Issue recording video of certain games...

[Seith]

OK, so i've been slowly building up my MALA list of PC Games I plan on featuring on my cab, and part of that process has involved making intro videos for each game.  So far the process has been going pretty smoothly, i've been using Camtasia Recorder for the majority of games, and Fraps for any that won't record properly in Camtasia.  However, recently I came across a Qix-like game called "Gal Pani X" that I can't get video footage of for the life of me.

• Camtasia Recorder:  Records the video of the game, but almost everything it picks up is black, you can basically only see the cursor on the screen.
• Fraps:  Won't hook into the game
• Taksi:  Won't hook into the game
• Camstudio:  Takes the screen, shrinks it down, greyscales it, and tiles the image nine times across the video.  Also outputs extremely choppy.
• GameRec:  Won't hook into the game

I have been having similar problems capturing video of the game "La-Mulana", also for the PC.  I was taking a look online and apparently it has something to do with how these (and presumably other) games are drawing to the screen.  It may have something to do with the fact that they don't use DirectX or OpenGL, although I don't know for sure.  Does anyone have any suggestions for an issue like this?  Maybe Circo/cdbrown could weigh in on what I need to do to get video of these games.

[Seith]

Perhaps I spoke too soon on La Mulana, as it seems in the next week an updated version of the game (complete with a graphical overhaul) will be available for PC:



That still doesn't solve my issues with recording video of Gal Pani X... it's a shame, as the game is 100% cab-ready except for not being able to record video.  They even have a cab-friendly high-score name entry system (something a lot of PC games lack).

 

[Sjaak]

I think mame has a built in feature to record video of the game

[vanrose72]

That still doesn't solve my issues with recording video of Gal Pani X...

I sometimes run into similar problems when trying to take still screenshots of games. The most common issue is that I get only a grayscale image instead of one in color.

I would suggest just going to YouTube and saving an mp4 of Gal Pani X gameplay, but I don't think anyone has posted video of that particular game. 

I'm interested about the solution to your problem. I hope you get it all figured out!

[Seith]

I would suggest just going to YouTube and saving an mp4 of Gal Pani X gameplay, but I don't think anyone has posted video of that particular game. 

Yeah, that was the other surprising thing.  The game is nowhere to be found on Youtube.  I wonder if it's just one of those games that is coded in a way that video capture software has nothing to hook into.