Posts Tagged recording

This is the first in what will be weekly guides with the intention of showing you how to try out something a little different. Most guides will be tailored around gaming, so check back here often and leave comments if you have any questions.

In this article I will be explaining how you can record yourself playing a game and upload it to share it with your friends. Let’s get started. These are the programs you will need.

Video recording software – By far the best is Fraps, it costs $37 (roughly £23), and allows you to record video from any game at ful or half resolution, and with sound. In the newest version you also get the ability to record from the desktop, and to record sound directly from the microphone which makes shoutcasting (gaming videos with commentary) even easier. If you don’t want to buy Fraps, there are free alternatives such as Hypercam which perform the same function but with fewer features.

Video editing/encoding software – The perfect package for this is Adobe Premiere Pro, which will provide all the functionality we need. There are probably free programs available which can do the job, but I wouldn’t be able to recommend any without searching for and testing each one out one by one. You can grab a free trial of Premiere Pro from here.

Our first task once you have the software installed is to load up Fraps (or another recording program), and configure it to our liking. Your monitor resolution is important here, as it determines what resolution we record the video at. Chose a hotkey, preferably one that isn’t used by the game you want to record.

Next determine what resolution you want to record at. The optimal resolution for recording in HD (high definition) is 1280×720, note that this is for a widescreen monitor, if you have a 4:3 aspect ratio then use 1280×1024. The best way to record at this resolution is to set your resolution in-game to 1280×720 and then tell Fraps to record at full size. Another option if you have a large monitor is keep your native resolution and record at half size, for example your native resolution is 1920×1200 then half size would be 960×600.

Lastly, take into consideration the speed of your computer, more specifically your graphics card and hard drive speed. The best way to make sure your computer can handle the resolution is to test it out in-game. If you get stuttering, lower the resolution and make sure you’re not recording above 30FPS. You also need to have a large amount of disk space available before you start recording, 50GB per 30 minutes at 1280×720 is a good estimate.

All that’s left now is to record your footage, load up the game and when you’re ready, hit your record hotkey.

To summarise:

• Do not record above 1280×720 (or 1280×1024).
• Set FPS to 25 or 30.
• Make sure you have at least 50GB of free space per 30 minutes of expected footage.
• Ensure that you have tested that your computer can run these settings before starting!

After recording, you should have a series of short 1-2 minute video clips ready to be imported into your video editing software.

This concludes the first part of the guide, check back tomorrow for the conclusion, where we will be stitching together these video files and exporting as a video file to upload onto the internet.

Click here to read the second part of the guide.