Machinina software recording programs for Windows 10?

[thoughtseize]

I'm looking to get into creating machinima in Second Life and was wondering what recording programs you'd recommend today for Windows 10? There are a number of options and wanted some input. I have a fantastic gaming PC with a lot of power and space. Free and paid recommendations are OK.

[panterapolnocy]

For recording alone OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) with a proper configuration is good enough, for simple edits Avidemux should suffice as well.

[Laylah Yaseotoko]

If it's just recording you are looking for, personally I use the NVidia tools to record (if you have an Nvidia card that is), it ads almost no resource load to my (also fantastic gaming) PC. It's worked really well for me so far.

For editing I use Filmora.

[Artorius Constantine]

The windows game bar is free and probably installed already. Hold down 'Win'+'ALT'+'R' to start recording. It will save to your user video library folder in a folder called Captures.

 

Shift+Alt+ U will hide the user interface.

Shift+Alt+H will hide your HUDS.

Same thing to bring them back.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Artorius Constantine

[sandi Mexicola]

I've been using FRAPs for, like, forever.  One thing I like about it is that you can set it to capture uncompressed frames. 

I have an old graphics card, but when I am lucky, I can capture 30 uncompressed frames a second.  Each frame is also a possible Flickr SL photo candidate.

(Hopefully, I will upgrade my GPU soon.)

I have not tried OBS.  NVIDIA tools and Windows game bar hardly put any load on your system.  However, (in my experience) they compress as they record.  I try to avoid compression wherever possible, because: If you compress when u record, and aren't careful and edit the footage, most video editing programs, by default, in my experience, output a compressed version of what you are editing.  That's two compressions.  Then, either while uploading to, and/or watching from YouTube, your video gets compressed a 3rd and/or 4th time. 

This is not bad if not much is changing on the screen in your videos.  For me, I like to record particles (and other videos where the scene might change a lot), and when the image on the screen is changing rapidly, you want to avoid compression as much as possible.  So I try to record and edit and output-from-edit all uncompressed.  YouTube compresses enough.  

Of course, someone here might have better solutions, so I am all ears!  👂

 

 

Edited August 16, 2022 by sandi Mexicola

[Jackson Redstar]

OBS is most commonly used (I think) I use a version by StreamFX so I can record h.265 files (the updated standard to h.264) but there are tons of OBS tutorials out there for recording

FRAPS was king years back but is a bit of a resource hog, I tried the Nvidia gameplay didn't like that all

[Chic Aeon]

I haven't been able to run FRAPS on Win10 (just saying) but yes king for a long while.

The built in record doesn't do a good enough job unless it has been upgraded.  When I used it in Sansar (not being able to use FRAPS) it was very clunky so far as smoothness goes.  

I haven't recorded since Sansar days so not up on things. 

[sandi Mexicola]

4 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

FRAPS was king years back but is a bit of a resource hog

truth, but it is still my fav

Edited August 16, 2022 by sandi Mexicola

[Nalates Urriah]

FRAPS was my primarily video recorder. Years ago they stopped updating it. With my upgrade to Win10 it became unusable.

Searching for an alternative I came across OBS. Most of my SL videos have been made with OBS. It is a cross between a recorder and a video switcher for broadcast control. After all the name reveals it is designed for "broadcasters" working in the streaming world. Like Photoshop, it has WAY more capability than most of us will use. There are YouTube video tutorials showing how to do amazing things with OBS.

The second most important machinima add-on is my SpaceNavigator. It makes recording machinima much easier.

[Jackson Redstar]

And btw if you really really wanted to you can capture um copmpressed AVI files with OBS like FRAPS did, though I have done a lot of side by side test and really can see any difference between the avi file and a mp4 or mkv with good quality settings. In fact it is almost endless the amount of ways you can set up OBS from frame rates to encoding and even to various color spaces

[sandi Mexicola]

On 8/19/2022 at 1:32 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

The second most important machinima add-on is my SpaceNavigator. It makes recording machinima much easier.

I was considering getting one.  Anything in particular I should know?

[Nalates Urriah]

18 minutes ago, sandi Mexicola said:

I was considering getting one.  Anything in particular I should know?

You can find used ones on eBay. Way cheaper. Also don't pour water on them... I spilled a glass on one and had to replace it. 🙄

[sandi Mexicola]

6 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Also don't pour water on them...

nor on keyboards.  😑

[OptimoMaximo]

OBS for recording, and Kden-live for editing. Similar to Premiere, but it's free and open source with tons of plug-ins and possible output settings, both compressed and uncompressed solutions. Though, when I need to compress something with no loss of fidelity, I just use the raw ffmpeg utility from the shell.