HQ Video Capturing

[Arbeiten]

Hi, I've had a recent obsession with recording my guild running dungeons/raids, and was wondering if someone could share some advice.

First off, I have dug around quite a bit, found a few threads dating around 2007 and 2009, but nothing really seems to answer my question directly.

Ideally, I would like to run Fraps in Full-size mode and be able to produce some high quality video to post on my guild forums. So far, everything I've come across has referred to recording at half-quality and "up-scaling" to a slightly sharper image.

I suppose my question(s) is how could I go about recording high quality gameplay video (1920x1080), without having to sharpen the image via a second or third program.

I have no issue going out and purchasing hardware to do so, I just have no idea where to look, as every thread I've dug up (in any forum) is screaming Fraps or another software based application.

I'm a complete amateur at this whole thing, so pretty much any advice would be greatly appreciated.
(As a side question, how does TankSpot record such high quality boss fights/guides? I understand some editing is involved, but the initial video itself looks amazing).

[Fetzie]

I am not a tankspot video guide author, but I record with Fraps in full size 1080p (1920*1080) @ 30 fps. I then render it down from ~12 GB to around 500 MB using mpeg4, 30 FPS, 12 Mb/s video bitrate, 192 kb/s audio bitrate, 1080p vertical resolution in Sony Vegas.

This is what it ends up looking like:



Have a look at the sticky thread at the top of the Tech Central forum.

[Arbeiten]

Thank you! Very nice vid btw, I love the music. I took a look at the sticky you mentioned, and am probably going to invest in a Fraps license, eventually buy a new 2TB internal as well as Sony Vegas from newegg. Until then I suppose VirtualDub will suffice for temporary editing and compressing Fraps files.

I will have to try running Full-Size at 30fps instead of Half-Size at 60fps though, I feel like it should turn out fine with my machine though. (Only thing I'm really lacking is 64bit OS w/ more RAM and a semi-outdated GPU - HD Radeon 5870 or something. And of course the second HDD to record to).

Thanks again for the feedback!

[Fetzie]

Youtube does not support 60 fps videos anyway, they get converted to 30 FPS regardless, which can cause a drop in quality in itself. The key thing is to keep the framerate and the resolution the same from start to finish. If you are using an x*1200 resolution you will need to do a bit of trickery to make it look good at 1080p. Check youtube for tutorials, there are lots of them out there and most of them are quite well made.