looking for a PC video capture solution

[Grandpa Stu]

I'm trying to capture video of some dx10 applications. The only thing i've found that does this is fraps. but running fraps causes a performance hit making video capture choppy and unreliable. what causes this performance hit? is it because of all the images being written to the hard drive? something else? if i could understand what's causing the slowdown then i could better find a solution.

for instance, would using a hard drive dedicated to the fraps dump help solve the problem? are their hardware solutions for capturing pc video? i've found all sorts of devices for capturing video from TVs and the like but nothing soley for the pc. is running the dx10 apps and video capture on the same pc just too much to handle? would pumping the video output to the input of another pc and capturing the video there solve the issue? is that even possible? if i could do that then why not have the two video cards in the same PC and looping them?

any and all input on this is appreciated. even just a link pointing me in the right direction would rock my world

[Foo]

There are solutions, but proper ones are expensive.

Try googling 'SXGA Capture Card' to get some cards that could capture up to 1280x1024

If you can get your graphics output running simultaneously on your PC's vga and tv-outputs, then capture from the tv-output using a standard tv capture card, you'll be able to do it cheaper. The limitation then is how high you can get the tv-out and in transmit/capture resolutions. I was never able to get it very high but then there'll be limitations on the composite output I was using at the time.

One possible avenue to explore might be PC Component out TV DVD Player/HDD recorder combo unit DVD

Kinda ugly though. Also I'm not a video editing type person so one of those folk should be able to give you a better response

[creep]

FRAPS is an application, so yes it takes system resources. It also writes immense amounts of data to HDD, so your storage system is important for making it work properly.

Things to try to make fraps run better: Check the "Half Size" option, turn down the framerate for recorded video, run the game in lower resolution, cap the game's framerate to something it can output consistently.

I've captured with FRAPS from a couple of games and not had any real issues, but then I wasn't capturing brand new games on last year's hardware. One crucial statistic will be your system's CPU usage while accessing disks. There's a free app called HDTach that might give you some insight on why you're having trouble with fraps.

[DTS]

You could try using a solid state hard drive.

Or a USB pen drive. Or a memory stick.

All solid state and decent for video. The solid state hard drive would offer more space; lots of space is needed for video, more for higher resolution and framerate.

Solid state storage is smooth in operation cause it has no moving parts.

Edit: Or you could try using a RAM drive (you just allocate some RAM to use as a drive), then copy the files to disk after the capture.
You wouldn't have much space with a RAM drive probably, but you could start recording just before where you had stop in the demo when you ran out of space, then edit the sperate files together afterwards, deleting the overlap by using an in-game time display (in the HUD).

[creep]

I'm aghast at your apparent cluelessness of what "solid state" means.

A solid state (generall FLASH RAM) drive offering "more space" than a traditional drive would cost thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of dollars.

Secondly... solid drives still use the same interfaces as regular hard drives, giving them the same limits on I/O.

And USB... CPU usage would be through the roof, pulling resources away from the game and capture software, so that's out.

[DTS]

I'm aghast at your apparent cluelessness of what "solid state" means.

A solid state (generall FLASH RAM) drive offering "more space" than a traditional drive would cost thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of dollars.

I didn't mean more space than a traditional drive, I meant more space than the alternatives I mentioned.

[Grandpa Stu]

thanks for the suggestions. i found an obscure post on an UT forum similar to what you said foo but instead pump the video out to an HD camcorder. i may try that if i can actually get my hands on one.

unfortunately cutting the image size in half isn't an option and there's no way to cap the FPS with what i'm doing. the system specs i'm using aren't exactly cutting edge so those are going to be upgraded and hopefully that will help out.