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The tech support thread.

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Have a problem or a question about tech that you want some help with?  Post it here and see if you get an answer.  I'll go first with my dumb question.

I am trying to capture some footage from older Pc games I loved as a kid.Now normally I use FRAPs and that works great but for some reason whenever I try to capture footage from older games like Wing Commander Prophecy or Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 it just either stops recording or only records my desktop with the sound from the games. Does anyone here know what is going on and if so is there another program that will capture footage from older PC games? I only have my one computer to work with so the solution google gave me of plugging my computer into another computer will not work for me and I am not sure if that would work any way. if there any other method for someone like me to use to capture footage from old PC games?

I would be grateful for any help you can give me,thanks.

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I'm not familiar with FRAPS, so I can't say what exact settings you need; but I know that most recording programs have trial limits to the length of recordings unless you purchase the program. That might be the causeo f the stoppage.

As for audio issues, they likely have to do with your capture settings. Make sure that the program is set to record audio from your microphone as well as the game. These settings can depend on your operating system as well, and there are usually tutorials to be found online for this.

I have used similar programs (namely Bandicam) in order to capture gameplay footage, and haven't found any problems with the program once I got it set up properly.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

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(It hasn’t happened yet)

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Yeah Thanks.  I have the paid version of Fraps(it cuts out after 1 minute in the trial version)so it's not that and there are no real settings to play with.

It's a problem that only comes up with games made before 2004 so i think it's something to do with screen resolution. 

I'll do a google search and try out Bandicam.

Thanks again.

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Not that I'm an expert by any chance, but I wouldn't think it's resolution, I think it's the rendering thingy, i.e. OpenGL, Direct Draw, Direct3d etc.

I'd look into that. Perhaps Fraps can't detect and record the old rendering method(s).

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Oh I just got an answer to this question from Lazy Game Reviews.  It turns out Fraps and programs like it capture the footage as it is going through your 3d card so with the older games that don't use the modern 3d graphics cards there is nothing for the program to capture.  Instead I have to hook up my computer to another computer or some sort of 3d capture device and that will solve the problem.

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Have a look at this:

https://obsproject.com/

Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Supported features include:

  • Encoding using H264 (x264) and AAC.
  • Support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) and NVENC.
  • Unlimited number of scenes and sources.
  • Live RTMP streaming to Twitch, YouTube, DailyMotion, Hitbox and more.
  • File output to MP4 or FLV.
  • GPU-based game capture for high performance game streaming.
  • DirectShow capture device support (webcams, capture cards, etc).
  • Windows 8 high speed monitor capture support.
  • Bilinear or lanczos3 resampling.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/directdraw-dx8-capture-support.12614/

....this plugin is really heaven-sent for an older game like Age of Empires II: The Conquerors.

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Oh yeah! OBS is great stuff. I use that to stream to Twitch when I have the wild hair to do so. Definitely worth a look.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

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Yeah and it seems to be capturing footage from old games just fine.  i plan to focus on Windows 95 games I played in the mid 90s in my videos since there do not seem to be a lot of videos about the games I played as a kid. Most videos on Youtube are either about the most recent games or NES/DOS games. Mid 90s windows stuff seems to fall through the cracks. Well not any more.