Video Encoding of FastCapPro Game Recorder

 

Why should we use video encoding?

Video encoding can greatly reduce your file size. Normally, one 16 bit picture of BMP format with the resolution of 800 x 600 is about 960K. Therefore, if we capture game at video resolution of 800 x 600 and 30 FPS for only one minute, the video file size would buck up to 1.6G! The hard disk would not have enough space to save a long video with such a huge size.

We usually need to encode game movies before we post them on the website or send them to our friends. You can encode your movie after recording with VirtualDub, or Movie Maker or many other tools. You can also just encode your movie during the recording. FastCapPro supports real time video encoding (Microsoft Video 1, MPEG4, Divx and Huffyuv etc.) during game capture. When you record game (e.g. WOW) with real time compression, the output video (800 x 600, 20 FPS, 60 sec.) just takes about 50M, or much smaller. Real time capture is helpful when you are recording a long action like a battle, a football game etc.

 

What Video Codecs Does FastCapPro Support?

PICVideo Lossless JPEG Compression
PICVideo Lossless JPEG Codec
Microsoft Video 1
Microsoft MPEG4 Video Codec V1
Microsoft MPEG4 Video Codec V2
Indeo video 5.10
Indeo Video 5.10 Compression
Huffyuv v2.1.1
DV Video Encoder
Divx 6.2.2 Codec

You can download these tools from EjoyStudio download site.

 

What FPS and Video Resolution should be used during capturing with real time encoding?

You can set the video resolution and FPS (video output) according to your computer requirements. You have assigned your computer to run the game, record the movie and perform the encoding all at one time! Therefore you need to lower the FPS and video resolution to lighten the CPU burden when you perform real time encoding. It is improper to record game at the video resolution higher than your settings in game. For example, when you set game resolution at 800 x 600, your video resolution should be 800 x 600 ( full screen ) or lower. You would not increase the video quality by enlarging the frames. It is common that your video resolution is close to half screen of your game resolution when you perform real time encoding.

 

What are the video compression settings?

Many codes provide the compression settings. The most two important settings are Data Rate and Quality. Higher Data Rate and Quality will improve video quality, but will cost more CPU time. You need to find out the balance between game speed and video quality. When you use FastCap's real time encoding, you can use Video Compression Settings to adjust the video quality and the game speed. Click the button "more" beside Video Compression in video page. You can also go to the Video Compression Settings page by double clicking every video compression formats (e.g. Microsoft Video 1). Click the button "configure". You can define the video compression settings (e.g. Data Rate, Quality and Keyframe Rate) there.

Some key points on video encoding

1. Video encoding can save your disk space but at the meantime would lower the graphic quality. In order to get the perfect graphic quality of your long video, it is a good idea to record your game and then carve your long video to DVD directly without encoding it.

2. It is not necessary to encode the video before you edit it, otherwise you would need to decode the compressed video to the formats recognized by the computer for editing. The video would be encoded AGAIN after editing. Therefore, your video will loss more detail if it is encoded twice. You can record games without encoding with FastCap in full screen if you plan to edit it later.

3. There are some lossless codec (e.g. Huffyuv) which would not lose the pixel of the image during encoding. The video encoded into Huffyuv format would look almost the same as the uncompressed video in graphic quality. However, the lossless codec can just slightly reduce the file size (e.g. the file size is from 1/2 to 1/8 of the uncompressed video).

Movie quality and file size are different while encoded in different compressors. Following are some comparisons:

Compressor	Encode Speed	File Size	Video Quality
Microsoft Video 1	High	Big	Normal
Indeo 5.10	Slow	Big	Good
MPEG 4	Very High	Smallest	Normal
Divx	Very High	Small	Very Good
Xvid	Very High	Small	Very Good
Huffyuv	Highest	Bigest	Lostless

For editing purpose, we recommend no video compression and full screen recording. For real time encoding, we recommend MPEG4 or Divx in half screen.