It's a bit difficult to explain, but whenever there isn't enough CPU time for Dosbox, Dosbox becomes "late" from real-time (and so does the recorded game sound and video). Your recorded voice, however, stays real-time, so they grow out of sync gradually.

The effect is more pronounced if you set Dosbox cycles way too high. The sound starts skipping when you play the game, but in the recorded video the skips don't exist, so the recorded video is essentially shorter than the time it took to record it.

One solution is to record your voice-over while watching your own replay. Setting Dosbox cycles lower might help, but it will still go out of sync for example if some other application causes disk activity and Dosbox gets delayed because the video recording can't write to the disk fast enough.

I guess the other question I have is why does DosBox require such a ridiculously powerful machine to run properly, even though it's emulating an operating system that didn't require nearly that much power? I mean, my new PC is pretty stout, and yet it still won't run on it? I didn't realize DosBox was that poorly designed.

I really don't feel like explaining something that has been explained a million times before.

Here's an article on another emulator instead that explains the issues with emulation: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/ac … es-emulator.ars

If you think DOSBox is "poorly designed" then perhaps you should create your own emulator and design it "properly".

Smooth move Brian, good luck with getting more help for this "poorly designed" emulator...

I didn't mean to personally offend anyone. I guess I was simply unaware of the issues that emulation causes. I apologize for my previous statements. I guess I was just upset at spending so much for a new PC only to find that I still can't do what I want with it. I apologize again. It'd obviously not poorly designed, and is in fact amazing that a stable DOS can run on today's PCs. Again, there was no intent to offend anyone. If my apologies are not sufficient, then there is nothing else I can do.

Just to clear things up; DOSBox doesn't just emulate the operating system, but also the CPU, hardware and peripherals, all in software. On top of that, you want to record *and compress* a video, in real time; run a separate app to record audio too; and rely on your OS to do the management. So yeah, the host CPU is going to take a hit.

Do check out the article linked in DosFreak's post, or run a search on the differences between emulators and virtualizers.

PROTIP: look into hardware video capture devices. No performance hit. There are quite a few posts on these forums discussing them, IIRC.

Also, if you plan to post DOS game footage to Youtube... please, for the love of god, make the world a better place by aspect-correcting your video to 4:3.
So many kids watching junk on youtube, and thinking that CGA was widescreen, and that circles used to be ovals... STOP THE MADNESS!

By hardware capture devices, do you mean something like FRAPS or the Roxio PC capture or HyperCam? People have suggested CamStudio but I've had nothing but problems with that.

I think I understand now though. I was wondering why people didn't use the capture feature in DB, and I guess it's because it uses so much power.

No, those are all software capture programs (not familiar with Roxio though). I meant an actual physical hardware device that hooks up into your PC's video output.