What screen capture software is available for PC games?
Are there any programs which are free and relatively user friendly?
I have a 1 year old Falcon Northwest Talon - so this is a pretty high end machine.
I'm thinking about Strategic Command WW1 Breakthrough and doing some reviews or AARs when it comes out.
Fraps trial lets you do up to 30 second videos with a watermark
http://www.fraps.com/download.php
Haven't tried it but E.M. Game Capture supposed to allow videos, again with a watermark
http://www.effectmatrix.com/Game-Capture/index.htm
If you're just looking to grab single frames, and you're running Vista or Windows 7, check if your PC has the Snipping Tool. Its simple, but does a pretty good job...
I paid for the full version of FRAPS and I am happy with it it so far.
I use Snaggit from Techsmith which is payware. But you can have it automatically adjust resolutions, compression loss, take just a portion of the image, add time & date info, etc...
For example, I was using the screen specific area capture while I was trading. I was putting charts, orders, position screens onto DropBox (cloud server) so that I had continuity to cover fail over scenarios. I was using Snaggit's area capture to control the screen portion captured to remove name and account information on some captures so that sensitive data did not end up in the cloud. So, your options range from free and basic to pay and very configurable, I think.
Quote from: MarkShot on September 05, 2012, 02:00:54 PM
I use Snaggit from Techsmith which is payware. But you can have it automatically adjust resolutions, compression loss, take just a portion of the image, add time & date info, etc...
For example, I was using the screen specific area capture while I was trading. I was putting charts, orders, position screens onto DropBox (cloud server) so that I had continuity to cover fail over scenarios. I was using Snaggit's area capture to control the screen portion captured to remove name and account information on some captures so that sensitive data did not end up in the cloud. So, your options range from free and basic to pay and very configurable, I think.
I can second SnagIt. I use it for work (ver 9, but I think they're upto ver 11). Its a great program, but like Mark said its payware. They do have a free 30-day trial version (http://www.techsmith.com/download/snagit/default.asp).
All I need is screen captures. Videos not necessary.
Will snippit work if the game is playing in full screen mode?
Apparently...not. Just gave it a try and no luck. Works OK if a game is running in a window, but not full screen. Way to go Microsoft. Sorry for the false lead...
Airboy use the free FRAPS. It works like a charm. It's a one button push and it always captures the image. For example the printscreen button captures about 1 in 20 shots for CMX2 games, FRAPS captures it everytime. And the FPS benchmarking while unnecessary is a cool free feature to check out game performance on your system. I use FRAPS to take the image and then paint, paintshop or paint.net to do my AAR artwork, i.e. draw squiggly lines on the image.
Also what are your Falcon's specs, if I might ask? I've been looking into their systems too.
Quote from: Bison on September 05, 2012, 03:26:24 PM
I use FRAPS to take the image and then paint, paintshop or paint.net to do my AAR artwork, i.e. draw squiggly lines on the image.
That sounds alot like my "artwork" as well. ::)
I use Hypersnap. Sometimes it won't work with a game, but posting an issue in their forums usually leads to a fix in a couple of days.
Quote from: Bison on September 05, 2012, 03:27:37 PM
Also what are your Falcon's specs, if I might ask? I've been looking into their systems too.
I bought a close to generic Talon desktop. It is 3.5 gigahertz.
The only major extra I sprung for was liquid cooling. The loudest thing is the disk drive. It is amazingly quiet. My hardware geek friends all thought it was an impressive rig for the price. I ran it through several hardware geek friends prior to purchase.
If you have the time, talent and energy to build your own system then you can probably come out ahead. But my time is too valuable to build that skill set.
I have had it a year and like it more than any PC I have ever had. This is my second Falcon. I've also had 2 Alienwares (prior to being bought by Dell). When I bought it the system specs for the price really pushed me to buy a Talon. I don't play shooters or flight sims - so the absolute top cutting-edge performance was not very important.
I've purchased 4 systems from Falcon. They build them well and have good tech support.
They've quieted them down greatly by using damping foam, and slow moving oversized fans.
I would buy from them again, but that would make no sense in Taiwan. My next gaming desktop will probably from a local shop that builds custom machines. For our other machines probably DELL or some domestic manufacturer like Acer or Asus. For the moment, I'll be shipping 1 MachV and 2 Talons. The cost between shipping and just replacing is a toss up, but they are all configured already. With relocating, I will have enough to do without having to replace 3-4 PCs.
I'm very intrigued by the new tiki design, but the talon is what I've been considering.
I use Faststone Image Capture. It's is a cheaper SnagIt (but SnagIt is still better). It does capture, cropping, annotation in one go. Good for wargame AAR.
But if the game does not support Faststone because of full screen mode (like FPS and Sims) then I use Fraps.
If you play your games with DOSBOX, it's already built-in! :)