Filming computer screens

Hi;

Because of some disorder I suffer from I am going to be a part of a small documentary. The wish is to bring parts of my life (and others) in it, in which programming games is part.

That is the part in which you could help me. They want to film some parts of the projects I work on. Just putting the camera to the screen will get ugly results so I'm looking for software that could record what I do while I play a part of my own game, so that you can see it in a movie file.

Do you know cheap (or free) and reliable utilities that could do that?

FRAPS

I'm sure they do a free version, but it doesn't cost much either, and is pretty fast.

http://camstudio.org/

Fraps and Hypercam both give good results, i've used them both and they work well. They both have watermarks and limitations for free use but neither are very expensive.

Alternatively filming the screen can work but you have to flaff about with screen refresh rates if you use a CRT. My flat panel LCD or whatever it is thingy seems to work fine.

Thank you very much....
I'll check those programs out...

I use camstudio, it's free and has it's own lossless codec which works very well. I use it to record full screen resolutions up to 1024x768 including some blitz windows being open and it's pretty smooth.
Otherwise, yeah fraps is good, it does have a 30 second per clip limitation as well as the www.fraps.com showing at the top of the screen, it also only records what's in the game window, and nothing else apart from sound, but it's also very smooth.

I assume you have a CRT. You could just buy an LCD. =]

You wont have the flicker problem with a LCD, its true. And it is better for your eyes.

I recommend FRAPS and VirtualDub
Especially for VirtualDub once you manage to understand its parameters and the way it is working then you have in your hand a very powerful application for video capturing

Got LCD... On my iMac that is...
I'm not going to replace the monitors of my old Windows PCs, since I use them too rarely.

Still it's nice to know that LCD picks this up quite good...
Now I gotta wait for my iMac (which got broken) to get fixed.

I tried one of those desktop grabbers some weeks ago on my music-PC. It couldn't cope with a synth I was running, causing ticks in the audio. Later on I tried to just grab the video, export the audio and sync them together later. So far that's never worked. Has anyone ever successfully 'recorded' a softsynth with lip-sync tightness between audio and video (knobs, virtual pianokeys, faders etc.)?

It's because LCD doesn't work by beaming the image from the top to the bottom, all pixels just change at the same time.

If the guys behind the documentary are professional they'll have a setting on their camera which will allow it to lock to a set framerate, such as 60fps, so they'll be able to film any kind of monitor.

I'm afraid they are not that profesional, since this documentary is meant for a small audience. It's not meant for broadcast. It's just an informative documentary that remains within the profesionals on the area of my handicap not on filming...

Still I've talked about FRAPS and HyperCam (I will look into VirtualDub later), but since it does cost money and the filmers do have to take official responsibility it will take a few months before we know those programs can be purchased.

Don't you hate it when you need people's permission for transactions?

Use camstudio....its free and I have used to to record blitz3D loads

CS_TBL, i have tried this on occasion, and i don't consider my computer to be particulary slow. Same problems you have. Sound processing seems to take up too much time, as well as disc access.

If you are filming CRT's, the catch is to make sure that the refreshrates match -- typically filming a 60Hz CRT looks oodles better than filming 85 or 100Hz.

CamStudio will dump the movie if you go over about 3 minutes. Use Camtasia.