What's the best free Screen+Audio recorder?

[Hawk]

I'm wanting a good free screen recorder that will record anything on a monitor and record the sound too.

Suggestions and opinions please.

Thanks guys. 

Hawk.

PS: I tried downloading and installing CamStudio but the installer was full of malware and viruses(and this was a download direct from their official site!!) Took me an hour to clean my system. 
PS:PS: I don't want anything that will only record game videos. Thanks. 

[HornetMaX]

MSI afterburner is what I use.
For non in-game recording it may be not as simple as "press a button" and you go (technically, if an app is running in 3d mode, then it can't capture your desktop unless you tell him to ignore that app), but that's realtively easy to sort out once you know it.

Considering video/audio recording is not its main purpose (it's designed to monitor and overclock graphics cards), it gets my vote over any dedicated software as I can do both things with a single software.
Video recording capabilities are also pretty damn good (Intel QuickSync, a similar AMD stuff I can't remember the name, a feature like NVidia shadow play for AMD cards, ...).

And yes, it's free. Really free, no stupid toolbars, no spamware, nothing.

MaX.

[matty0l215]

Doesn't Nvidia make something like afterburner (GeForce Experience i think). I know AMD has got Gaming Evolved which might do what you need.

[Hawk]

MSI afterburner is what I use.
For non in-game recording it may be not as simple as "press a button" and you go (technically, if an app is running in 3d mode, then it can't capture your desktop unless you tell him to ignore that app), but that's realtively easy to sort out once you know it.

Considering video/audio recording is not its main purpose (it's designed to monitor and overclock graphics cards), it gets my vote over any dedicated software as I can do both things with a single software.
Video recording capabilities are also pretty damn good (Intel QuickSync, a similar AMD stuff I can't remember the name, a feature like NVidia shadow play for AMD cards, ...).

And yes, it's free. Really free, no stupid toolbars, no spamware, nothing.

MaX.

Hi Max.

Sounds great!  I'll take a look.....

Thanks mate!

[HornetMaX]

Doesn't Nvidia make something like afterburner (GeForce Experience i think). I know AMD has got Gaming Evolved which might do what you need.

Nvidia has the nice "shadow play" feature: you can use a (little) share of your GPU power to constantly record (up to a given size), meaning that you no longer have to play then watch a replay in order to record, you record while playing. Of course, it has an associated performance hit, depending on the game, the settings, the hardware, ...

AMD (now) has something similar, but it requires Raptr (or something like that): first impressions I've read around, it seemed less efficient then Nvidia's (tbc).

I'd still go with Afterburner: raptr does a hundred things I don't need and I hate when AMD tries to install it without my consent (in non-WHQL versions of their drivers).
In general, I like my software to do few things right instead of a lot of things half-right.

Social networking for gamers ...

Raptr is a social networking application and instant messenger that is geared towards video game players. The downloaded client integrates with the PC (using EasyHook) as well as 3rd-party applications such as Yahoo Messenger, AIM, ICQ and Xfire. It includes features such as game achievement tracking, in-game overlay, and game management. The Raptr In-Game Overlay supports a number of games including Call of Duty, Half-Life, TrackMania and many more.

MaX.

[Hawk]

I've installed Afterburner and hot-keyed(in settings) my video-capture and screen capture, restarted afterburner, but the hotkeys don't seem to want to start the video-capture of my screen for some reason??

Any ideas?

Hawk.

[HornetMaX]

I've installed Afterburner and hot-keyed(in settings) my video-capture and screen capture, restarted afterburner, but the hotkeys don't seem to want to start the video-capture of my screen for some reason??

Any ideas?

Hawk.

Try to see if it captures while playing GPB. If yes then it's working fine.
If it only doesn't work when trying to capture your windows desktop, here's what to do:

1. Open Afterburner there's a button (not very visible) labelled "i" (lowercase letter i). Clicking on it pops up a window with some text info about your CPU GPU etc.
2. Scrolling down to the section named "On-screen display server" check for the line "Active 3D process".
3. In order to capture the window desktop there must be no 3d process active. Unfortunately, some apps (even if not 3d) do use functions that make the be classified as 3d.
4. If there's a 3d process, then it's blocking the recording of the desktop.
5. You should open RivaTunerStatisticsServer (RTSS): it comes with Afterburner, it runs as an icon in your notification taskbar.
6. Once open, you see a list of applications on the left: under the list there's a + (plus) button (and a wastebin). Click on the + button to add a profile for the app that was reported by Afterburner as "Active 3d process"
7. Then browse to the executable of the app (e.g. chrome.exe) and once selected, in the right part of the window you have a line with "Application detection level", click on "None" (just under it).

Of course, this must be done only once for all (but you may have to repeat that if there are multiple apps that are recognised as 3d).

MaX.

[Hawk]

I've installed Afterburner and hot-keyed(in settings) my video-capture and screen capture, restarted afterburner, but the hotkeys don't seem to want to start the video-capture of my screen for some reason??

Any ideas?

Hawk.

Try to see if it captures while playing GPB. If yes then it's working fine.
If it only doesn't work when trying to capture your windows desktop, here's what to do:

1. Open Afterburner there's a button (not very visible) labelled "i" (lowercase letter i). Clicking on it pops up a window with some text info about your CPU GPU etc.
2. Scrolling down to the section named "On-screen display server" check for the line "Active 3D process".
3. In order to capture the window desktop there must be no 3d process active. Unfortunately, some apps (even if not 3d) do use functions that make the be classified as 3d.
4. If there's a 3d process, then it's blocking the recording of the desktop.
5. You should open RivaTunerStatisticsServer (RTSS): it comes with Afterburner, it runs as an icon in your notification taskbar.
6. Once open, you see a list of applications on the left: under the list there's a + (plus) button (and a wastebin). Click on the + button to add a profile for the app that was reported by Afterburner as "Active 3d process"
7. Then browse to the executable of the app (e.g. chrome.exe) and once selected, in the right part of the window you have a line with "Application detection level", click on "None" (just under it).

Of course, this must be done only once for all (but you may have to repeat that if there are multiple apps that are recognised as 3d).

MaX.

Brilliant Max! I followed your tutorial here and got everything working great....

Thanks Max, very much appreciated mate! 

Hawk.

PS: I did a short on screen recording(about 3 mins) and the size of the file was over 500MB.... Any chance you know of a way to reduce the size of the recorded video files even further without loosing too much quality?
Currently I have afterburner recording on "AVI format" with the "MJPG compression"

[Hawk]

@ Max: I've found a way to reduce greatly the video file size and keep the quality: I reduced the record quality from 100% down to 90% and it virtually halved the file size! Brilliant! 

Hawk.
PS: I'm VERY impressed with what I've experienced so far with "MSI Afterburner" as a Screen/Audio recording utility..... Far better than Fraps or anything else of the like I've tried so far....
Very impressed indeed!! Thanks for the "Heads-Up" on this one Max!  

[HornetMaX]

@ Max: I've found a way to reduce greatly the video file size and keep the quality: I reduced the record quality from 100% down to 90% and it virtually halved the file size! Brilliant! 

You have plenty of settings to play with. Which video format do you use ? Resolution ?

As a general advice, if you really want an optimal quality/size trade-off you should use high quality in AB (short for AfterBurner) even if the output file is large.
Once you have the big file you can use Handbrake (another excellent piece of free software) to re-encode the file.

But for occasional recording even AB is very much OK. I tend to use 720p with Intel QuickSync as it leverages the QuickSync stuff the integrated GPU of the CPU can do (but for that you need a QuickSync enabled Inter CPU and some trickery). I'm gonna try the recently introduced AMD VCE H264 too.

PS: I'm VERY impressed with what I've experienced so far with "MSI Afterburner" as a Screen/Audio recording utility..... Far better than Fraps or anything else of the like I've tried so far....
Very impressed indeed!! Thanks for the "Heads-Up" on this one Max!  

And video/audio recording is not even its main purpose ...

It's a hell of a piece of software. Only the name sucks: MSI ?! AfterBurner ?! Seriously ? 
And the developer (one man gang) shares some personality traits with Piboso

MaX.

[Hawk]

@ Max: I've found a way to reduce greatly the video file size and keep the quality: I reduced the record quality from 100% down to 90% and it virtually halved the file size! Brilliant! 

You have plenty of settings to play with. Which video format do you use ? Resolution ?

As a general advice, if you really want an optimal quality/size trade-off you should use high quality in AB (short for AfterBurner) even if the output file is large.
Once you have the big file you can use Handbrake (another excellent piece of free software) to re-encode the file.

But for occasional recording even AB is very much OK. I tend to use 720p with Intel QuickSync as it leverages the QuickSync stuff the integrated GPU of the CPU can do (but for that you need a QuickSync enabled Inter CPU and some trickery). I'm gonna try the recently introduced AMD VCE H264 too.

PS: I'm VERY impressed with what I've experienced so far with "MSI Afterburner" as a Screen/Audio recording utility..... Far better than Fraps or anything else of the like I've tried so far....
Very impressed indeed!! Thanks for the "Heads-Up" on this one Max!  

And video/audio recording is not even its main purpose ...

It's a hell of a piece of software. Only the name sucks: MSI ?! AfterBurner ?! Seriously ? 
And the developer (one man gang) shares some personality traits with Piboso

MaX.

Video Format: MJP Compression
Container Format: Audio Video Interleave AVI
Quality: 90%
Frame Size: 16:9  1080p
Frame Rate: 30fps


Is the AMD VCE H264 a codec plugin for Afterburner? Were can I get it?
Handbrake sounds interesting..... I'll have to look that one up too....

Thanks Max! 

Hawk.

[HornetMaX]

Is the AMD VCE H264 a codec plugin for Afterburner? Were can I get it?

Normally it should be available as video format (along NV12, RTV1 and MJPG).
If you don't have it either you have an old AMD GPU, or you have a non-AMD GPU (Nvidia, Intel integrated etc).

But if you have Nvidia you should have another (Nvidia specific) option (NVENC).

NVENC and AMD VCE use the power of the GPU to do the encoding (instead of using the CPU).

MaX.

[Hawk]

Is the AMD VCE H264 a codec plugin for Afterburner? Were can I get it?

Normally it should be available as video format (along NV12, RTV1 and MJPG).
If you don't have it either you have an old AMD GPU, or you have a non-AMD GPU (Nvidia, Intel integrated etc).

But if you have Nvidia you should have another (Nvidia specific) option (NVENC).

NVENC and AMD VCE use the power of the GPU to do the encoding (instead of using the CPU).

MaX.

It's certainly not in the list of options for the video format in afterburner..... I have an AMD CPU and an AMD Radeon HD6950 2GB Graphics Card with latest drivers installed.

Thinking of seriously upgrading soon to an Intel i7 based SSD system.

Hawk.

[HornetMaX]

It's certainly not in the list of options for the video format in afterburner..... I have an AMD CPU and an AMD Radeon HD6950 2GB Graphics Card with latest drivers installed.

6950 is too old for VCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Codec_Engine

But don't rush-out to swap the GPU just for that ...

MaX.

[Hawk]

It's certainly not in the list of options for the video format in afterburner..... I have an AMD CPU and an AMD Radeon HD6950 2GB Graphics Card with latest drivers installed.

6950 is too old for VCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Codec_Engine

But don't rush-out to swap the GPU just for that ...

MaX.

No worries.... I know the 6950 is still a decent graphics card, and married to an i7 based system with 32GB RAM will be quite adequate for what I need for a good while. 

Hawk.