 1080p @60fps or 720p @30fps. In intense scenarios it would probably drop framerate by the same degree, potentially making the game unplayable. Even so I think my hard disk performance is lacking a bit as there was some stuttering. Could Shadowplay even record raw footage? I've heard its impact on performance is minimal. I might be able to upgrade to an NVIDIA 800 series card later in the year. Kind of hesitant to buy a GTX 780 because its performance is not even that much better compared to my OC'd 7950... and it'd cost me 150 euros more now than the 7950 cost me over a year ago. Dxtory sounds good, too bad it's not free... I'll still probably try it out though and see how it compares to Afterburner. I also did try OBS and indeed I couldn't get it to work in full screen. That's kind of a deal breaker to me. Thanks for the in-depth commentary.
The advantage of shadowplay is that it uses it's own on-chip compression method which is very efficient. I'm tempted to switch to it yself from my current Dxtory+264. The game has to be played in fullscreen for it though, which I'm not a fan of. One of the perks in Dxtory that I value highly is that you can assign several audio sources. For example separate sources for: speakers, headphones, main microphone and screaming bee at the same time and edit them all separately later. This gives you the ability to cut off TeamSpeak chatter completely without sacrificing game audio.
I must admit that I have been more impressed than I thought I would be by Shadowplay but have not yet tried it myself. From my own experience, which included editing video as well as recording games and other programs directly from the PC, I would second the suggestion for Dxtory with the Lagarith Codec. As to YouTube, there are ways to ensure that you get the maximum possible quality, rather than letting YT butcher your videos.
Can you expand on that a bit? Is there a generally agreed upon codec/container/bitrate etc combo that youtube likes best?
I tried FRAPS etc, but stuck to MSI Afterburner. MSI Afterburner allows codecs like h.264vfw and Lagarith, plus it can capture more than 1 audiochannel. For encoding to MP4 for example, avidemux2 is a good tool. The internal video recorder in PS2 fails after a few seconds with little ram, 4GB, but performs well with 8GB. Have not tested that with MSI Afterburner. [Edit] I record in 1920x1200, but YouTube scales it back to 1080p. Plus YT does not like VBR. Don't save on bitrate if you use CBR as YT always degrades the clips.
First off, c'mon now... even stock 780's are ~ 40% faster than a 7950. When you consider SC's, Classified's and Ti's, then we're talking cards on another level. I know AMD likes to talk how r290's are Titan killers, but my 780 SC boosts to 1137 and has been killing Titans for almost a year now. Just something to consider. Given how well the Ti is doing I don't expect nvidia to rush out the 800's. Shadowplay does not do raw cap; it dumps an mp4 into the folder of your choice. The problem with keeping quality good on you tube (and this is where dxtory excels), is that youtube considers the bitrate of your entire project, video and audio. Shadowplay's audio bitrate is high, so youtube figures this into their equation and degrades video quality so the overall package comes in under their guidelines. The best way to maintain quality for shadowplay video is to render at a constant bitrate of ~ 22k. Yes, of course we'd much rather render at 50k and above, but... this is one of the drawbacks of shadowplay and how they deal with audio. With Dxtory you can set a nice low audio bitrate so you can render much higher videos and still have youtube maintain reasonably good quality. Until shadowplay gives us the option to change audio rates, then as far as being able to up good quality video goes, Dxtory wins hands down.
FRAPS is a very well known recorder but it kills your framerate. Bandicam is awesome. It doesn't look like much (and you cannot pirate it) but it's been really great for me. It's only like $30, and definitely worth it.
Yes, stock vs stock a 780 is a good bit faster than a 7950. I was comparing a 7950 @ 1.1Ghz (a 30% overclock over stock 850MHz) to a stock 780. 7950 @ 1.1GHz is quite close to 7970 GHz, and see how close that is to a stock 780: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/768?vs=827 It's just not worth 450€ to me when I paid 280€ for this 1.5 years ago. I would preferably wait until I could get a +50% stock vs stock improvement for what I previously paid, hopefully a Maxwell-based GTX 770 equivalent would be close to that. Shadowplay will probably have been developed further and improved at that point. Wat? Bitrate is measured in kbit/s or Mbit/s, and for 1080p @30fps the order of magnitude is single digit Mbit/s Good to know. MSI AB also lacks the option to adjust audio quality. However I would still cut the video and reencode it before uploading to Youtube so I could just set audio quality in that step, without having to worry about options in the recording software
I use Dxtory with Lagarith Lossless Codec for capture. later rendering using MeGUI (x246, Constant Quality, Cuality Setting: 21) So it doesn't slow down FPS to much while recording, and gives afterwards a file with nice quality and a decent size. (Dxtory doesn't limit Framerate to capoire rate like fRAPS)
