HOW TO RECORD A GAMEPLAY AS A VIDEO FILE

         

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Have you ever noticed how do they do it? No, you can’t deny that you did not watched any. If you love playing games then you must have watched gameplays over YouTube or through other ways. You are waiting for long time for the most anticipated games and finally you can’t hold yourself until the release and watch a demo gameplay over the internet. Sometimes you have trouble playing a game and to beat that you just look for the walkthroughs. Isn’t it. Yes, I got you. It was easy by the way. Today I am going to tell you how to record gameplays.

So that you can record on your own and show your gaming skills to the world.

Recording gameplays is not same as recording a normal computer screen. It is different. Different due to Microsoft DirectX.  This is a collection of interfaces (mainly application programming interface). It hosts the tasks related to multimedia especially games. Just like you need software to play videos on your computer, you need DirectX to play games. It creates the gaming interface to show us what is where. The big ‘X’ in the word DirectX works like an unknown variable. Actually DirectX is a package of DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectMusic, DirectPlay etc. Each are specialized in different fields of multimedia. When you try to record your gameplay with a normal screen capture software it will be ended getting a black screen. Because those software are not capable of capturing DirectX simulations. But as always there is a solution to this problem. There is a software called FRAPS that can record gameplay.

FRAPS Screenshot                                                                                    

            This is a very easy to use software. You can record gameplay as movie and add commentary if you wish, take screenshots and even benchmark your pc against particular games. Now what in seven hell is benchmarking. It is the measurement of your PC’s performance in a game.it tells how good your computer is performing in a game. The result of benchmarking for a particular PC differs from game to game. Benchmarking measures the minimum, maximum and average frame per second (FPS) of the gameplay. Here the average FPS is not the usual (minimum+ maximum)/2. Average FPS is the Fps that stays for the maximum time. It may even take the minimum or maximum FPS value. In some games benchmarking option is provided in the main menu. But FRAPS lets you benchmark every game whether the option is given or not.

           But there are problems with FRAPS. How can you record gameplays if you are playing on Xbox360 or Play Station or Nintendo Wii U or on any other gaming consoles? FRAPS is not a help here. Other than that being a real time video capture media it requires CPU resources to get going. As it requires CPU cycles there is a performance drop in your game. It increases the loading time and even decreases the average FPS of the gameplay. If there is not any dedicated video card then the performance drop is significant. This can be reduced if you buy a beastly powerful CPU which can cost 60000 rupees (buy 1 more pc instead. It will be a better option). How you record gameplay then in low cost and form every gaming console? Go hardware instead. No, I am not talking about VCRs and DV Cams. You need a device called PCIe capture device. This works just like a graphics card or sound card. You have to install the device in the PCI express slot of the motherboard. The devices are generally PCIe x1 type. So it will work with all type of motherboards having a PCIe slot on it.

Roxio Game Capture HD Pro, Elgato Game Capture HD, Hauppauge HD Personal Video Recorder these are some gape recorders. But these are dedicated to Xbox 360 and Play Stations only. It cannot capture PC gameplay.

            Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Avermedia Live Gamer HD these are some of the capture devices popular in the market. My personal Favourite is Avermedia’s one. It looks good and easy to use.

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                                                                      Blackmagic Intensity pro

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                                                                        Avermedia Live Gamer HD

            How will you use it to record gameplay with it? It is simple. To show you I am taking Avermedia as a reference product.

            There are 2 HDMI ports on Avermedia Live Gamer HD. 1 is HDMI in another is HDMI out. There are 2 analogue audio ports (in and out). Connect your HDMI out of the console or pc to the HDMI in of the device through a HDMI cable (provided in the box). In the same way connect your audio out cable to the Audio in of the device to pass analogue audio. You can use HDMI cable to pass both the video and audio signals. HDMI has the capability. Use the HDMI out of the device to connect the device to a display to see what is recording. You can use the Audio out to connect speakers. The device has inbuilt H264 Encoder to encode in real time. That why it hardly takes any CPU cycle to encode. In case of pc game you can use the same pc (where you are playing the game) or a different pc to record. The wired round device in the picture is a USB dedicated recording switch. Press the switch whenever you want to start, pause, resume or stop the recording.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If you have any query please comment. I will be appreciated.