The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

In FRAPS you can set the frame rate, and you can click a checkbox for "lock framerate", which will limit the framerate of the game to the rate that you are recording in. Which may help.

And then, I use VirtualDub to cut off the widescreen edges (because I have a 4:3 monitor), and to convert it to an H264 format. Which I then use in WMM to create the wmv that I upload to Youtube.

But I'm not sure that H264 is the best codec for this, especially because WMM will recode it anyways.

The quality in that video looks about par with those that Husky and HD put out for their casts. They've both complained about very large file sizes and slow conversion/compression times and they have some fairly beefy rigs, so I imagine that's pretty normal. What kind of rig are you running?

I though YouTube could take H264?

It does, but I need WMM for editing, and it produces wmv.

Ah. iMovie outputs several formats, so I didn't stop to think about it.

Just off the top of my head, I think it's
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 2.61 GHz CPU
1 Terabyte Barracuda Harddrive
3 GB RAM
Windows 7 64bit

I'd throw more RAM in, but otherwise it sounds decent. How about the video card?

EVGA GT 240

It doesn't lag with all games. Like, I recorded some World of Goo, and there was no lag whatsover.
al-Assas, I picked framerate to be 29.97 in Video Capture Settings.

It's also dependent on how graphically-intensive the game is. The harder your card is working on the game, the less resources it has to contribute to the video capture.

I see.
So does that mean if I lower settings to Medium or so, it'll be less laggy?

It should be.

Thank you.

The fraps codec isn't really the best. Your best bet is to open the file with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker and save it as a movie maker file. This will reduce the file size, but will keep the video, and will allow you to save it later as HD.

Before I cleaned out my Fraps Videos... they took up 160GB of my Hard drive. lol. You seriously need to make them into movie maker files. Takes 4 seconds to convert lol.

For sony vegas and youtube. I favor settings of 1280x720 in video properties. You can right click ur video file and uncheck 'Maintain aspect ratio' that will get rid of any black boxes around the video. Should i not, you can use video pan/crop to mess with the settings (hold ctrl so you can freely move the box)
If pan/crop doesn't fully do it, click Track Motion on the left of the timeline and that will solve it.

(Sony Vegas)

I don't have Sony Vegas. The only editing program I have is Windows Movie Maker. I run Windows 7 64bit, and I don't know if I want to go out and get Sony Vegas quite yet. I'm assuming it's not free, and if it's not, can I use something else? Is there any way to remove black boxes in Windows Movie Maker?

I havn't used movie maker in 3 years.

I have windows 7 64bit as well. Sony vegas isn't free and it isn't cheap. But im sure somwhere on youtube theres a guide to get it free (i got mine free on 4 different computers)

Let's leave it at that. No links, please.

of course stab...may i ask why? Legal problems?

No, not exactly. It's The Hidden Blade's policy to not promote illegal activities. Feel free to discuss and/or admit that you participate. Just don't help others to get involved.

If you teach people anything related to pirating or taking Copyright files without paying, it's kind of against the law. *cough*torrents*cough*.

80% of my computer is illegal and torrents. O dear, i hope none of you work for the FBI

ROFL. I'm not that much, but occasionally, if I REALLY need something, and I need it NOW, I get it, then I go out and buy the actual thing when I have the money.

Its all illegal where i am. I still does it. If i want Assassin's Creed 2 on my pc, i go download it (: But im lazy so i only download what i absolutely need or want. (Sony vegas, photoshop, etc)

Assassin's creed doesnt make the cut (then again i have it for my 360)

@Arrrogance Illegal downloads are lame. And it is no bit different from stealing. And your argument is invalid.

@DracoX872 The FRAPS codec is the best. For the use it is intended. Which is saving video with as few CPU time as possible. The CPU is already kept busy by the game. If they had chosen H.264 — well, most PCs cannot even encode H.264 in realtime. The disadvantage of low compression (that is, if they compress it; Perhaps they don't even do) is the file size, but this can be fixed in post.
Additionally, the FRAPS codec is lossless. No compression artifacts.

@DarkAlphabetZoup As FRAPS uses the HD quite heavily, the biggest performance boost you can get is maybe by using a second hard disk just for capturing. If the game wants to load textures from the same HD you are recording videos to, the performance drops (and not just a little bit). Except if you are using an SSD.

I used to compress the captured videos with VirtualDub as well. I've also got a short Tutorial about VirtualDub. In this step I also cut away unnecessary material and named the output files in a way that I could later make sense of it.

For editing I used kdenlive, which however does not run on Windows (but you can install it in a virtual machine, or on a second partition). For Windows, you might want to take a look at Lightworks.

Granjow

@Granjow

I am no way arguing that what I download is legal, fair, or I have good reason for it. I am just stating I do it. My previous statement meant I would download even more stuff were it not for my laziness

I've heard it twice now and it still sounds backwards. (Paraphrasing here:) "I'd steal more if I weren't so lazy." Yeah, and I'd beat up more ho's if I were in better shape!

One time I started a job at a downtown office and asked a coworker who lived in my neighborhood about commuting by car. He described the route he drove to work. I said, "Oh, really? When I come in there's always a long line of cars waiting to take that exit." He said, "Me too. I get in the other lane and butt in at the front of the line."

Then I asked him about downtown parking, which is always expensive. He said, "I park for free at the shopping mall and hoof it over here." (as if the walk was a major inconvenience for him). Of course the mall parking is for customers only. It's posted that they will tow others away. I tried to drop a hint: "Hmm. Mall security must not be very good." This too fell flat on him. He replied, "I know. Several cars have been broken into but I'm willing to take my chances!"