I recently decided to give Dxtory a try as an alternative to FRAPS for making videos of my flights. Although I have heard good thigs about it, I cannot get it to work well. The problem is that my framerates nosedive when I start recording. For instance, I was cruising in the PMDG 737NGX over France at about FL350 (UTX+GEX Europe) and averaging 45FPS in the VC. After starting the recording, this reduced immediately to 8-10FPS.

 

I also tried the default Cessna 172 in northern England (again with UTX+Gex Europe). On the ground at EGCB (UK2000 VFR) I had about 70 FPS, much more in the air. Once again, the framerates dropped to 8-10 when recording, both on the ground and high up.

 

I have only the trial version at present, so I have not parted with any money. If anybody is using Dxtory with good FPS during recording, could you please share your settings (including codec used) and give me some suggestions?

It is my understanding that you just install the program. Do not record. Just the program running in the background optimizes your FRs.

While Dxtory might have secondary functions, it's primary function is to record video, and that is what I am trying to do.

 

My framerates are good enough for me, and are not affected at all by having Dxtory running in the background. The problem is that when I hit the "record" hotkey, my otherwise good FSX framerates grind to a crawl. Not even FRAPS has this much effect on my FPS.

 

If anyone here is or has been using Dxtory for recording FSX, please share your experience and your settings.

The best software to record videos that won't eat your FPS or your HD is GameCam. You sacrifice a little quality as it compresses the video but it it's not too bad. Check out my videos on my channel below, My system specs are to the left, as you can see it's only a mediocre system.

My Debut version 1.64 is about to cost me $27 or so to get their new version 1.68 ... actually this program could cost $$ every 3 months for newer updates.

 

So, now I am looking at DXtory or GameCam ...

 

do they charge for Updated versions?

You are all wrong.

Best stuff for recording flights and videos is FSRecorder. First record your flight with high fidelity, play it and export it as movie, no stutters, perfect fliud and clear clip.

You are all wrong.

Best stuff for recording flights and videos is FSRecorder. First record your flight with high fidelity, play it and export it as movie, no stutters, perfect fliud and clear clip.

 

Not if you want the sound to be in sync! It is probably the best for videos with alternate sound sources, like Music!

Record the sound with fraps or dxtory, the sync it with video in some editing software. Simple.

Sorry for digging up this old thread, but since the topic is exactly the same I would like to discuss, I see no reason for opening a new one and create a duplicate in the forum.

 

I am making my first attempts with videos. After some research, I ended up buying dxtory a couple of days ago. As the original OP, however, I also noticed a significant drop in performance whenever I activate the recording. I have a laptop with i7 2.8-3.8 GHz and GTX 860. While I understand that this may not be the most performing system, I may assure that I normally get acceptable FPS and performance with all usual addons (payware aircraft, lot of orbx sceneries, payware airports, ASN etc.). I am surprised, because most of dxtory users state the performance drop is negligible.

 

This led me to suspect that my current configurations are not correct. I browsed this and other forums but I could not find specific information about how to configure dxtory for FSX-SE. Would anybody of you using dxtory be so kind to suggest the most appropriate configuration to get smooth and stable videos with FSX-SE and FSX in general?

 

Thanks in advance.

There are no easy routes to capturing footage from FSX. All of the methods come with some form of compromise somewhere along the line. Fraps gives perfect lossless files at your simulator's native resolution but the files are staggeringly huge (over a gig per minute) and the capture process absolutely canes your frame rate.

 

I've only tried DXtory a couple of times but I found the results to be quite similar - large files and performance that was well under par.

 

One way around this is to use a capture card that does the processing away from the CPU which gives virtually no impact on game performance during capture. However the better ones aren't cheap and many are limited to 1920x1080p resolution. One effective method for capture that is gaining attention is Nvidia's own Shadowplay program that is available for many of the later Nvidia GPU's.

 

Also a further challenge is that all capture cards record the files in a compressed format with variable frame rates. Adobe's Premiere editing program throws a hissy fit with such files and the longer they are, the more glitchy and out of sync the sound and picture becomes. The fixes for this are themselves a big headache, believe me.

 

For easy capture, Shadowplay and Sony Vegas are probably the answer.

The program I use that I find has the least performance hit with FSX/FSX/SE is GameCam. Unfortunately it's old and now unsupported. I'm not even sure if it's still for sale. It is somewhat limited in features, like it can't record from 2 separate audio sources, and the cursor isn't recorded, but it performs better then any other utility I've seen. It's other benefit, is it has a very small file size footprint. It does have some problems. One is it can lose audio in the middle of a recording when recording in .wmv format. .avi's are fine, though they tend to be slightly larger in size then .wmv's, still pretty small. I can record a 2 hour flight with about 1.0-1.5GBs. Also it doesn't work well with FSX in DX10 mode. It only works if the top menu is visible. If it's hidden, a static frame overlays the video making it unwatchable. The next best in terms of performance and currently supported is Bandicam. It performs a little worse then GameCam on my system, but not as bad as FRAPS or DxStory. (IMHO). but it too produces very small files. You can see what I get in my youtube videos (Link below) Bare in mind my system is rather modest by today's standards. (3Ghz E6850 C2D with a GeForce 460 card.).

Thank you very much to both of you for your replies.

 

Actually I had tested ShadowPlay, but I was not too satisfied. On my system, I was only able to capture videos with full-screen. Quality was also not as good as expected. On the other side, ShadowPlay was definitely lighter on my simulator's performance than Dxtory. I read several reviews before making my purchase, however I confess I am pretty disappointed with Dxtory so far. Despite the good quality, performance loss is really unacceptable, the final size of the files is also enormous. Unfortunately, your replies are confirming my suspects that it does not depend on my configuration, but on the software itself. In other words, I am afraid I made a precipitate decision.