How best to record videos from Altirra?

[Foebane]

First of all, I have tried software like Nvidia Shadowplay and Bandicam to record fullscreen video from Altirra, but for some reason, the audio sometimes manifests these annoyingly loud clicks and chirps from the audio which is nothing to do with what's running, and it seems to happen somewhat randomly or even not at all, depending on the type of audio.

 

I discovered that emulators tend to have built-in recorders, and Spectaculator has an excellent recorder, which came in useful as neither Shadowplay nor Bandicam would work with that emulator at all.

 

However, I look at Altirra's video recorder and am wondering about a couple of things:

 

1. What is the best frame rate to use? As default, the one marked "accurate" (49.861) is chosen and it sets it to that every time I choose Record, so should I stick with it? Ideally, I wouldn't mind 50fps but I know that video encoders tend to use fractions under the intended frame rates (29.97 springs to mind).

 

2. Does "encode duplicate frames as full frames" make the video more compatible with players and other encoders? I tried a video encoded without this option and it didn't play properly on an Android player.

 

So can you please advise?

 

[phaeron]

The best frame rate depends on your use case. The default is to match the actual frame rate that the Atari would run at. This is a bit off from normal frame rates, though, which leads to awkward issues when trying to merge it with other video. Selecting one of the other frame rates fixes this, at the cost of running the audio and video slightly fast.

 

"Encode as full frames" does improve compatibility, particularly with YouTube's encoder, which does not handle AVI pad frames properly. In your case, though, it is probably a codec issue. Zipped Motion Block Video (ZMBV) is a codec that is well suited to encoding older computer videos, but it isn't a widely supported codec. Altirra's video recorder is not meant to produce final video; it produces raw video that you then reprocess with another utility.

[Foebane]

Altirra's video recorder is not meant to produce final video; it produces raw video that you then reprocess with another utility.

 

Oh, I know that, I use Handbrake for final encoding. I did the same thing (well, no choice, really) with Spectaculator's in-built recorder, as Shadowplay refused to detect it.

[rdefabri]

Is there any other external software to do this? I wanted to capture audio / video from RMT, and I can't seem to do it. Camstudio scares me - get all kinds of pop ups and weird messages from my anti-virus, so I'm steering clear. I tried Skype and then realized I wouldn't get any audio (unless played through the speakers, which I could do).

 

Has to be an easier way!

[flashjazzcat]

I tried Camtasia or Snagit a few times (I forget which) when creating narrated captures, and it worked fine.