Video capture software for a Let's Play?

So... a fancy mood has struck me to, maybe, try myself at this whole "Making a Let's Play"-thing.

Spoiler

Show

To provide more detail: I've always been extremely entertained by the I Wanna Be The Guy Let's Plays by UltraJMan and cloud8745 - warning, extremely NSFW language with a ton of cussing - if you are not disturbed by that though, I highly recommend checking them out, they are pretty hilarious, especially the latter.

For those who don't know, IWBTG is a platformer that is a homage to many old NES games - platformers and otherwise - with an utterly ridiculous degree of difficulty. Literally anything can and will kill you, the whole place is riddled with utterly unexpected and highly creative traps, and the entire game is rigged to screw you over at every imaginable step in every way you might and might not expect. Which, of course, makes playing through it blindly an all the more hilarious experience - if you are appropriately masochistically minded, anyway - and makes watching someone suffer through it infinitely more amusing yet.

I've still considered it fun, in spite of its... very peculiar nature, and at some point thought that doing a Let's Play of it might actually be pretty cool - only, I couldn't possibly do it blindly, as I'd already beaten it, which would take a lot of the amusement out of it.

Now I have learnt that there is, apparently, what amounts to a successor - I Wanna Be The Fangame - which, judging by what I've seen of it, is indeed more of the same, equally insane and hilarious as the original. I don't know whether it is - I have deliberately avoided letting myself be spoiled when it comes to it this time - but it looks like it might just be that opportunity to do a blind Let's Play of I Wanna Be The Guy that I can no longer do with the original.

Specifically, a Let's Play in video form; considering the nature of the game I'm considering making a Let's Play of, using still pictures just wouldn't cut it.

Which is something I've never tried, yet I'm quite sure there are plenty of fine folks on these forums of ours here who have and who might be able to supply some advice - specifically, what software is out there that
a) would be well suited to capture the video of a game I'd be playing, including the music and sounds of said game,
b) at the same time, record the incoherent, insane ramblings I might be uttering while playing said game, and
c) that is free (not some 30-day trial version or anything like that)?

My computer is not exactly high-end, but moderately decent-ish; the OS would be Windows 7.

Thanks in advance! :smallsmile:

I have installed (but not yet used) Livestream procaster for just such a purpose. It allows people to watch the Lets play live but more importantly I believe it saves the videos once they are complete allowing people to later watch them. I believe it is what shadowarchmagi used for his X-Com 'Lets Play' in the steam thread.

That the sort of thing you were looking for Winterwind?

You might wanna check this thread out and the one mentioned in there. :smallwink:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jair Barik

I have installed (but not yet used) Livestream procaster for just such a purpose. It allows people to watch the Lets play live but more importantly I believe it saves the videos once they are complete allowing people to later watch them. I believe it is what shadowarchmagi used for his X-Com 'Lets Play' in the steam thread.

That the sort of thing you were looking for Winterwind?

---

Is making a stream that other people can access optional or mandatory? I'm pretty sure I'd rather give it some test tries first before unleashing it upon the public (and quite possibly edit all of the videos first anyway, so I wouldn't want them to be accessible live anyway; otherwise, yeah, seems pretty much like the thing I'm looking for. Thanks! :smallsmile:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Domochevsky

You might wanna check this thread out and the one mentioned in there. :smallwink:

---

Oooh, that does help, indeed! Thanks! :smallsmile:
Though I am slightly confused with regards to that "What U Hear" option you mention - how would that capture my voice? What goes into the microphone normally doesn't go out through the speakers again, after all - I know one can set it so that it does, but hearing myself as I speak would get incredibly distracting...

I'll give all of the suggestions you made a try. Thanks, both of you. :smallcool:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Winterwind

Is making a stream that other people can access optional or mandatory? I'm pretty sure I'd rather give it some test tries first before unleashing it upon the public (and quite possibly edit all of the videos first anyway, so I wouldn't want them to be accessible live anyway; otherwise, yeah, seems pretty much like the thing I'm looking for. Thanks! :smallsmile:

---

Making the stream is mandatory, however, you can make your channel private so that only people with a password can view it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OracleofWuffing

Making the stream is mandatory, however, you can make your channel private so that only people with a password can view it.

---

Ah. Alright. That would be pretty much perfect, then. Thanks. :smallsmile:

Still have to try out all of the different options suggested here; I'll come back to you once I have done that. :smallwink:

XSplit allows you to make an entirely local recording, no streaming at all.

A problem I find with recording my screen is the fact that it is very jumpy and stuttery. I have a fairly low end processor and only 2GB of RAM, is there some sort of low specs program to do this, or am I doomed to upgrade?

Probably doomed. The thing with screen recording is that it takes exponentionally more power the bigger the area is you want to record. Recording only a window of half your monitor size could already alleviate the issue.

(Back in the days when i did the Drakensang LP i had the game windowed at roughly half size, both to allow for a 4:3 format (viddler only allows that for free accounts) and to get a smooth experience. And of course the codec used is important as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Domochevsky

Probably doomed.

---

Curses be upon computing. I guess I'll just have to set up a camera behind me, or something.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spartacus

Curses be upon computing. I guess I'll just have to set up a camera behind me, or something.

---

The results won't be pretty. If your graphics card has a TV out you could pipe that to some sort of video recorder and get the image that way, assuming such things are still available!

Greetings,

EpicRewind is video capture software that has a key differentiating feature: RAM RollingBuffer mode. This works like an on-demand instant-replay: a game is hooked and the video is continuously buffered in system RAM, when something cool happens the user can save the buffer contents with the press of a hotkey. So rather than saving video from your entire gaming session you can just save the good stuff after it actually happens. In addition, EpicRewind provides some nice performance benefits over traditional capture software: video processing, encoding and writing to disk only happen when you choose to save a video clip. During video buffering, the contents of the framebuffer are just being copied to system memory X times per second based your specified capture FPS.

Key advantages of the RAM RollingBuffer:

You don't need to pre-plan a gaming video, you can just play the game without thinking of the video at all. If something interesting happens you can always choose to save it after it's happened.
Ideal for MMOs and Multiplayer games where 99% of the gameplay isn't worth sharing and the interesting stuff can happen at unexpected times.

Added benefits:

One of the best benefits is that it saves you time by eliminating the need to dig through all your saved gameplay footage to find the good stuff.
Saves disk space by not writing countless hours of video to disk your just going to throw away later after you dig out the highlights.
More efficient use of system resources by not processing and encoding video the entire time your gaming.

The base version of EpicRewind is free and can be downloaded here:

http://epicrewind.com/downloads.php

Anyway, thanks for reading!