Soon to be first-time PC Runner. Is Camtasia Studio 7 allowed?

2011-03-03 11:23:20 pm

Not a walrus

Also, if Camtasia is too slow for you, and Fraps is not an option for whatever reason, you can also try scfh + virtualdub + lagarith. SCFH creates a virtual capture device out of your screen, virtualdub can grab it, and lagarith is reasonably fast good compression, and it's all free.

I used it to capture this: http://www.uranium-anchor.com/sa/lp/play.php?id=154

BlueStarReturns

2011-03-03 11:41:23 pm

Twinkle-Twinkle Lil' Star, har har!

Thanks for all of the advice, guys (Sir VG, nate, and UraniumAnchor)! I will keep everything you guys said in mind and try to post a quality test when I have everything squared away. You've all been a great help!

I have no name

2011-03-04 08:26:16 am

Obscure games ftw

I've been trying to get acceptable PC recordings as well, and I figured I'd try the scfh/virtualdub/lagarith method.
However, when i tried to find scfh, I came up with a bunch of pages with "standard cubic feet per hour".
Mind providing a link to it? (Yes I know I'm hijacking the thread :P)

Sir VG

2011-03-04 09:03:59 am

Fucking Weeaboo

I assume it's this: http://mosax.sakura.ne.jp/fswiki.cgi?page=SCFH+DSF

UraniumAnchor

2011-03-04 09:06:41 am

Not a walrus

Yes, use this to get it running: http://koitsu.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/how-to-install-and-use-scfh-dsf/

Works fine in Vista 32-bit, no idea about 7 or 64-bit.

I have no name

Edit history:

I have no name: 2011-03-05 01:28:37 pm

I have no name: 2011-03-05 01:24:10 pm

2011-03-05 01:07:33 pm

Obscure games ftw

Well, with that I was able to get the audio and video synced up, but for some reason anything I record is, well, pixelated.
EDIT: Fixed by re-opening VirtualDub (ironically to see what settings there were that might need changing)

Sush

2011-03-08 07:31:45 pm

Thought this question was best suited for this thread:

I recently started recording a speed run on my PC using Camtasia 7 and did so before checking up on what settings I should have been using to record with (so as to make compatable with Anri-chan and so forth). My question is are videos recorded with the following options good enough to be encoded to SDA standards?

Video:
Dimensions: 639x479 (640x480 captures the side of the window the game is in)
Record to: .camrec
Frame Rate: 30
TechSmith Codec
The "Key frame every x frames" box was unchecked.

Audio:
Format:PCM
Attributes: 16.000 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo 62 kb/sec

I've currently recorded 10 Segments and video/audio quality seems OK so far and the only problem I've faced is Progressive Audio Desync which I have now discovered can be easilly fixed with Audacity. I hope all this effort was not in vain due to my lack of technical forsight as alot of time has been put into this project so far.

Thanks for any suggestions/help.

joe

Edit history:

joe: 2011-03-08 11:29:49 pm

joe: 2011-03-08 11:28:10 pm

2011-03-08 11:26:42 pm

you really want to record at 640x480 and crop off a row after encoding if necessary because most codecs don't deal well with resolutions that aren't a multiple of 4.

pcm audio is also really unnecessary and will inflate the filesize quite a bit, you should be able to install LAME mp3 codecs and use that. but since you're going to be reencoding it eventually anyway you can just fix the audio at that step instead of at recording.

Sir VG

2011-03-09 01:33:18 am

Fucking Weeaboo

Quote from joe:

you really want to record at 640x480 and crop off a row after encoding if necessary because most codecs don't deal well with resolutions that aren't a multiple of 4.

pcm audio is also really unnecessary and will inflate the filesize quite a bit, you should be able to install LAME mp3 codecs and use that. but since you're going to be reencoding it eventually anyway you can just fix the audio at that step instead of at recording.

You want to avoid reencoding anything if at all possible. PCM audio isn't gonna expand the file size as much as a lossless video codec, like huffy or lagarith. Leave the audio compression for the final encode, whether it's by anri-chan or not.

UraniumAnchor

2011-03-09 02:57:04 am

Not a walrus

There is no reason to use a lossy audio codec when pcm is available unless you're running out of hard drive space. And even then the solution isn't to switch to a lossy codec, it's to get a bigger hard drive.

nate

2011-03-10 01:02:28 am

why the low frequency on the audio? is the game from the 1980s or something?

UraniumAnchor

2011-03-10 01:15:24 am

Not a walrus

Oh wow, yeah, I didn't even notice that.

44khz at a minimum unless you know the game does less than that internally.

afsdfafasd

2011-03-10 02:37:44 pm

techsmith isn't a very fast codec if i remember correctly. you could try to use huffyuv or x264 with ultrafast setting.

i've heard that humans can't hear more than 25khz, so i'm not sure there if 44 makes any difference. there's also no reason to use PCM audio because the downloadable videos on SDA always have compressed audio

BlueStarReturns

2011-03-10 02:55:42 pm

Twinkle-Twinkle Lil' Star, har har!

If this will help things out with what to use: The game I plan on running is the new Back to the Future Game from Telltale, so I don't think it would be DOS-based.

mocliamtoh

2011-03-10 04:08:35 pm

My name is unpronounceable

Quote from afsdfafasd:

techsmith isn't a very fast codec if i remember correctly. you could try to use huffyuv or x264 with ultrafast setting.

i've heard that humans can't hear more than 25khz, so i'm not sure there if 44 makes any difference. there's also no reason to use PCM audio because the downloadable videos on SDA always have compressed audio

The sampling rate is irrelevant to the actual frequencies of sounds in a sound file. I think wikipedia will describe it a bit better than I can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate

nate

2011-03-10 05:15:31 pm

we don't accept mp3 audio. if you record to mp3 then you have to transcode lossy to lossy which you never want to do.

I have no name

2011-03-11 09:57:59 am

Using this fixed some of my issues, but I'm still having frameskip problems, both in the game and more of them in the recording itself.

joe

Edit history:

joe: 2011-03-12 08:21:09 pm

2011-03-12 08:19:02 pm

Quote from nate:

we don't accept mp3 audio. if you record to mp3 then you have to transcode lossy to lossy which you never want to do.

really? good to know. is there a specific reason? filesize or just because it's an inferior codec or? what is allowed, AAC?

Tranquilite

Edit history:

Tranquilite: 2011-03-12 10:12:47 pm

2011-03-12 10:12:25 pm

Quote from I have no name:

Well, with that I was able to get the audio and video synced up, but for some reason anything I record is, well, pixelated.
EDIT: Fixed by re-opening VirtualDub (ironically to see what settings there were that might need changing)

I find that with Virtualdub and SCFH DSF, that you if you change the capture resolution, SCFH wont update until you exit and re-enter capture mode in VirtualDub.

nate

2011-03-13 01:03:37 pm

Quote from joe:

Quote from nate:

we don't accept mp3 audio. if you record to mp3 then you have to transcode lossy to lossy which you never want to do.

really? good to know. is there a specific reason? filesize or just because it's an inferior codec or? what is allowed, AAC?

the only accepted container is mp4 and mp3 in mp4 is nonstandard.