Is PlayClaw worth it? - Hardware & Software

Hello there I am thinking of getting the standard license for PlayClaw. I know that it makes smaller files than fraps so that is why I want to get it. If anyone with experience with this software could let me know if its worth it, it would be much appreciated. Cheers bs

Fraps records in uncompressed files if you want smaller files with Fraps you have to compress them later. PlayClaw simply compresses the files while recording but needs more CPU Power.

What kind of specs do you have and what are you looking to do with it? Is filesize an issue, or just for convienence? Dxtory or mirillis action might be something to investigate.

[IMG]http://puu.sh/3LmDC.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://puu.sh/3LmE0.png[/IMG] Mainly for convenience and the fact that I would like to keep raw recording files. I do a lot of recording gameplay for my YouTube channel. I have tried Action and liked it but in about 50 percent of my games it doesnt appear and dxtory caused significant impact on my gameplay. Right now fraps halves my frame rate (records at 30 FPS locked). [editline]25th July 2013[/editline] Also I am upgrading my RAM in a matter of days

[QUOTE=bs8814;41589112]Right now fraps halves my frame rate (records at 30 FPS locked). [/QUOTE] That's probably because you have the 30 fps max setting on, turn it off and it will record everything at the same fps as your games run in.

[QUOTE=bs8814;41589112][IMG]http://puu.sh/3LmDC.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://puu.sh/3LmE0.png[/IMG] Mainly for convenience and the fact that I would like to keep raw recording files. I do a lot of recording gameplay for my YouTube channel. I have tried Action and liked it but in about 50 percent of my games it doesnt appear and dxtory caused significant impact on my gameplay. Right now fraps halves my frame rate (records at 30 FPS locked). [editline]25th July 2013[/editline] Also I am upgrading my RAM in a matter of days[/QUOTE] use fraps and compress the video afterwards or use dxtory or bandicam

I'd prefer not to compress after as it is inconvenient.

DXTory with YUV420. 1 minute = roughly 1GB at 1280x1024. If I need to save space (I have a little bit of free space left on my HDD) I just compress it with Sony Vegas and later use it for whatever project I wanted to use it for. For example - Played a hour of GTA: SA-MP. First the files were 10GB and more. Now after I rendered 'em with Sony Vegas and different settings, they are 1GB. Yeah, the quality gets worse but I'm fine with it. The FPS drop from dxtory is maximum 5, and that doesn't worry me.

You should take a look at this [url]http://obsproject.com/[/url] which does also just recording + it's free.

[QUOTE=Calkkuna;41589221]That's probably because you have the 30 fps max setting on, turn it off and it will record everything at the same fps as your games run in.[/QUOTE] Fraps by design will do it anyways. Unless your framerate can go over 60 it will lock to 30.

MSI afterburner apparently now also does video recording.

[QUOTE=Brt5470;41589633]Fraps by design will do it anyways. Unless your framerate can go over 60 it will lock to 30.[/QUOTE] Huh, not for me?

MSI Afterburner codecs do not work with Sony Vegas

[QUOTE=bs8814;41589112]dxtory caused significant impact on my gameplay.[/QUOTE] Don't put your recordings on the same drive as your game, and possibly look into other codecs.

Well the problem with that is that my OS HDD is only 100 GB and my files one is 1 TB... So I cant really have games on the OS one.

If you're recording on the same drive then I'd really suggest you don't bother with compressing/encoding the video whilst recording it. Surely it's a convenience to have dxtory encode it in say x264 for you while you play, but chances are a lower end machine wont be able to handle it as encoding can be pretty heavy, especially on higher resolution footage. There are plenty of very reasonable ways to go on about encoding your raw files, one of them being x264 and avisynth. All you'd have to do is rename your raw footage to just about anything you set it to, say "1.avi", run a batch file and it'll encode and compress it for you. If you're interested then I'll post or send you a short guide on how to set it up and use it. It's really not that big of a hassle, given you don't want to cut and edit the video there are plenty of ways to do it that only take a few mouse clicks.

OBS is definitely the best option.

[QUOTE=Superkipje;41589377]You should take a look at this [url]http://obsproject.com/[/url] which does also just recording + it's free.[/QUOTE] I had seen this before but never tried it. Downloaded it last night and it's exceptional compared to the non-free options, both for recording & streaming.