Recording With Dosbox

[Ella]

Lately i've tried to record footage using Dosbox, although it hasn't been smooth sailing sadly.

Basically, i've used both Fraps and Dosbox's very own onboard recorder, however none of them have given any real good result. With the onboard recorder, when i utilize it it'll slow down Dosbox to a crawl, running at around 15fps and under, but when i go to view the video, it'll play correctly as if there was never any lag. This is frustrating of course, so i set frame skip to 1, then 2, but to no avail - same result.

With Fraps, the frame rate is so inconsistent it's ridiculous, it'll go from 30fps to 12 in a heart beat. I know there's not really a great deal i can do to fix this though. I did set the capture/output folder to my external hard drive to see if it'll prevent lag, but nope.

Is there anything i can do to get any real good capturing result?

Dosbox version is 0.74. Fraps version is 3.5.5.

Cheers me dears.

Edit: Thread should probably be moved to Public Storage. Sorry guys.

[MoonStalkeR]

What external HDD are you using? Is it usb2 connected?

[Ella]

It's a Buffalo 500gb, not sure what the model is. Also yes it's usb2 connected.

[Hendricks266]

Using the computer's internal hard drive will almost certainly be faster than an external, especially on a USB 2.0 connection.

What you should do is use a game's demo recording functionality to render the movie using DOSBox's internal functionality afterwards. That is what Daedolon does to render the Blood videos.

[Ella]

You would've thought the internal would be faster than the external, but nope. Both hard drives deliver the same result.

The trouble with using demo recording is that you can't save or load. I also wouldn't be able to give commentary on a genuine level, plus i'd have to make sure to NEVER die, which would frustrate the hell out of me to no end.

Thing is the computer i'm using is definitely capable, yet i receive the same issues i had with my previous machine which would be 5 years old now if i still had it. There has to be some sort of set up that works.

[MoonStalkeR]

You would've thought the internal would be faster than the external, but nope. Both hard drives deliver the same result.

Was it a secondary internal drive? I had flawless recording when running Blood and FRAPS on my main drive while the footage was being recorded to an additional internal (SATA) HDD. Both were 1TB 7200 RPM models. The computer had an i5-760 CPU and 4gb RAM. Do you know how many RPM your Buffalo operates on?

[Daedolon]

If you have money to spend, you might want a recording card that has its own CPU, thus leaving your CPU free to emulate the game in DOSBox. Those are quite hefty in prices though.

I'm personally looking at buying this one at some point.

Other than that it's just a matter of finding the right balance with the DOSBox settings and the in-game resolution.

[Ella]

I've fixed the issue. I was only recording with fraps at 30fps which makes the games choppy as hell because the frame rate isn't fixed while recording. Literally i just increased the frame rate to 60 and it's fine now.

Was as easy as that.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Umnir]

No problem