Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a lot of awesome gameplay vids posted here and i’m curious as to what software you all use? I’d like to start recording my roaming in WvW to:

a) Study the times when I make silly mistakes (which is fairly often lol) in order to learn from them

b) To capture the moments when I do really well.

So if you could please, let me know what software you use and your experience with it (Quality, ease of use, etc..)

I’d also like to know what software you all use to edit your videos after you’ve recorded them.

Thanks in advance.

I use fraps, it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. Your frame rate will take a significant drop with it active though, and it records completely uncompressed, so the quality is high, but so are the file sizes.

Hm you can stream with OBS and just record it back with fraps later.
But yeah, fraps and sony vegas pro 11 to edit.

Pyroatheist.9031:

I use fraps, it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. Your frame rate will take a significant drop with it active though, and it records completely uncompressed, so the quality is high, but so are the file sizes.

Thanks Pyro. I’ll try it out and see how I like it. I added a second question to the OP. What software do you use to edit your videos?

I think Bandicam is all round the best one, it’s easy to use and it doesn’t slow down your machine. You can easily configure it to record in x264 for high quality at a small file size.

PandaBear.7510:

Pyroatheist.9031:

I use fraps, it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. Your frame rate will take a significant drop with it active though, and it records completely uncompressed, so the quality is high, but so are the file sizes.

Thanks Pyro. I’ll try it out and see how I like it. I added a second question to the OP. What software do you use to edit your videos?

I use adobe premier, but that’s by no means the only choice.

I heard Bandicam is pretty awesome. That’s all I know about it :P.

I use MSI Afterburner, and it can get uber quality, but I prefer normal quality + normal file size + no fps slowing down :P.

I heard you can only use MSI afterburner on MSI computers though… But I’m not sure. If you don’t have the right video card thing, it can melt or something :P.

I use Sony Vegas Pro 11 for editing, and it’s amazing. Takes some time figuring out how to do everything and where everything is, but it should be much easier if you use a video tutorial.

I didn’t use a tutorial, aaaaaaand… That was a mistake :P. When I edit, I spend more time figuring out how to do something than actual editing.

It’s alot of fun though.

I use the Overwolf (Enjin) client for ts3 overlay and video recording, file sizes are acceptable, decent quality and not much Fps drop.. http://www.overwolf.com/Download/

Also its free

I use MSI Afterburner (AFAIK, it’ll work on any PC for recording), and Windows Live Movie Maker for editing.

They’re not the best, but they’re free.

Msi afterburner best and free

Thanks so much for the info everyone!

After using Bandicam (free version) for quite a while, I switched to MSI Afterburner (also free) and much prefer Afterburner over Bandicam.

Bandicam won’t lag your system but the recording quality is not nearly as good as MSI Afterburner. As well, the free version of Bandicam will only record 10 minutes maximum and leaves a ‘Bandicam’ watermark at the top of the screen (it covers the PPT time/score box at the top middle of your screen in WvW) and is only removable if you purchase the free version.

MSI Afterburner is also light on your PC so you shouldn’t notice too much of an FPS drop. The picture quality is much better than Bandicam (very close to Fraps quality). Just experiment with the video recording settings (there are only a few) properly. You should also turn off the overclocking feature of MSI Afterburner. The only downside to MSI Afterburner is if I open Afterburner first, GW2 won’t launch and will give an error. Launching GW2 first then MSI Afterburner avoids this problem.

Fraps – The best picture quality but can really slow down your PC. However the picture quality isn’t much better than MSI Afterburner.

Right now, MSI Afterburner is my favourite. I use Windows Movie Maker to do everything else.

Keep in mind that if you have a crap PC, you probably shouldn’t run any recording software. Also, make sure that your recording are being saved to a different hard drive then your OS and GW2 which should help.

If you have an nVidia graphics card their new ShadowPlay thing could be the best option for the recording itself — almost zero performance hit and high-quality compressed video output.

I’m not sure about editing, haven’t done much of that.

Xavi.6591:

After using Bandicam (free version) for quite a while, I switched to MSI Afterburner (also free) and much prefer Afterburner over Bandicam.

Bandicam won’t lag your system but the recording quality is not nearly as good as MSI Afterburner. As well, the free version of Bandicam will only record 10 minutes maximum and leaves a ‘Bandicam’ watermark at the top of the screen (it covers the PPT time/score box at the top middle of your screen in WvW) and is only removable if you purchase the free version.

MSI Afterburner is also light on your PC so you shouldn’t notice too much of an FPS drop. The picture quality is much better than Bandicam (very close to Fraps quality). Just experiment with the video recording settings (there are only a few) properly. You should also turn off the overclocking feature of MSI Afterburner. The only downside to MSI Afterburner is if I open Afterburner first, GW2 won’t launch and will give an error. Launching GW2 first then MSI Afterburner avoids this problem.

Fraps – The best picture quality but can really slow down your PC. However the picture quality isn’t much better than MSI Afterburner.

Right now, MSI Afterburner is my favourite. I use Windows Movie Maker to do everything else.

Keep in mind that if you have a crap PC, you probably shouldn’t run any recording software. Also, make sure that your recording are being saved to a different hard drive then your OS and GW2 which should help.

Hmm. If I first vlose MSI Afterburner while gw2 is running, it crashes :P

So:

1. run msi aferburner
2. gw2
3. close msi afterburner
4. gw2 crashes

Or:

1. start gw2
2. then msi afterburner
3. close msi aferburner
4. crash :P

I just try not to close it, and its fine.

edit: btw, sony vegas 11 has a free trial you can use first :D. Much better than windows movie maker too… It does almost nothing :/.

If you got Nvidia, definetly test Shadowplay. With it you also have the feature to turn on passive recording like 10 minutes back, so you can actually hit record after a fight if you want. Personally I have it off and only use manual recording, but that’s preference. There is one “bug” sort of speak and that’s that the video is choppy in some players, like VLC. But it look fine in WMP.

IMO it is better than Afterburner by quite a bit.

Here is an example of a 1080p capture (you dont have a choice, Shadowplay captures everything at 1080p/60fps lol): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn_I04OBBAM

Video editing software used is Windows Movie Maker (free) with simple black out/black in transitions and music added on top.

Its very simple to cut video – just select the time when you want the transition to happen, right click and cut, then find the other “end” where the next sequence start. Cut again and delete the video between. Simple to mute the video and slap on music.

The text is one of the major flaws in WMM, you only have one “timeline” for it so you cannot overlap. This is the reason the chatlog censuring pop up after the “SFRJ raid blabla” and music content. Its just a big black wingding box (“N” or “B” or something down there, cant remember). A little tricky to get it to match, you have to fiddle with box/text sizes. I will stop using WMM text and use Youtube captions instead I think, no need for the in-video text.

I’m using “Mirillis Action!” to record the video. It’s really good if you have a nvidia to dont lose fps while you are recording. For the editing i’m using Camtasia studio 8 or Sony vegas pro 10.

P.s my videos have low quality due to my old pc, it’s not a fault of action :P

Dxtory.
Disturbingly customisable.
High Quality.
Low resource imprint.
Cheap as hell.

If you have what you need to run Shadowplay well, use that, otherwise Dxtory will basically dump all over any other option.

Alissah.9281:

Xavi.6591:

After using Bandicam (free version) for quite a while, I switched to MSI Afterburner (also free) and much prefer Afterburner over Bandicam.

Bandicam won’t lag your system but the recording quality is not nearly as good as MSI Afterburner. As well, the free version of Bandicam will only record 10 minutes maximum and leaves a ‘Bandicam’ watermark at the top of the screen (it covers the PPT time/score box at the top middle of your screen in WvW) and is only removable if you purchase the free version.

MSI Afterburner is also light on your PC so you shouldn’t notice too much of an FPS drop. The picture quality is much better than Bandicam (very close to Fraps quality). Just experiment with the video recording settings (there are only a few) properly. You should also turn off the overclocking feature of MSI Afterburner. The only downside to MSI Afterburner is if I open Afterburner first, GW2 won’t launch and will give an error. Launching GW2 first then MSI Afterburner avoids this problem.

Fraps – The best picture quality but can really slow down your PC. However the picture quality isn’t much better than MSI Afterburner.

Right now, MSI Afterburner is my favourite. I use Windows Movie Maker to do everything else.

Keep in mind that if you have a crap PC, you probably shouldn’t run any recording software. Also, make sure that your recording are being saved to a different hard drive then your OS and GW2 which should help.

Hmm. If I first vlose MSI Afterburner while gw2 is running, it crashes :P

So:

1. run msi aferburner
2. gw2
3. close msi afterburner
4. gw2 crashes

Or:

1. start gw2
2. then msi afterburner
3. close msi aferburner
4. crash :P

I just try not to close it, and its fine.

edit: btw, sony vegas 11 has a free trial you can use first. Much better than windows movie maker too… It does almost nothing :/.

GW2 doesn’t crash when I close MSI Afterburner for me.

I’m using either MSI Afterburner or Nvidia Shadowplay.
MSI Afterburner pros: records 1920×1200, high quality uncompressed video. Downsides: video size (think tens of gigabytes) and performance.
Nvidia Shadowplay pros: high quality video, compressed in hardware, very lightweight, continuous recording mode (press a key and saves the last 5 minutes on disk, very useful). Downsides: only records 1920×1080, can’t manage (yet) to make it use my SSD, sometimes freezes/loses frames.