Recording lag

[Bridge]

I seem to be getting some choppy video even though the FPS counter on Bandicam indicates the video is recording at a steady 60fps. I'm trying this out on Mirror's Edge as it's the only game I have installed at the moment. Here are my specs:

MB: Gigabyte H77-DS3H
CPU: Intel i5 quad core ~3.5GHz
RAM: 8gb
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7800 -400MHz -1749mb
DX11
120gb SDD
OS: Windows 7 64bit
~20" LCD screen 1680x1050

I encounter no slowdowns while recording but the video tends to lag slightly (enough so that it's noticeable). With Fraps I get an unbearable framerate (10fps). The most common advice I found online to reduce lag was to record to another HD than the one the OS runs off of but since it's a solid state with a huge RW speed (500mb/s) I don't see how it matters. It should be more than enough to record game footage I imagine. What do you guys think? Is my computer just not cut out for recording or is there a way to significantly decrease recording lag? Here are some short samples:







(The second link is slightly higher quality)

Could anybody maybe recommend some other process-light recording programs that can record HD footage? I have Bandicam on the highest video settings and it's hardly what I would call HD.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Watch them in full screen; the lag is not noticeable in the embedded youtube player.

[Yuhaney]

First of all, download yourself a little program called CrystalDiskMark and run it few times.
Just to see if the SSD is running as it should.

[Bridge]

I ran 5 runs 1gb each on all of the read/write tests and got these results:

Seq: 204.0 - 126.5
512K: 188.0 - 114.0
4K: 21.46 - 110.3
4K QD32: 137.7 - 118.1

Second test:

Seq: 203.2 - 124.7
512K: 186.1 - 76.73
4K: 20.19 - 70.77
4K QD32: 138.6 - 118.0

Third test:

Seq: 203.3 - 107.7
512K: 185.3 - 115.2
4K: 21.14 - 71.19
4K QD32: 136.5 - 118.6

So I guess it isn't running at 100%. The guy in the store said it had a read speed of 525 and a write speed of 550 (something like that).

[Your Computer]

There is no "process-light" recording for the same system doing all the work. If you want optimum performance for both running the game and recording, then get another computer and install a capture card on it. Some games aren't as demanding on the system, which allows more power for the recording. I wouldn't claim Mirror's Edge to not be demanding. I've played that game myself, and even without recording i would get massive drops in frame rates within certain areas. I'm highly doubting based on the mhz you posted that the 7800 series card is a discrete card or even a 7800 series card. 400mhz for a 7800 card? My 5850 could dominate that.

Note: HD is normally considered 720p. This normally doesn't mean much in the computer world, especially considering video compression and that 720p often translates to a video whose height is 720 pixels (though the "p" in "720p" does not mean "pixels").

[Yuhaney]

I'm new to SSD's.

But what I've been told is that you should make firmware update for your SSD to make it run properly.

However, even when you make the update I doubt that it will run all the time at the fastest possible speed.
They seem to market these things to consumers telling you how fast their product can be at the best, but usually they still stay under that.

[Bridge]

There is no "process-light" recording for the same system doing all the work. If you want optimum performance for both running the game and recording, then get another computer and install a capture card on it. Some games aren't as demanding on the system, which allows more power for the recording. I wouldn't claim Mirror's Edge to not be demanding. I've played that game myself, and even without recording i would get massive drops in frame rates within certain areas. I'm highly doubting based on the mhz you posted that the 7800 series card is a discrete card or even a 7800 series card. 400mhz for a 7800 card? My 5850 could dominate that.

Note: HD is normally considered 720p. This normally doesn't mean much in the computer world, especially considering video compression and that 720p often translates to a video whose height is 720 pixels (though the "p" in "720p" does not mean "pixels").

Yeah you're right, Window's built in dxdiag program gave me wrong info. The card is actually a 7850 (though I should have known that anyway) with almost 1 GHz on the GPU clock with 2GB overall memory.

EDIT: Good idea Scraper. I'm downloading the latest firmware now; I'll see if that changes anything. Anyway, is there really no good way to record footage with my current set-up?

[Yuhaney]

Can you describe more of the way you record?
Resolution, video fps (not the gameplay fps) and what format you use while recording (if the program let's you alter this), for example.

[Your Computer]

Anyway, is there really no good way to record footage with my current set-up?

Make the game require less work to run: reduce resolution, turn off anti-alias, turn off vertical sync, turn off ambient occlusion, turn off any DirectX 11 features, if any.

[Bridge]

I record at 1680x1050 (my native monitor res) at 60fps. I record AVIs with the MPEG-1 codec (default) at 4000 kb/s bitrate. Haven't experimented with any other codecs yet.

[Yuhaney]

Try 1280x720 at 30fps and see what happens.

YouTube has 16:9 aspect ratio and if your monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050, then that is 16:10.
1280x720 is 16:9 so it'll fit perfectly.