All about game video recorders
Published on November 24, 2009
Fraps and PlayClaw are the most powerful game video recorders and I want to know, which one is the best. In previous game video recorders test drive I’ve tested several recorders and generally Fraps was on the first place and PlayClaw on second. This test was made on old hardware (Intel Core2Duo, GeForce 8800GT) and with old versions.
Now Fraps is updated to 3.0.3 and PlayClaw to 1.7 build 699 with new features and bug fixes. And I can test them on new Intel Core i5 and ATI Radeon 5750.
Published on November 15, 2009
Fraps was updated to 3.0.0 and then to 3.0.1 version with support of DirectX 11 and some bugfixes.
PlayClaw was updated to 1.7 version also with support of DirectX 11 capture and small improvements and few bugfixes.
Fraps vs PlayClaw competition will be soon. We’ll make tests on Intel Core i5 CPU with new ATI Radeon 5xxx.
Published on November 5, 2009
Sytexis software uploaded video captured from AMD DirectX 11 demos: Mecha and Ladybug.
But there aren’t any official news. It looks like new update of PlayClaw is coming soon with DirectX 11 support and maybe some new features.
Published on October 12, 2009
Sytexis software released new version of PlayClaw with DirectX10 support. I’ve checked it on Crysis, World in Conflict, STALKER: Call of Pripyat and it’s working 
It’s time to make new performance tests with main competitor – Fraps.
Published on September 21, 2009
There are a few fixes (Need for Speed Shift is now supported) and added one important feature. Now PlayClaw can write video files with size more than 4Gb. This feature is automatically available if hard disk for recordings has NTFS file system.
As a sample, you can find NFS Shift video on YouTube
Published on August 31, 2009
Beepa released new version of Fraps. There are a lots of small bug fixes. Complete list of changes here:Fraps 2.9.9. changelog
Published on July 24, 2009
There are number of commercial recorders which have various abilities but all of them can record videos from games.
Which recorder is the best of the best?
We’ll take Fraps, PlayClaw, ZD Soft Screen Recorder, GameCam, Total Screen Recorder and test them in various conditions. As test applications will be taken Battlefield Heroes game and sample from DirectX9 SDK AntiAlias. Game will be used to test in real conditions and AntiAlias sample will be used to check video codecs performance, because this application doesn’t load CPU and video card very high and our game recorders can show all their power. All recorders are in trial mode, audio recording is disabled.
Published on July 8, 2009
It looks like ZD Software released new 4.0 version of their screen recorder. As states on their web site, there are some improvements:
Unfortunately, there aren’t any concrete news excepting new friendly UI and capture performance. We will do some tests with most known game video recorder tools a bit later, so we will be able to check how this new ZD Recorder is working now.
Published on June 10, 2009
A few days ago Sytexis software released new version of their game video capture tool with new feature. The main change is ability to capture Direct Vista audio. Not all similar tools can do that. At least, Fraps can capture Vista Audio. Now PlayClaw can do it too.
Posts