Camtasia tips

[Bullet Pulse]

Does anyone have any?

I'm running it @ 1920 x 1200, is that why?

The program runs well for me, until I decide to compile and test out my programs, then the fps drops terribly.
When I'm working on a program or on the internet, my CPU usage is about 70% and when I start one of my programs, it goes to 100%. Why?

Here are my specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66 GHz
4GB RAM
2 x eVGA 8800GTS 640mb

What would you suggest?

[dandymcgee]

I'm curious as to what answers people may have for this myself. Screen recorders have always slugged my frame rate so horribly it's no longer worth recording.

This is one of the main reasons I only have a few videos on YouTube.

[Live-Dimension]

If you want to record all the video inside your game and it IS OGL/DX then fraps.

If not, I really don't know, but i'm interested as well. Are you using XP by any chance? I'd assume that Vista/Win7 wouldn't have this slowdown issue due to desktop composition, everything already is running on DX if you have aero enabled, but it could very well be wrong. Everything is rendered as a single image in WinVista/Win7, no overlays or any crap.

When I'm working on a program or on the internet, my CPU usage is about 70%

Your CPU is 70% for just surfing the net?

[LeonBlade]

I have no problems recording my desktop with only a 2.00 GHz processor and 4 GB of ram.
I'm also recording all window information as well like what windows I have open and currently in display etc.

I'm on a Mac, I use ScreenFlow, so it's recording all these advanced things along with the screen itself, and I have no issues at all.
Camtasia is the best screen capture software for Windows, so stick with that.

Lower the FPS on your game before recording, see if that helps any.

[Bakkon]

Play around with a few lossless video codecs to find one that works for you. Just be prepared to have 5 minute videos that are over a gigabyte.

[Bullet Pulse]

If you want to record all the video inside your game and it IS OGL/DX then fraps.

If not, I really don't know, but i'm interested as well. Are you using XP by any chance? I'd assume that Vista/Win7 wouldn't have this slowdown issue due to desktop composition, everything already is running on DX if you have aero enabled, but it could very well be wrong. Everything is rendered as a single image in WinVista/Win7, no overlays or any crap.

When I'm working on a program or on the internet, my CPU usage is about 70%

Your CPU is 70% for just surfing the net?

I'm on Vista.
I meant that when recording with Camtasia while browsing the Internet or writing code, my CPU usage is about 50 - 70%.
Without Camtasia recording, it's at about 4%.
However, without recording, and with my SDL application running, it's about 65%. Maybe that's why.
Perhaps I should take a separate recording of only the game window when I want to show it.

Play around with a few lossless video codecs to find one that works for you. Just be prepared to have 5 minute videos that are over a gigabyte.

I tried the DivX option and when I record, it skips five or so seconds every few seconds while running my game.
Should I try a different codec?

Edit: I put Camtasia on 15fps and my game on 25 fps (to keep player speed normalish) and changed my game's screen size to 640 x 480 and I actually get a half-decent video now. I'd like to get 30 fps with Camtasia, but it's near impossible at the moment.

[Live-Dimension]

Play around with a few lossless video codecs to find one that works for you. Just be prepared to have 5 minute videos that are over a gigabyte.

This is probably the best advice. To get the performance you need, the video capture software MUST record, convert, and save each frame, 30 odd times a second. Video compression is slow. Fraps works around this by not really compressing the video at all, so the files are huge. You then re-compress them ready for youtube or whatever. Any good codecs for this kind of performance? I wonder if we could actually use FRAP's codec?

This method puts strain on the Hard drive though, so if your app continuously access the drive, then capture performance will likely suffer unless your recording to another hard drive.