How to Record Video Games for YouTube!

How to record video games, render, and upload to YouTube

Before we get into the meat of it you have to see if your computer can handle recording gaming footage.

What you need:

1. Middle to high-end computer
2. Hard drive with fast write speeds or multiple hard drives
3. Recording program like Fraps or Xfire
4. Editing software like Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere

Step 1: In order to record gaming footage you need some form of video capture program like fraps or x-fire. Fraps is the most popular because it records in high quality but beware because it takes up a lot of hard drive space. Remember to record full screen for optimal frame rate.

Note, if you are having lag issues you can alleviate them by doing some of the following :

• Record footage to another drive. If your game is on C:\ then set your fraps folder to D:\
• If the drive you are recording to is too slow you might have to upgrade to one with faster write speeds
• Lower your settings from Full-size to Half-size, the quality will be the same but smaller
• Turn on Vertical Sync within your game which will help with lag, but can severely reduce frame rates

This are the settings I use on a g74sw asus laptop. Usually you want to record full-screen at 30 fps while lowering or increasing the graphics within your game.

Step 2: Use editing software like Sony Vegas to edit and render. For best results click on project properties and select HD 1080-60i (1920x1080, 29.970 fps). When you are done editing you need to render as  MainConcept AVC/ACC Internet HD 1080p.

If you are having performance issues you can:

• Render to another drive. if your footage is in D:\ render to C:\
• Enable "Render using CUDA if available" when you customize template for rendering
• Rename your project
• Disable "Render using CUDA if available" if your graphics card is not compatible
• [ctr] + A to select all and [ctr] + C to copy, open a new Sony Vegas template and paste your project
• Go to options>preferences>video and set Dynamic RAM Preview max (MB): 128

Step 3: Upload your video to youtube!