What is the best screen recording software?

[hardcore_gamer]

What is the best software to record your screen and whatever you are doing there? Let's say for example that I want to record a video of myself using Doom builder while perhaps even also talking into a mic, what would be the best program to record it with?

Obviously a free program would be the best, but I can also live with paying for one as long as it is not uber expensive.

[Infinite Ammunition]

https://obsproject.com/

If you need some sort of weird complicated audio setup involving routing sound channels then bring Virtual Audio Cable into the mix

[Phml]

Never got OBS to work without heavy performance issues, and I think it has issues with OpenGL games. Apparently primarily a streaming program so it does significant encoding on the fly and there's the underlying assumption you have a modern core i5 processor or better.

MSI Afterburner is free and works fine for me, although apparently it uses unusual compression codecs so you might run in trouble if you want to edit stuff afterwards.

FRAPS records .avi files with light compression, surprisingly people complain a lot about performance issues but I never had any with the program, using it as far back as 2006. That said, it lacks in options and you'll have to shell for the paid version (I think it's $30) if you don't want to stick with 30 second clips.

DXTory seems to be another popular (paid) solution. For me it just refuses to work.

[hardcore_gamer]

Phml said:

Never got OBS to work without heavy performance issues, and I think it has issues with OpenGL games. Apparently primarily a streaming program so it does significant encoding on the fly and there's the underlying assumption you have a modern core i5 processor or better.

MSI Afterburner is free and works fine for me, although apparently it uses unusual compression codecs so you might run in trouble if you want to edit stuff afterwards.

FRAPS records .avi files with light compression, surprisingly people complain a lot about performance issues but I never had any with the program, using it as far back as 2006. That said, it lacks in options and you'll have to shell for the paid version (I think it's $30) if you don't want to stick with 30 second clips.

DXTory seems to be another popular (paid) solution. For me it just refuses to work.

I must be able to edit the files afterward in Windows movie maker to add subtitles. FRAPS is also only good for recording video games.

[Linkrulezall]

People speak very highly of Fraps, but I've never actually used it myself. I personally use Camtasia Studio for everything these days, and it works quite well. It's even got a decent video editor included that I use for just about everything nowadays.

[Jaxxoon R]

Aren't people using Xsplit these days?

[RUSH]

I've been using registered Fraps since 2007. Records beautifully.

[clamgor]

Some say Fraps is good.

I use Fraps.

It's good.

But others say DxTory is better.

Haven't tried it myself, but I think it's superior to Fraps based on what I've managed to gather.

[Tuxlar]

http://taksi.sourceforge.net/

Dated, but still works fine for my purposes. Might need some codecs (like x264), if you want to record compressed.