FRAPS is nifty but even when synching my games to 60 FPS, they are obviously choppy. This results in a less than pleasant gaming experience, in addition to lowering my “performance”, which is important considering I want to capture video clips to put into a demo.
So, I’ve been trying think out of the box, for another method of capturing in-game video, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
My video card is dual head, which means it has two DVI outputs. My monitor has a VGA input, which is no problem because the card comes with a DVI to VGA adapter. What if I get a second one of these adapters and connect to it a VGA to S-Video adapter, then connect that to an external video encoder (think “Dazzle”). The video encoder (USB or Firewire) would then connect to a second computer, which would be handling the encoding. Theoretically, it sounds like a great idea. What’s really cool is this wouldn’t lower the performance of my gaming computer whatsoever, since the encoding is being handled by the video encoder and second PC.
What helped influence this idea is that, at the office, I’ve been helping our developer test a USB video encoder, which has a S-Video input.
I’ll bring one of these devices home this weekend to test. Hopefully I can find one of thsoe VGA to S-Video adapters locally, for around the same price.
