Your requirements are too restrictive 😀

You are broke, have a slow computer and your audio is miss-configured (buzzing).

Not sure how we can help you to be honest.

What are you trying to record?

Best is to use a videocapture device or recording software that allows to be run remotely on a different computer.
I don't think there is anything free in both categories.

Record the screen on you phone 😜

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Record the screen on you phone 😜

I've done that and for the purpose of the video it was enough! 😎

For DOS games, DOSBox's built-in recording functions are pretty sweet. Just make sure you have a fixed cycles count set no matter what, as the auto and max settings will cause the recording to jitter whenever the game itself does, whereas with a fixed cycles count, the game is recorded perfectly, even if your system isn't powerful enough to actually play the game at the proper speed while recording it. ;)

Which means it's good if you're gonna overlay audio AFTER recording.

For streaming or recording footage at the same time as you record a voiceover, you absolutely need a powerful system, or two systems with one capturing footage from the other. You may want to invest in a capture device, or upgrade your system if you prefer to stick with software capturing.

I've been looking into Bandicam for my own recording purposes outside of DOSBox as my new system can run circles around my previous one. The unregistered version works pretty well for me, though I had to tweak the heck out of its settings to get the right balance of recording quality with codecs that would work for me. If you're just trying to grab a small window, you may also want to try VirtualDub's screen-capture capabilities, though it can be very tricky to set up properly.

As for audio... that's a tricky one. Some audio chipsets nowadays are hardwired to make it difficult to record directly from them, I think due to pressure from the music industry to help prevent pirating. If that's the case and nothing you try in terms of software and driver settings lets you record what's being sent to your speakers, buy yourself a short little male-to-male stereo phono cord and run it from the speaker or line-out port on your computer to the line-in or mic port. Might seem silly, but it worked in the past with much older hardware and I can't imagine why it wouldn't work now. (Unless those ports are defective or screwy. My previous system had issues with its Mic port and picked up massive amounts of static from it.)

I decided to give fraps another try just for giggles, and it turns out it's not nearly as bad as I remembered (the last time I used it was on a Pentium 4, and somehow I thought that it would bring my current system to its knees as well, which it didn't 😜). That said, the 30 second recording limit was annoying, so I gave Bandicam another shot. Using the low-end PC preset, I actually got the audio working, though I had to use VirtualDub to separate the audio track and denoise it in Audacity, then use VirtualDub to put it back in.

It's finished uploading now, so you can check it out here: http://youtu.be/fMb40_EQalc

Does anyone know how I can reupload this in at least 480p? I'm assuming YouTube gave it the 360/240p treatment since it isn't widescreen, even though the source material was 640x480, therefore probably "good enough" for 480p.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Does anyone know how I can reupload this in at least 480p? I'm assuming YouTube gave it the 360/240p treatment since it isn't widescreen, even though the source material was 640x480, therefore probably "good enough" for 480p.

It's uploaded fine in 480p. You just needed a little more patience to wait for all the conversions to finish. ;)

YouTube's upload system tends to jump the gun a little much of the time, telling you an upload is completed and processed before it completely is. :P

After rewatching that video a few times, I've realized how utterly terrible it is, so I'm in the process of working on a higher-quality followup. One thing I wonder, will YouTube accept a relatively uncompressed file around 2GB? It'll take forever to upload, but it may result in a better quality image than having it butchered by not one but TWO compressors (Xvid along with whatever YouTube uses nowadays). 😜

I record directly in VirtualDub a lot (all of my retro PC videos are through it), but Fraps for a few 3d accelerated thingsy things. And of course, DOSBox's internal recorder for the videos about obscure shareware (where it's not really necessary to use old hardware for)

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

After rewatching that video a few times, I've realized how utterly terrible it is, so I'm in the process of working on a higher-quality followup. One thing I wonder, will YouTube accept a relatively uncompressed file around 2GB? It'll take forever to upload, but it may result in a better quality image than having it butchered by not one but TWO compressors (Xvid along with whatever YouTube uses nowadays). :P

You're never going to notice the difference so long as your initially compressed files are using a high bit-rate. Many compressors, when given the ability to use a variable bit-rate with a really high setting, will top out at the maximum they need to achieve as high a quality as they can. (Thus even if you say to go as high as 50 Mbps, it won't exceed the maximum bit-rate it needs to achieve the highest quality image it can given the frames being compressed.)

I don't actually know what YouTube's file-size limit is, but I do know there is one.

The Youtube file size limit is 20gb.. at least last time i tried 😀

So I shouldn't have to really worry about compressing my videos then. Cool. 😁

Well, I discovered that I can record audio perfectly using VirtualDub, yet it can barely record video worth a crap. Bandicam works perfectly for video, yet no matter what I do I can't get it to record decent audio. I tried recording the audio with VirtualDub and the video with Bandicam, and while I had promising results, it was an absolute nightmare to sync the two, so I just gave up on it.

All I want is for Bandicam to record audio the same way that Virtualdub does, because whatever virtualdub does is fucking PERFECT, and I have not been able to replicate it with any other program.

God, Bandicam is pissing me off SO MUCH! >_< It's like my computer hates me and wants to watch me suffer.

My workflow is raw footage from bandicam and camcorder > PowerDirector > Render in max. settings > compress with Handbrake > Upload to YT.

I've decided that I'm going to try swapping motherboards, which I've actually been meaning to do for a while since I have an Asus P5B in storage, and I've been wanting to see what it can do. My current Gigabyte board is ok for the most part, but it does have a few issues. 😜