Taking screenshots and video from games is nothing new, not even for consoles; after all magazines, websites and TV programmes have been doing it for decades. The process and the tech have gradually become more and more accessible, and it seems that Roxio now have an option that is simple and – most importantly, of course – relatively cheap.
The PC version, retailing at £39.99, is basically a program, supporting games utilising DirectX 8-10 and OpenGL. Capturing video from PS3 and 360 games still requires a PC; but for £79.99 you’ll get not only the program, but also a USB device (compatible with either machine) to plug into your console and a bunch of cables necessary to hook your PS3/360, PC, and magical doohicky together. However, you’ll also need a component AV cable which isn’t included in the bundle.
Before you ask (I can see that look on your face) yes, HD recording is possible; 1080i for consoles, 480p for PC. Footage can be saved as WAV, AVI, MP4, or the ever-popular DivX, meaning file sizes won’t be quite so monstrous as they could have been. Screenshots can be saved in a similarly flexible manner, in JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP or GIF files.
And! You can play around with the captured footage to your heart’s content, adding text and/or commentary should you so wish. Picture-in-picture, animated credits, special effects, transitions, background music tracks… not bad, eh? Best of all, both the PC and console options include tutorials for those who need them.
This is perfectly suited not only to aspiring bloggers (don’t dare overtake us!) but also to people who love bragging/teasing rights in Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3. Players of those games will be well aware that the best moments are ones you can’t plan for; an enemy being hilariously crushed by a care package crate, an incredibly flukey kill, an impressive killstreak you managed thanks to mistakes made by the other team. These most recent Call of Duty games both automatically save your most recent matches in the ‘vault’, meaning you don’t even have to worry about recording every match just in case; browse your play history at your leisure, then break out the Roxio Game Capture.
You can always upload your footage to YouTube, Facebook or Machinima; or take pictures of all the times you killed people annoying you with their mics, and keep sending them the pictures over PSN or Xbox Live. Not that you’d ever dream of doing something so childish and petty of course…
For more information – perhaps you already capture game footage, and want to see how this stacks up against what you already use – visit the official site at http://www.ebuzzing.co.uk/rd/33940_3916_528095_27619_20045_63216/www.roxio.com/eng/products/game-capture/default.html .
Comments