f13.net

I've been messing around with Fraps and Quick Screen Recorder and they're both ok for certain things. But they also mess with frame rates.

What I'd like to know is if there's any sort of hardware solution where I can record what's on my computer screen at full resolution with no performance hit.

In my niave opinion, I feel like such a device would be plugged into the second port on my video card (I have one analog and one DVI port) and I could press a button on it that would just start recording, either to its own harddrive or back into my main drive.

Does such a thing exist? I certainly don't want to do the whole video camera thing, and while I could export S-Video too, I know the quality wouldn't be as good.

Umm, I suppose if you could somehow finagle your DVI port to output an HDTV signal you could hook it up to an HD recorder of some sort and then you would feed it back in to your computer using Firewire and HD video editing software or something. What's wrong with Fraps?

What are you trying to record? Generally, using fraps only as a recording thing is not a good idea, because it records as-is, hence killing your framerate. What you should do is then run the recording through something like Win Movie Maker and recompile it at a smaller compression + better framerate.

Huh? Converting uncompressed (or minimally compressed) video to compressed video does not increase the framerate unless you are dropping frames (i.e. speeding up the video).

Yes.

An ATI All-In-Wonder card or other dedicated video editing card would be your best bet.

Nothing is 'free' though, there is still processor over-head involved.

An AIW only captures SD though and your typical HDTV capture card uses coax inputs.

I just 'assumed' that they had advanced with the times and were capturing HD.

I am sure there is some very expensive piece of hardware out there that does.  Good luck.

edit:  Ok, I put on my engineer hat and what you are talking about is capturing the video out of your graphics card after it has left the VGA connector but before it goes into your monitor.

Maybe something like this:
http://www.epiphan.com/products/vgarecorder/index.php

Thanks Murgos! Yea, something like that. Price is a bit steepish, but definitely worth looking into.

edit:

Just came across this thing:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1822571&Sku=O38-1076

Doesn't mention having any video capture software, but I do have the Hauppauge TV suite. Would I be able to use that video capture program (the name escapes me) to record with this device? The device sheet says it'll work with basic OS tools ("no software included/needed"), so not sure how that works.

Are you sure your card pushes signal out on both the VGA and Digital connectors at the same time?  Often they only do one or the other.  If so then I see no reason why you couldn't just run the digital out over to a HD capable DVR and record that signal.

No that is not what you want. That's a box for converting TV signals into something that can be displayed on a computer monitor.

Ah ok. What's with the VGA-in though? There TV's that output VGA?

It's a pass through input for your video card (though apparently that box can use it for PiP as well). Otherwise you would need a monitor that had two inputs.

I used Camtasia but it doesn't work for protected video anymore, showing a black rectangle or scrambled image for the playback.  Is this due to some sort of protection or is the program itself foozled?

You may need to turn off all hardware acceleration if it is showing as all black.  You get the same effect when trying to take a screenshot of a movie.

The black rectangle is a result of Camtasia not recording the Direct X layer (that's why the same thing happens with movie screenshots). Some things can do it, some things can't - it would seem Camtasia can't.