21 replies to this topic

[Enos Shenk]

So for a long long time Ive been wishing I had the capability to screen record World of Warcraft for some PvP videos, but Ive never been able to find a program that will satisfactorily do this.

Ive tried the demo version of Snapz Pro X, and it fails. It records my desktop and my cursor of me launching the game, but as soon as the game comes up, Snapz simply records a black screen. The cursor does change to the WoW cursor, and you can still see it moving around the black screen. The audio as well comes through, but the actual game is nowhere to be found.

Does anyone out there know of a program that will accomplish the same task for OSX that FRAPS does on windows?

[MightySlugMan]

you may need to play WoW in windowed mode for it to work.

[Tetsuya]

there is nothing similar to FRAPS on the Mac.  FRAPS is very low-overhead compared to Snapz and quite a bit easier to use.

Snapz wlll work though - just run WoW in a window, and tell Snapz to only record the WoW window.  Its pretty easy.

Better have a beefy machine though - ive got a Dual 2Ghz G5 w/2GB of Ram and it chops my Framerate in WoW in half

[Enos Shenk]

Oof I didnt even think of windowed mode.

I gave that a shot, and it was atrocious. The framerate in-game was pretty much the same, but when I opened the movie file Snapz recorded into Final Cut to play around with it, the framerate of the actual move was horrendous. At times freezing for up to 10 seconds.

So theres nothing out there that will do this and not suck? Thats dissapointing...

[Tomatocow]

Set up a video camera to record your monitor while you're playing...

[Ichigo27]

Tomatocow, on February 5th 2006, 09:43 PM, said:

Set up a video camera to record your monitor while you're playing...

It's hard to record your monitor unless you have the right video camera to do it. Or you could buy a video capture card.

[edddeduck]

Ichigo27, on February 5th 2006, 08:49 PM, said:

It's hard to record your monitor unless you have the right video camera to do it. Or you could buy a video capture card.

If your card has a video out option then you can attach this video to a digital handy-cam and record the screen output, I don't believe there is any software recorders apart from Snapz Pro on the Mac.

Snapz Pro works on games but you have to drop all the settings to minimum and capture at no more than 15 fps, also if possible don't record sound as this impacts the fps as well.

To summarise on the Mac a program like FRAPS  that captures games at high frame rates does not exist.

[Shadowfury333]

edddeduck, on February 6th 2006, 05:05 AM, said:

Snapz Pro works on games but you have to drop all the settings to minimum and capture at no more than 15 fps, also if possible don't record sound as this impacts the fps as well.

That isn't necessarily true. I once made a video in WarCraft III at the highest settings (although only 800x600x32 res window) on a Dual G4 1.25GHz that has a 64MB ATI RADEON 9000 at 30fps, and it worked fine.

[Mac_d00d307]

There is always this...

[FortranDragon]

Mac_d00d307, on February 7th 2006, 09:37 AM, said:

There is always this...

That link has a session id.  It has expired.  ;-)

[Mac_d00d307]

FortranDragon, on February 7th 2006, 11:40 AM, said:

That link has a session id.  It has expired.  ;-)

D'oh! Just go the apple store, search 'video output' and it's the first thing on the list.

[FortranDragon]

Mac_d00d307, on February 7th 2006, 05:16 PM, said:

D'oh! Just go the apple store, search 'video output' and it's the first thing on the list.

The Apple Video Adapter?  Since it states that it is  "Compatible with: iBook without an external reset button, eMac, iMac G5, or 17-inch iMac (1GHz) with mini-VGA port" it might not be a solution.

[KirinRiotCrash]

It's an expensive solution but this is what I'm thinking ...

Someone passed this info to me when I wanted to an alternative to FRAPS and just happened to have the appropriate hardware for it ...

But I translated it into Mac jargon for the sake of this post:

If you got a non-PowerMac Mac, you would need a miniVGA-to-composite cable and a firewire video capture box, such as those made by Miglia and El Gato, preferably one of those boxes that has hardware-based encoding. Connect the S-Video or Composite cable from the miniVGA dongle to the S-Video In or Composite In connector on the Firewire box. Set up the game so it would play on the "Television" instead of the default monitor. For iMacs and iBooks, you may need to download Screen Spanning Doctor: http://www.rutemoell...ok/ibook_e.html in order for desktop spanning to work as the original setting on those kinds of computers only allow Mirroring. Powerbooks, on the other hand may not need the extra hack. Then set up the video capture software to dump the feed as you play, preferably to another hard drive.

If you have a PowerMac, you could use a PCI/PCI-X/PCIe card instead of a firewire box. Those internal cards are generally cheaper than their firewire cousins.

This is not a joke. I've only done this on the PC once! Never done it on a Mac. Bring your own hardware.  Safety not guaranteed.

[bobdroopy]

Snapz Pro X wiill do the job fine, just run wow in windowed mode, and select the area yuo want to be recordeed.

[Xavier]

There is also an application I found called MovieGrab that works much the same way as Snapz Pro. I have used it a few times, but I don't have a computer that can handle recording and playing at the same time. It was good but not great quality

[Schmilled]

Quote

There is also an application I found called MovieGrab that works much the same way as Snapz Pro. I have used it a few times, but I don't have a computer that can handle recording and playing at the same time. It was good but not great quality

I went on Macupdate to download the MovieGrab, but the link to download is down (http://ambrielsoftwa...s/MovieGrab.sit): This domain is currently expired.

Could you point me out a link to download it?

[huaying]

Popular  OBS, TinyTake or FoneLab are all good Fraps alternatives for Mac.

[ipickert55]

I'll also hop on the necro thread. I can't speak to it's performance because I didn't monitor anything like that, but back when I used to work for Paulthetall and MacGamerHQ we used Screenflow to record gameplay and instructions and such. I don't recall the performance taking a horrendous hit or anything so it might suit your needs. It is quite expensive, but it also does come with a lot of features so maybe it's worth it.

[Wlee2060]

Have you ever tried Joyoshare Screen Recorder to record World of Warcraft on your computer? I used this one and it worked well. Maybe you can have a try.

[Frigidman™]

This thread just keeps getting necro'd...

Mojave (and I suspect Catalina) has a built in screen video capture under cmd-shift-5.

However everyone should just use OBS and be done with any guesswork.