Roxio's Game Capture Films Your Fragfest on PC

Roxio plans to launch two solutions that allow gamers to easily capture video footage of PC and/or console gaming. The software-only edition for PC gamers arrives with a reasonable $49.99 pricetag. Console gamers will require additional hardware, jacking up the cost to a meatier $99.99.

According to the company, the Roxio PC Game Capture software grabs HD-quality gameplay footage in real-time, recording at full screen resolutions rather than locking users at a specific level. Once the raw imagery is collected, users can then edit the video by adding transitions, voice commentary, background music tracks and titles. Roxio PC Game Capture is compatible with DirectX 8 to DirectX 10, and OpenGL.

"Gamers can also tap advanced features including a 32-track timeline editor featuring picture-in-picture, animated credits, and special effects capabilities to further personalize their productions," the company said in a press release.

As for the console edition, the bundle includes the PC software and an additional USB-based capture device. This connects to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 by way of a component and RCA connection. That said, Roxio's console setup will only capture footage at 480p which can be converted to AVI, WMV, DivX and MP4 formats. Still image screen shots can be saved as JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP or GIF file types.

Once gameplay footage is captured and edited accordingly, players can upload their files from within the Roxio Game Capture software. "The products include simple upload features for directly posting completed videos to major online communities including Facebook, WeGame, and YouTube, including popular game play sharing channels such as http://www.youtube.com/user/machinima," Roxio said.

Roxio's software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP. It's also optimized for use on Nvidia CUDA and ATI Stream platforms for "maximum video encoding performance." It also takes advantage of Intel Enhanced for Core technologies (like Intel Quick Sync Video) for "great game play capture, conversion, encoding, and sharing."

The Roxio Game Capture console bundle will be available March 24, followed by the PC software-only edition sometime in Q2 2011. PC gamers may want to check out the system requirements before sinking $50 into the software, located here.

Roxio's game capture solutions arrive just in time for grabbing some raw Duke Nukem Forever footage. Bring on the how-to poop paintings!

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Parsian 7 years ago

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Performance

otherwise, FRAPS already does this and consoles can record with no performance loss on their DVR.

I think the best solution for PC game recording would be a DVR style recording which simples takes a Digital Video feed from the graphic card DVI (or display port) output.
shineon2010 7 years ago

yes why pay $50 when fraps is free and does exactly that
kcorp2003 7 years ago

xfire video captures my games too, but it takes up too much space, say for instance 2 min medium quality video cost you like 2-3GB! however i do experience a bit of system performance lost. I still have to try fraps. with most games now returning back the record feature, hopefully Battlefield 3 implement back battlerecorder.
xambron 7 years ago

Fraps.
quovatis 7 years ago

All game video capture software should really use a buffer like GameCam does. I think this is the single best idea for any recording software. Instead of filling your drive with gigs of useless footage, the software stores the last x minutes of footage in a buffer and only permanently stores it to your HDD when you tell it to. That way, you only record important things, which you can usually only determine after the fact. You're left with only the good stuff and don't spend wasted time throwing out 90% of the footage. I only wish other software did this. GameCam is great, but doesn't work with some games.
shoelessinsight 7 years ago

Though I don't want to sound rude, it seems to me that an article like this belongs in the Tom's Hardware Vendor Voice section, even if it is written by a Tom's employee. It reads like an advertisement straight out of Roxio marketing.

The technology isn't new or significantly improved over solutions that have existed for years, so it isn't exactly news. It isn't a how-to, a benchmark, a roundup, or even a review, so it doesn't belong in Features or Stories either.

I suppose if it had been written more as "It has something new that caught our eye," and less like an advertisement, it wouldn't be so bad. But this comes off to me more as paid product placement rather than news.
Netherscourge 7 years ago

Doesn't "free fraps" have like a 30 min time limit and is locked at 30FPS?
joytech22 7 years ago

Sweet Iv'e been looking for something like this, Especially the console version and this is pretty cheap as well.

I'll try out the PC-Only version first and see if it's performance is close to that of Fraps (don't care about file size, just want speed) and even if the console recording is smooth I'll grab one.
schmich 7 years ago

Yes, fraps costs $37 vs the $50 on this product. It would an interesting software if the codec used was better than fraps. The fraps one is terrible.

I don't know if it's an impossible problem to overcome but fraps also has the problem of limiting YOUR fps to whatever you set fraps to. So if you're a proper player recording matches you have to record at 60fps which just eats your hard-drive away.

One thing I wish fraps had and I hope this software has is loop recording. Lets say it records 30mins in loops. So lets say your recording has gone for 30mins then the first minutes start to get deleted. Once something awesome happens you press a "keep the 30mins" button. Why? So that when you play you can record all the time without your hard-drive filling up.

Lastly, would be nice if the hardware version also worked on the PC as if you're running the latest game there's very little CPU over for recording.
newbie_mcnoob 7 years ago

Only 480p for console captures? No thanks.
Hauppauge already offers 720p/1080i capture hardware.
kimyeang88 7 years ago

shineon2010yes why pay $50 when fraps is free and does exactly that

Frap is not free . it can only record 30 sec for trial version. Unless you pay .
Anonymous 7 years ago

If it can only record consoles in 480p then it's worthless (unless you only get the PC software). This is 2011 or christ sake, not 2001.
Supertrek32 7 years ago

480p on a $100 device? lol

For $200, you can capture 720p60, 1080i60, and 1080p30 on a Black Magic Intensity Shuttle. With a future update, the device will even support 1080p60.

That said, you do need a high-end computer to handle the thing (although HDD requirements are highly exaggerate by their website).

Combine that with VirtualDub 1.10.1 (test 4 as of writing) and you can compress it basically any way you want. If you're interested in it, here are a few tips:

Unregister the .dll (google it) files for the included MPEG codec (it's in program files). It's not very good. Instead, I recommend installing ffdshow-tryouts, which every computer should have anyway and it lets you get better picture with higher compressions. Next enable the filter chain and skip the 24-bit conversion. Add a convert format filter and set it to YV12. Finally, set your video compressor to ffdshow and configure it to MPEG or Huffyuv.

Using this method, a 100% quality MPEG at 720p60 is about 560MB a minute. The picture quality is amazing. I don't have any real videos up yet, but this has a short clip of Xbox 360 Crysis 2 gameplay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5a3D9PHgoY
Supertrek32 7 years ago

I should also note that the nasty ghosting issues are part of the demo, not a fault of the card.
flightmare 7 years ago

If it is 480p you want, you can easily buy a 20-bucks usb capture card. I only consider it worth the 100 dollar on higher resolutions.
cumi2k4 7 years ago

whoops,wrong number...i was thinking of the angry bird developer when i clicked this link
jkflipflop98 7 years ago

schmichYes, fraps costs $37 vs the $50 on this product. It would an interesting software if the codec used was better than fraps. The fraps one is terrible.I don't know if it's an impossible problem to overcome but fraps also has the problem of limiting YOUR fps to whatever you set fraps to. So if you're a proper player recording matches you have to record at 60fps which just eats your hard-drive away.One thing I wish fraps had and I hope this software has is loop recording. Lets say it records 30mins in loops. So lets say your recording has gone for 30mins then the first minutes start to get deleted. Once something awesome happens you press a "keep the 30mins" button. Why? So that when you play you can record all the time without your hard-drive filling up.Lastly, would be nice if the hardware version also worked on the PC as if you're running the latest game there's very little CPU over for recording.

Fraps is $20 and it does loop record the last 30 seconds exactly as you describe.
eddieroolz 7 years ago

First: Can't free/paid apps do this already?

Second: Holy crap, Roxio is still alive?
wildernessman33 7 years ago

Everyone else is already saying this, so naturally I will also chime in. This product really is 10 years late...you have been able to buy a crappy capture card that will 640x480 for years. And with everyone hooking up their console with an hdmi cable, why take a step backwards?

You are better off with a blackmagic intensity shuttle or a Hauppauge PVR if you want a higher quality external capture card (yes i realize the shuttle has very specific hardware requirements...). But, it is being billed as specifically for gamers, which may lure in some noobs who don't know there are better options out there.

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