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Game recording with MSI Afterburner


lujate

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This brief how-to will describe how I do game recording using MSI Afterburner. First though, I think the question must be asked, "why not FRAPS?", considering FRAPS is the gold-standard. I have not really used FRAPS, but here is a brief synopsis based on what I have read.

 

Advantages

  • High resolution
  • Buffering option that allows you to start recording after the fact

Disadvantages

  • Many claim that it adversely affects performance
  • High disk usage (estimates say about 1GB/min)
  • Cost (not a lot, but still not free)

 

Afterburner

  • I am content with the resolution
  • No buffering option but disk usage is low enough that you can run it for longer periods
  • On my PC, I do not see any performance degradation
  • I accidentally left it recording for 2 1/2 hours and only used about 27GB.
  • Free

 

 

MSI Afterburner is a "Graphics Card Performance Booster" and not a dedicated recording tool. That being said, it does an OK job recording. After installing the program, start MSIAfterburner.exe, which will bring up the program.

 

5kgh80.jpg

Near the center at the bottom is a "Settings" button, which brings up the properties. The Video Capture tab may not be visible, so you may have to scroll the tabs to the right to find it. There are not a very large number of options on the Video Capture tab. The most important ones are the Video capture hot-key, the Frame size and the Videos folder. The hot-key sets what key starts/stops recording. The Frame size is determined by your monitor resolution. The Videos folder defaults to your My Videos library on Windows 7. Just remember to minimize Afterburner rather than closing it. Then all you have to do is start recording.

femadi.jpg

 

 

Now that you have the video, you still need to polish down some of the rough edges. For that, Flooxim recommended that I try Windows Live Movie Maker, available free as part of the Windows Live Essentials.

 

9q92kk.jpg

 

I use Movie Maker to add captions (available on the Home tab), as well as trim the beginning and end of the video (available on the Edit tab). It also lets you remove, or fast-forward through, portions in the middle of the video. To do that, you need to mark the beginning and end of the split by right-clicking on the "film" in the right frame. Once you have it split out, you can right-click and remove it, or use the Speed option on the Edit tab to fast-forward through it. Once I am finished, I use the Save movie ==> For high definition display option to save my work, and then I upload it to Youtube manually. Movie Maker also has an option to transfer to Youtube directly, but I have never used that option. There are many more options that I have not tried, so do not think it is not there simply because I did not mention it.

 

HTH

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I used to use Afterburner just for oc'ing back in the day before it included video recording. Back then it was a straight copy of another program that did the same thing (ATI Tool? or something else, don't remember), they just changed the logo. Personally I use FRAPS as well, have for years now. Either of these can cause severe performance issues when recording if you don't have a system that can take it. The good thing about FRAPS is that you can adjust the size and FPS of the recording. Video sizes can get big if you don't watch it. Back when I was big into Guild Wars I used to do farming/tutorial videos. Recording at 1680x1050/30fps would eat up my entire HDD extremely fast. I'd hate to see what my current 1920x1080 would do lol.

 

Oh, and if you use Win7 you have to download Windows Movie Maker. It isn't included by default but I believe it comes with SP1. Which you should already have. ;)

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I have the freebie version of FRAPS that will record 30 second clips. Using the default settings, the quality was noticeably better with FRAPS. Of course, FRAPS was recording at over 3GB/min, which is many times higher than Afterburner. I might be able to narrow the quality gap by tweaking Afterburner, but it would be at the cost of disk usage.

 

I have no doubt FRAPS will give better results, which is why they can charge for it, but for me it just would not be worth it.

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  • 11 months later...

Sorry to unbury this thread, but I also record with msi afterburner. The problem I'm having now is that sometimes MSI records Sacred 2 video and sometimes not. Do you mind sharing your OSD settings ? I don't remember which ones I used for sacred 2...like vector 2d or vector 3d or raster 3d...and viewport of framebuffer...everything you can post will be usefull...I need for sacred 2...I already tried a lot of settings but there are too many possible combinations...application detection level, even on-screen display zoom might have something to do with this issue...

I have the latest stable MSI (2.3.1)

trangely enough I can record other games and the osd with fps appears on them...except on the game Containment the zombie puzzler where osd doesn't appear but I can still record...

Edited by gamer x
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I am not sure exactly what "OSD" is. If you can explain, I will do my best to help.

Ok, osd is the on-screen display (server). When you launch msi afterburner, a separate program also launches which is the osd server program. Its icon is the same as msi af. except it has a "60" pink number on it.

Edited by gamer x
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I am not sure exactly what "OSD" is. If you can explain, I will do my best to help.

Ok, osd is the on-screen display (server). When you launch msi afterburner, a separate program also launches which is the osd server program. Its icon is the same as msi af. except it has a "60" pink number on it.

 

 

I would expect mine to be just the defaults, but here it is.

5maeet.jpg

  • Like! 1
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Thanks for that, it didn't work for me. On testing settings today I discovered a few things. I was running the game on win 7 with compatibility mode for win xp sp 3 and admin mode, to avoid crashes. I then added the game executable to the list of application profiles and set application detection level to none, as instructed in another site if nothing else worked, and then I could record the game, but with terrible performance, and the file created would be named desktop. The same happened if I run the game in compatibility mode for win xp sp2. But if I run the game in compatibility mode for win vista sp 2 or win 7 sp1 itself, msi af. behaves as it should and I can record the game with reasonable performance. I hope this post makes sense; otherwise I can explain again.

Thanks for the attention Lujate.

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I am sorry I was not able to help. It just worked for me plug-n-play. Of course, I ran it under Win7 native (and windowed mode, FWIW).

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  • 5 months later...

Interesting that you bring this up gamer. I was going bonkers trying to get VLC to work as a game capturing app. Nothing was going right so after a while I just gave in and installed xfire which has always worked well for me. I might give this afterburner a try. I like to have options. Thanx for the heads up!

  • Like! 1
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  • 3 months later...

Interesting that you bring this up gamer. I was going bonkers trying to get VLC to work as a game capturing app. Nothing was going right so after a while I just gave in and installed xfire which has always worked well for me. I might give this afterburner a try. I like to have options. Thanx for the heads up!

There is a new beta version of MSI Afterburner (3.0.0 beta 18) which comes with RTSS 6. That one supports 64-bit applications, so this compatibility problem should not happen anymore. :drool:

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/msi_afterburner_beta_download,5.html

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If you guys get to record the sliding glicth in Sacred 2, can you upload it?

I love that glitch, but can't find it in animated or video form anywhere outside the game.

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