Screen record PC games in Windows 8

Question

I have used Hypercam 2 to record my screen before, but I am unable to record and take screenshots of any sort of game. It just goes right through and shows the desktop or whatever window was open when I started the game or a black screen when it should be showing what is happening in the game.

I would prefer a free software, or at least a software that lets me record for 5-10 minutes without a huge watermark (Bandicam is my last resort). So far I haven't tried other software because since even the built-in screenshot function of Windows 8 doesn't work, I think the issue is not with Hypercam.

How can I solve this problem and what software should I use? I am using Windows 8. Most online solutions say to disable desktop composition, which I can't find in Windows 8.

Answer 1

For video games, you can use Fraps:

• Straightforward to use
• light
• non-free
• you can change the FPS and the resolution
• Windows 8 (game capture only)

Answer 2

If anyone stumbled upon this, I have found a great software that works absolutely perfectly. Open Broadcaster Software is the sofware I used. It's just over 7mb and did what I wanted perfectly, and for free without any annoying watermarks.

Answer 3

There are a few nice programs out there, don't worry :) I have more experience with such programs, and it's funny that you are already aware of Bandicam, because...

• Bandicam is able to do screenshots and videos really well on Windows 8.1, and screenshots have NO watermark. Only videos have a watermark on the top of the video, and the recording limit is 10 minutes per video, the limit in Fraps is 30 seconds. Personally I'm always using Bandicam mostly as a FPS limiter, and besides it's 10 minute per video limit and the watermark, it doesn't have any restrictions. But the program below will probably fulfill your needs:

• Open Broadcaster Software is an open-source recording and streaming program like AgZ has already mentioned before. It's the first time more tricky to setup, because you will need to add a scene and sources manually for your recordings. But once you are comfortable with it, it's very nice. It supports like Bandicam hardware acceleration with Intel Quick Sync and Nvidia NVENC, and it has better recording performance than Bandicam on Windows 7 (source? I can confirm it by myself :P and a few forum stories here and there)

• Riva Tuner Statistics Server is a helper tool for MSI Afterburner, but also available as a standalone. Besides it's FPS monitoring, limiting and statistic features, it has a video recording feature. It's free too. Maybe you will like this?

• FFsplit is, text from their site, "a lightweight front-end solution which allows you to capture and composite videos". It's freeware, but I can't say much about it. I had tested it once a longer time ago.

A last note, and I can confirm these problems with Hypercam as well. It seems to be rather outdated under the hood. For simple screenshots here and there from windowed games, Greenshot is great. Normally it should work.

Answer 4

I like Loilo features that you might like include:

• Free
• No watermark unless you use the trial editing software. (In my case I plan to use Windows movie maker when the trial is over)
• You can record as long as you want I record pretty long videos.
• For me I found it seemed to use less resources then Fraps and Bandicam when recording.(May depend on settings of all software)

I tried a few others and this was the only one that seemed to work well. The only caveat is that it come bundled with a trial for video editing software.

Answer 5

I can recommend Mirillis Action! a feature-paced and robust game recorder and streaming software. It's very popular PC game recorder that offers a bunch of recording settings to configure.

Program has many useful features like HUD opacity settings, Time-Shift, Greenscreen mode, possibility of adding webcam and audio commentary to recording, Live streaming to most popular services: YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Smashcast etc. User can capture videos from all DirectX 8/9/10/11/12 and OpanGL games.

Videos might be recorded and stremed in MP4 and AVI up to 4K resolution.