OldGuy wrote:
VLC?
Has anybody used that for desktop movie capture?

It is very stable for other things.

I never saw anything in VLC to indicate it could capture the desktop.
Where do I look? What is the terminology?


The interface is like flying a 747. Don't forget to
flip the "fasten seatbelts" switch... The recipe
is only 11 steps or so.

http://www.wikihow.com/Screen-Capture-to-File-Using-VLC

If VLC were using FFMPEG or AVLIB, it's possible it is
using gdigrab for this.

One thing to remember about screen capture stuff.

1) Disable hardware acceleration on Flash Video
2) Disable hardware acceleration on anything else
you may be attempting to capture.

There are at least three rendering planes. Only FRAPS
knows how to capture all three, and in the latest OSes,
Microsoft has buggered the OS, so the FRAPS designers
cannot make a compatible implementation. So of the
rendering planes, something is un-fixable in later
OSes. Sorta like the frame limiter issue. So if you
absolutely must capture everything, you'd probably
want to stick with Windows 7, then start experimenting.
(Or, use a screen capture card, with HDMI or VGA input.)

When I tested FRAPS, or tried to, it was inserting
a DLL into every program files folder. Which of course,
makes your AV go crazy. My AV was so happy with the
FRAPS installer, the machine froze up :-) Using that
DLL is how they hook the information flow for capture.
Other methods are less intrusive, but also less
complete. Which is why you may need to adjust some
programs, so they render into a plane the capture
tool can reach.

If you need to capture 3D screen play, the NVidia
video driver now has ShadowPlay(?) for recording
3D plane video for later. So that would be an
example of a partial replacement for FRAPS, if
you're a 3D gamer. But that mechanism isn't intended
for the regular desktop rendering planes. It's
just intended for the harder-to-do one, the 3D plane.
Since part of the implementation is in the GPU, you'd
expect the result to be buttery smooth (video encoding
on capture, is done with a video encoder block in a
modern GPU).

When doing screen capture in Win7, you can get
slightly better results by disabling Aero, so
there is no transparency on the window frames.
Of course, then the results don't look "authentic".
Aero adds a little overhead to the capture
path or something.

Paul