Is there an affordable hardware-based screen capture system?

acer0169

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I would love to make a crap-load of gameplay videos with my computer but unfortunately software like fraps causes quite a drop in FPS while recording. Now a lot of people have said "oh it's only a 5FPS drop" and things like that but in all my use of Fraps that's just not the case. On GTA4 I can run the game at uncapped settings, everything at full, at around 35-60 FPS, yet when trying to record with Fraps I get around 10-25FPS which just looks poor.

Is there any hardware solutions I could use instead so I can keep my FPS exactly the same?

I've found a few HD cards that can screen capture but they're selling for around £650!!!

Any help would be great.

Cheers,
ace.
 

acer0169

Distinguished
1. I don't own an expensive enough camera to make the video look any good.

2. If the camera is close and zoomed out the picture looks better bit it's slightly curved (try for yourself, most lenses curve close up objects slightly)

3. If the camera is far away but zoomed in the picture is poor but straight at least.

4. I don't want to spend hundreds on a HD camera.

5. It's something I would have to set up and calibrate every time I wanted to record gameplay or video tutorials meaning none of my videos would be calibrated.

6. I'd like to record at 1920x1080 and even if my camera could record at that res, it would be pretty hard to get the monitor to fit exactly in the cameras recording area.

7. I'm not asking for a workaround or alternative, I'm asking for a hardware based recording system.. either an external or internal card of some sort.