Hi guys, anyone know of anything, free open source or cheap as I am a tight wad.

I tried CamStudio but for some reason it does not pick up the audio...maybe I was missing something.

So far I have had most success with Fraps but it only does 30 seconds in the free version.  I figured there has to be some free software somewhere that will do the capture job.

Or will I have to let the moths out ?

Cheers

It's okay I found one : http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/bbflashback/compareeditions.aspx

Never heard of BB FlashBack, have tried CamStudio and had varying results with that.

I have the full version of Fraps and its pretty flawless if you ask me, captures HD video at what I would class as perfect quality, you can't really tell it apart from what it was capturing.

Let us know how you get on with BB FlashBack Freddy.

I also use Fraps when I (rarely) need to capture video from an app, and it works well enough for me. Of course, like Freddy, I'm a bit of a miser these days, so I use the free version. I've never run up against any time limit for captures, though. Maybe that's because I've never needed more than a few seconds of video at a time.

And Freddy, I'm with Data on wanting to know how BB Flashback works out for you.

Well I have been messing around with it a little - there are a lot of features but it seems a bit buggy.  I tried exporting video (to AVI) using two of the Intel codecs that are on my PC (works with VirtualDub editor) and I get no image only sound.  I can use the 'Microsoft video 1' but the compression on that makes it look blotchy.

Again, whilst trying to crop something... the controls only seem partly functional.  But I can do that in VirtualDub anyway.

The video capture itself seems good. You can capture the whole screen and also a region of the screen too.  I think it is true to the original, I've compared it with live screen action and it looks fine.

A nice touch is that you can export to Flash video....I am really surprised by the quality of that too and for 10 seconds of 100% quality video it weighs in at 468KB - compare that to the equivalent AVI which is 87MB.

I think I will have to look around for a few AVI codecs to get around the image loss I mentioned above. The Microsoft one is just not good enough. The Intel ones work fine in my other editor and produce top notch results, it's a shame they don't work in this.

They do have a support forum though, so that's good.

But I think it is a great tool for free. In combination with other applications I am sure I will find it useful.

Well that was easy...downloaded DivX and that codec works perfectly :

http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus

Glad to hear that, Freddy! Sounds like a nice app to have.

Good to know, thanks for posting the info Freddy.

I too use Virtual Dub for various video editing tasks, its a great app that takes very little resources, I love it.

The two main codecs I use now are Xvid, and the newer H264, which if you didn't know is the codec used for blu ray and in windows is normally an MP4 file extension.

Yes Data, XviD seems to be the codec used for most hacked movies. But of course I don't do that... 

About H264, I agree, now it's THE codec, allowing to make movies with a better quality and/or a lower size. I use it a lot in Second Life (I have made tons of short mp4 movies, with QuickTime Pro and H264, and I notice that now, all the movies for SL use this codec).

By the way Freddy, CamStudio works fine with sound on my (very old) computer. I love it and will not change it. 

I might give those Codecs a look, but this DivX one seems fine for what I need at the moment, plus it's widely supported.

I think CamStudio would work on my PC if I had a separate sound card. But that would mean spending money unnecessarily 

Being a gamer I don't consider a soundcard as unnecessarily spending money, full hardware sound playback leaving the CPU to concentrate on the important things. FPS, but that is the gamer in me talking. 

Xvid and DivX codecs are virtually the same, the main difference is that Xvid doesn't install any software, just the codec, back in the old days when DivX was released it was bulled with addware and other crap, kept away from it since then.

Xvid works well in virtual Dud too, I always do two passes, which gives a better quality image.   

I don't really play any games like that, but I might take up your advice as sometimes my games are a bit flickery, I can live with it though. They are pretty cheap now.

The DivX codec I think is available by itself. The package I installed came with a couple of trial apps. I think it's pretty clean these days. I can just uninstall them if they are not useful.

OK well forget about that BB screen capture software it's rubbish.  It can't export video correctly.  And I think it is full of junk too as after running it I found that even after closing it my computer gets all sluggish and over active.  SO I am getting rid of it.

One other thing, the DivX codec has disappeared - does anyone know if you have to register it or something ?

I think I will just pay for Fraps at some point, there's too much junk about.

I've been through all this before Freddy and know exactly what you mean; in the end it has to be Fraps.

I recommend using the Xvid stand alone codec, keep away from DivX.

http://www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html

But I've got to say that the latest Live Windows Movie maker is really good, it can open and edit the videos straight out of Fraps and save them in HD WMV files that up-load and run on YouTube very well. On the latest version you can even set the bit rate of the output, making it possible to make perfect HD vids, go have a look at it.

You wouldn't even need the Xvid codec then.  

Oh yes... and I really like the way the Windows movie maker uses all the cores in a quad core when converting.

Yep I have been using Windows Movie maker too for my stuff - I like the way I can easily upload things to YouTube in one click.

I'll try the xvid codec then 

I need the codec to crop videos though, that's the only reason as as far as I know so far Fraps doesn't allow you to capture a region of the screen, or am I mistaken ?