Capturing game footage
An overview of the different methods available for recording Oni footage on Windows and on Macs.
Windows
Codecs
The most popular by far remains the so-called MPEG-4 and DivX/XviD/3ivX/whatever series. There are also a few decent Microsoft codecs, either preinstalled or coming with Windows Media Player updates (also using the AVI wrapper). WMV is produced by Windows Movie Maker: the "superior quality" setting can have lousy antialiasing for titles, but for raw ingame footage it's mostly OK, and it has a very convenient compression ratio. Apart from those, there is a "countable infinity" of 3rd-party codecs, more or less compatible with cross-platform editing of the recorded footage.
FRAPS
- Pros
- The main limitations for writing uncompressed video at large resolutions are CPU and HDD usage, and FRAPS somehow manages to get fast enough HDD access and doesn't steal much CPU time from Oni either (of course this depends on your CPU and HDD).
- Cons
- FRAPS is shareware: the demo version displays a watermark and stops recording after 30 seconds.
- The FRAPS codec is proprietary and Windows-only, so one can't play back the video in Mac OS without having installed Perian. (This codec extension is still buggy in its ability to handle FRAPS video due to a glitch in the underlying libraries, but it may be fixed soon.)
Taksi
A freeware, open-source counterpart to FRAPS
- Pros
- Freeware: no watermark, unlimited recording length, compatibility with every video codec installed
- Cons
- Doesn't record sound (but this isn't all that relevant for elaborate music videos anyway)
- May create "empty" ranges at the start of the video, if the recording is not the first in the Taksi session.
- Doesn't reliably detect Oni as an application window. This is fixed by using Rossy's OniUSB.
CamStudio
This is actually a tool intended for capturing video tutorials, not specifically tailored for video games, but it can yield decent results (depending on the codec, HDD and CPU of course). Like Taksi, is can use pretty much every video codec available system-wide. Unlike Taksi or FRAPS, it can't hook a specific application, and instead records a specific portion of the desktop. Unlike Taksi, it can record sound.
Mac A/V recording
These programs will automatically record Oni's sound and video at the same time.
ScreenFlow
$99, http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
Though bizarrely missing an option to record just a region of the screen, if you're running Oni in full-screen mode, then it shouldn't matter. If running in windowed mode, ScreenFlow's post-recording editing suite will allow you to crop the recording down to just the game window:
1. Hit the Change Canvas Size button. Make sure the Snap to Front Window box is checked.
2. Drag the white lines at the edges of the recorded screen inward until they snap to Oni's window.
3. In order to crop out Oni's window title bar, you'll need to zoom in on the video so you can see the individual rows of pixels and try to drag the top canvas line down to the top of the actual window content. You might think you can adjust the canvas size manually by typing in a smaller height value, but a decrease in pixels will be subtracted from the top and bottom of the window equally, whereas you want the lower edge to remain snapped to the Oni window.
Snapz Pro
$69, http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
Snapz Pro used to be the go-to screen recorder for Macs, but development has practically ceased and it does not work well in OS X 10.10. Used to be worth the price, but now you are better off with the options below.
iShowU
$20, http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.html
Insert useful information here.
Mac video-only recording
These programs theoretically record audio too, but they don't record system sound output out of the box. You have to combine one of these programs with one of the options under "Mac audio-only recording" to get an A/V recording of Oni.
OBS Studio
Free, https://github.com/jp9000/obs-studio/releases
This free open-source app is a bit tricky to set up, and requires Soundflower (below) to capture audio separately. But when it works, it works great. You can use the included Syphon app to siphon video directly from a game window. The resulting recording is a compact FLV file which, and if you make sure that you record only what you want the user to see, then you can simply feed the FLV directly into YouTube in order to publish it.
To capture Oni's video output directly, open Oni in windowed mode, then open OBS and remove any default entry in the Sources list. Click the '+' button and choose a Syphon source. In the Syphon source's properties, check the Inject box and click the Launch SyphonInject button. Choose Oni from the list of open applications and click Inject. Close the Syphon properties window and you should see Oni's game window at the top-left of the screen preview in the OBS window. Now click the Settings button, go to the Video section, and in the Base Resolution field type in the size of the Oni window. This will trim the video dimensions to Oni's resolution.
QuickTime Player
Free, built-in
Simply choose File>New Screen Recording. You will be allowed to select a region of the screen to record, which still leaves the challenge of precisely capturing the window's region up to you. Like OBS, QT Player also will not record system sound without additional help (see below).
Mac audio-only recording
These programs will either record the audio separately, to be recombined with the video in your video editor of choice, or will divert system sound to the program that normally wouldn't record it (as seen under "Mac video-only recording" above).
Audio Hijack
$49, http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/
The basic issue with most programs that record your system sound is that they record all the sound, including various sound effects from your mail client, instant messenger, etc. This program allows you to specifically record the audio from just Oni.
Soundflower
Free, https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/
This app lets you loop the audio from your system output to your system input. Instructions here.
An audio cable
If your Mac has a minijack audio in port, just plug an audio cable into the audio out and audio in ports to loop your sound output around to the line-in input, and select that source when recording video in one of the above programs.