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Screen capture software, which one is best

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littleclaude quad damage
Screen capture software.

I have a little job to do and I want to do multiple screen captures and wondered what the best free software is?

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  • Rwolf
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    Rwolf polycounter lvl 18
    MSI afterburner has screen capture, and video/desktop capture.
  • ceebee
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    ceebee polycounter lvl 14
    For recording: Debut Video Capture Software (Free)
    http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/

    For live streaming: Open Broadcasting Software ("OBS") also free
    https://obsproject.com/

    That should just about cover it. OBS can do both too if you don't want to use another program.
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    I have been so ridiculously impressed with OBS. It is amazing. I've used Livestream before, and their software - but it required a smaller screen resolution and lagged the unliving fuck out of my computer. OBS is completely transparent - so much so that I've left it on accidentally and noticed no slowdown.

    It also saves copies of your streams (maybe a setting?) in a VERY high quality, full res, awesomely compressed video. It is very good software. Requires some setup, but is very good.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    MSI Afterburn looked perfect in a Youtube video, so when I downloaded it my version does not seem to have the screen capture option? any help would be much appreciated.

    - [ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMW0HkOaQU[/ame]

    Capture1.jpg

    My version
    Capture.jpg
  • katana
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    katana polycounter lvl 14
  • Tobbo
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    Tobbo polycounter lvl 11
    I really like OBS as well!
  • Bruno Afonseca
    The newest MSI Afterburner versions don't do videos. Old ones do!
  • EarthQuake
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    I've tired a few:

    Fraps: works well, but after a while it wouldn't record files anymore, no errors or anything, would just create a file that was deleted as soon as I stopped recording. Very frustrating.

    Bandicam: works well generally but gave me issues with UI flickering (didn't show up in recorded video but made it pretty much impossible to make video tutorials).

    Currently using ZD Soft Screen recorder, which works quite well. With gpu recording the performance hit is minimal (as it is with the above two as well).

    I haven't used OBS myself, but I was comparing some of the output (that Lee Devonald sent me) and the compression was a lot worse than what you can get our of ZD soft or bandicam where you have a lot more control over the compression quality. How important this is really depends on your needs tho. Not sure if there are some hidden quality settings somewhere but we didn't find them when we were messing with it. Compression with OBS is fine for mostly static stuff, but anything with a lot of motion gets muddy.

    In general if you're doing anything heavy I would recommend a very fast GPU. Previously I was trying to do video recording with Marmoset Toolbag 2 (which is entirely GPU based) on a 560 Ti and it really wasn't fast enough to handle rendering and gpu recording, and CPU recording tends to be really slow (even on my quadcore i7 4770). Now I'm using a 770 which I quite like, though a 780 would be even better.
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Having gone trough quite a few, I have found playclaw(it's on steam) and nVidia shadowplay desktop recording works the best.
  • EarthQuake
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    So, shadowplay: I've tried numerous times to get this to work, but the record desktop option is greyed out for me. Do I need to do something special?
  • CrazyButcher
  • rino
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    rino polycounter lvl 11
    i use bandicam to record my videos, it has some bugs though, sometimes you don't know if you are recording because bandicam window disappears. but i've done few recordings with it and i'm happy.
  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    I use shadow play for games since it performs very well, than camtasia for desktop recording
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Useful thread - lots of things to try out !

    On a side note, if anyone is interested : I recently experimented with an Elgato HD capture card, in the hope of offloading most of the encoding calculations away from the computer. The device is absolutely perfect for console footage capture at 720p/1080p, and works quite well for PC game recording too.

    I tried it two different setups :
    1 - controlling the capture card with a laptop receiving footage from the proper workstation ; and
    2 - controlling the capture card with the workstation on which the work was actually being done.

    Both worked, but I found myself limited by the resolution settings and the wiring. The Elgato card is HDMI in and HDMI out, which can be annoying for PC users (for instance, recording footage from a Cintiq would require some extra adapters, and I doubt that the card would support 1600x1200 anyway). And even on a screen using HDMI wiring I got some scaling and resolution issues - probably because of the screen in question not running at a native TV-friendly resolution.

    TLDR : the device didn't really fit my needs, but it might fit yours depending on your gear. Being able to compress the video in realtime without having to worry about anything is a huge plus ! The software also has a indicator showing how much disk space is being used, which is very good too.
  • Anthony
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    Anthony polycounter lvl 2
    I've experimented with a couple like camtasia and bandicam, but i've found Afterburner to be the most reliable for clip duration to file size ratio, where as fraps records decent quality videos, but the file sizes are HUGE.

    Unfortunately, Shadowplay requires both a (relatively recent) Nvidia GPU and a (relitively recent) Nvidia CPU, neither of which i have, so i can't use that.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Thanks for the feedback guys very helpful.

    Question - Can Camtasia take multiple screen captures?

    My results with MSI Afterburn, it is perfect (click C to capture and it dumps as many images on the hard drive as you want) but there is quite a lot of Jpeg artifacting so make sure you set it to BMP or PNG format.

    Here are the results for anyone interested, go HD or go home :)

    Untitled_2.jpg

    Desktop_2014_06_21_23_15_23_415.jpg


    Desktop_2014_06_21_23_14_49_796.png

    Desktop_2014_06_21_23_14_18_220.png
  • Brygelsmack
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    Brygelsmack polycounter lvl 11
    Seriously, ShadowPlay is awesome for recording the desktop. Between Camtasia, Fraps and Debut Professional it has the best framerate. Quality is good on all of these, but the the video just looks so much smoother with ShadowPlay.

    Debut Professional has a lot of features though, you can record multiple screens at the same time etc.
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Earthquake: CrazyButcher might be right about that, I can't remember to have enabled anything special myself.
  • EarthQuake
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    Na, pc (EVGA 770 GTX 4GB, i7 4770, 16GB ram, Win 7 Pro 64), I see the little option but its greyed out, I can't enable it. Does it not like multi-monitor setups or something?

    I tried a month or two ago and no luck, but I'll try again.
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    I got the EVGA 760 GTX, so that is really strange it doesn't work for you.
    I have 2 monitors myself, but it only records 1 of them.

    Hope you get it working :)
  • iconoplast
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    iconoplast polycounter lvl 13
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Na, pc (EVGA 770 GTX 4GB, i7 4770, 16GB ram, Win 7 Pro 64), I see the little option but its greyed out, I can't enable it. Does it not like multi-monitor setups or something?

    I tried a month or two ago and no luck, but I'll try again.
    Do you have Aero enabled? It apparently requires it.
  • EarthQuake
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    iconoplast wrote: »
    Do you have Aero enabled? It apparently requires it.

    Aha, looks like that was it, thanks. Ok, how do I set it to capture from my secondary screen?
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