HD Video Capture of Skyrim: Minimum requirements?

[eltucu]

Nah, its more a matter of the HDD than anything else. 2600K rocks and the 560 Ti is ageing well so no problem from those.

 

The HDD is the slowest thing on earth compared to what your CPU and GPU can do, add to that that you're running the OS, all its stuff AND the game from it at the same time you're recording, its going to choke on all of that.

 

Specially since fraps records un compressed video, so a few minutes is going to weigh GBs. And thats a LOT of traffic for the HDD.

 

If you have a spare HDD, set it up so fraps records and stores the video on the HDD that isnt the one you're running the game/OS from.

 

If you dont, then i think you wont get good framerates no matter how fast your system is.

Actually the CPU is going to make a lot of difference. It's what does most of the encoding work.

Take in mind that the CPU isnt enconding anything at least with fraps, its recording raw video, its has more to do with the ammount of data that the system has to move around than the actual processing of the data, which is fairly light (just packing the thing into .avi, but without enconding anything since its raw video).

 

A ramdisk isnt an option here, with 4Gb is a no go.

 

For the record (no pun intended), i can record comfortably with my system (2500K, 560 TI, 16Gb of ram) BUT if i'm recording either on a spare HDD or a ramdisk. Recording directly on the HDD that is storing the game halves my fps, and i have a RAID 0 of two F3s.

 

So I've tried different things. Recording on the RAID 0 array (OS and game) and having the game loading from a ramdisk (kinda works, around 30 fps tho), recording on another HDD while running the game from the RAID 0 array (this worked better if i recall correctly), and recording on a ramdisk (this works pretty well but you're limited on the ammount of ram you have). And IMO, the easiest thing to do is to have another HDD and use it to store the video, then you'll have good performance AND enough room for longer videos.

Edited June 25, 2012 by eltucu

[FMod]

The HDD is the slowest thing on earth compared to what your CPU and GPU can do, add to that that you're running the OS, all its stuff AND the game from it at the same time you're recording, its going to choke on all of that.

The OS and the game don't put a lot of load on the HDD (<10%). What matters is that the bitrate of raw 2MP video is higher than the speed of most drives. Specifically, 2MP*60fps is 360MB/s, and even the few SSD that can do it are unable to sustain such speed.

 

In all cases recording 720p makes more sense than 1080p. Youtube uses a lower bitrate for 1080p than recommended for 720p, so it's only 1080p in name. The reduction in resolution isn't going to degrade game video quality much, especially for Skyrim, which is no eye candy in the first place.

 

 

A ramdisk isnt an option here, with 4Gb is a no go.

That's why 16GB with only half used for a ramdisk.

 

One of the best programs I know of is Vsuite: http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/vsuite-ramdisk/download.html

Unfortunately the free version won't do, but you can use the enterprise version free for 15 days.

[Vecna6667]

Maybe you should try DXTory for your capture software. I've hadn't tried it yet myself, but I've been hearing a lot of good things about it over Fraps these days. Here is a link for you to check it out:

 

http://dxtory.com/v2-home-en.html

[eltucu]

The OS and the game don't put a lot of load on the HDD (<10%). What matters is that the bitrate of raw 2MP video is higher than the speed of most drives. Specifically, 2MP*60fps is 360MB/s, and even the few SSD that can do it are unable to sustain such speed.

 

In all cases recording 720p makes more sense than 1080p. Youtube uses a lower bitrate for 1080p than recommended for 720p, so it's only 1080p in name. The reduction in resolution isn't going to degrade game video quality much, especially for Skyrim, which is no eye candy in the first place.

You suddenly know a lot more about this dont you? :P

 

One of the best programs I know of is Vsuite: http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/vsuite-ramdisk/download.html

Unfortunately the free version won't do, but you can use the enterprise version free for 15 days.

I use ImDisk. It's free and quite simple, you can make as many ramdisks you want and whatever size you want. Besides, the load from .img feature makes the whole issue pretty quick. Just save the drive as an image, right click, mount, and its done.

[JimboUK]

Record lossless, avoid anything that encodes on the fly.

Record to a different physical drive (not partition).

Limit the framerate to whatever the recording process drags the games framerate down to, recording a 60fps video of a game running at 30fps is a waste.

For Youtube keep the bitrate as high as practical, 720p WMV @ 6000kbit/s gives good results on Youtube. 1080p is a waste on Youtube, the extra quality will be lost once it's been through the official Youtube Video Mangler™.