Options within the game are going to be maxed out (Far Distance, Advanced OpenGL, etc.) and video card settings for Antialiasing and Filtering are going to be either 'Off' or 'Let The Application Decide' (Minecraft doesn't seem to have AA within the game at this time). With these settings, I chose one spot in The Nether that shows both light and dark regions on the screen, high detail distant blocks and lots of smoke/movement within view. Also, the sharp edges and movement of groups of pixels, along with solid colors and dark areas, are a good test of compression and will bring out any artifacts that the contending codecs might sweat out. Without taxing the CPU/GPU extensively, more of the power can go towards recording and getting the most 'bang-for-the-buck' from the game recording apps. Yes, MC isn't exactly 'high-end-tessa-shadow-bump-mipped', but that's the point.

What is the best quality I can get, you might ask? What is the smallest file size I can produce, while the quality is at least something I can tolerate, or share with others? These questions are going to be answered visually in this TestRun, where we are going to be looking at the most common Presets, Defaults and Specific Settings of four game recording applications: Fraps, Dxtory, Bandicam and Playclaw** - and see how each one looks compared side by side - and how big the recordings are for each.įor this TestRun, the game used is Minecraft. Whether you edit videos, archive, convert, or just record vacations or games, these are the two concepts you probably fight with constantly. There are many programs out there and everyone has their favorites for differing reasons but for this article we are going to focus on four of the more popular game recording programs (there are many more, to test in the future.).įor many people, Quality and Filesize are the two Rock'em Sock'em robots in the ring at all times. Greetings, in this edition of the TestRun series here at The Game Tips And More Blog, we are going to be looking at comparisons between game recording applications and their output.

Dxtory vs bandicam vs fraps