I started using Bandicam because FRAPS video recording somehow messed up Sony Vegas video render whereby the Video Preview looks same as the source but when rendered, it is darker and has more contrast to it and slightly dull. However, for Bandicam its the opposite where the video source has lots of contrast but when rendered, it shows a more natural color. After testing Bandicam to find the best way to record gameplay videos at high quality with less lag, I present you my results here! The testing is done with Intel i7 Ivy Bridge 3770K (8 threads) with 32GB RAM.

General Tab

Output Folder: Preferably a 8-16GB RAM Disk.

[NOTE] If you save video recording on a HDD (Hard Disk Drive), it will be slower (lag) compared to SSD (Solid State Drive) and RAMDISK (Memory Sticks). It is recommended to save recording into RAM so it does not wear down your SSD lifespan as you will be deleting those recordings after you have consolidated the videos into 1 final masterpiece! The time it takes to save on HDD versus a RAM DISK varies from 2-4 times the duration! For me its 4 times on a Western Digital 1TB Green Caviar.

Video Tab

Record/Stop : F9
Hide Mouse Cursor : CHECK
Video Format : MPEG-1 (VBR) Full Size 25.00fps 100q
Audio : PCM 44.1KHz, stereo

1. FPS: Use mediainfo on Bandicam Recording to determine the exact fps you need to select for your video capture! For MapleStory, its 25.00fps instead of 30fps. Different game varies different fps (Frame Rate per Second).
2. VIDEO FORMAT: I selected MPEG-1 (VBR) instead of the External Video Codec because its somewhat in between the range of quality and speed (less lag when capturing video). I tested with X264 compression and somehow its much slower making the capture loses some frame in between recording although the size is 90% smaller.
3. AUDIO FORMAT: The audio format must be PCM otherwise video editing software such as Sony Vegas will not be able to detect the audio waveform.

Below are my experiment log:

Sample Video: 1 minute video length + 1024×768 resolution + Lots of motion!

X264vfw H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Codec (16MB)
[SETTINGS] Preset Fast, Tuning: Animation, Profile: High, Level: Auto, Zero Latency: Check, Rate Control: Single-pass ratefactor (CRF), Ratefactor: 23, Log Level: None, SAR Width-Height: 1, Output Mode: VFW, VFW FourCC: H264, VirtualDub Hack: Uncheck. [NOTES] When there are too many motion-movement in the video, the video capture loses some frames or suddenly lag out. Also, the video preview shows some slight color discoloration and pixelation since Sony Vegas doesn’t like x264 CRF High Profile videos as input.

Motion JPEG – Similar to FRAPS (1.1GB)
[SETTINGS] Quality: 100 [NOTES] No lag, smooth as butter at the cost of huge space wastage. This method does not compress the video therefore the quality is similar to FRAPS.

MPEG-1 (135MB)
[SETTINGS] Quality: 100. [NOTES] I couldn’t tell much of a difference when comparing MPEG-1 with Motion JPEG, I could say its more of 92-98% of the quality even at high motion. It’s approximately 10% file size of Motion JPEG and 10 times more of X264vfw.

Summary

I’ll stick with Bandicam for now since the major aspect that I like is conserving space! I like that Bandicam has more features to tinker around compared to FRAPS such as choosing type of output based on quality and speed as shown in the above experiments.