WinUAE avi Output: What's the best codec???

[Glaucus]

Hey there!

I want to capture some game action into an .avi file. WinUAE (I have the latest installed) offers a nice selection of codecs. My intent is to simply make a short, and small (in size) movie of a game I'm sorta developing. The codecs are:

Cinepak Codec by Radius
Intel Indeo video 4.5
Intel IYUV codec
Microsoft Video 1
XviD MPEG-4 Codec
Intel I.263 Video Driver 2.55.0
Full Frames

Obviously, Full Frames is not what I want. Any suggestions as to which would be best for a full-screen arcade style game?

  - Mike

[Tomas]

I would say xvid, if you have enough cpu power that is.. if you have the space, then you might want to try one of the non lossy formats like huffyuv.. you will get alot better quality if you reencode from a non lossy format, than capturing directly to a codec like xvid and will offcourse use less cpu.  

[weirdami]

See if you can get VDOWave. It's pretty good. I used to to squish some big 5 minute video into around 5 megs. I figure if NASA uses it, it can't be all bad. :-)

The video is here, if you want an example of something using the codec. I used a quality setting that made a small file, but also allowed the text in the video (including the clock) to be read. 5 megs was acceptable. I think the file was 600+ megs originally. I can't get the CD it's on to work to check for sure, though. The point is that it was a huge file and I reduced it to 5 megs. :-)

That link is to an angelfire site, so just warning you of ads and things.

[Glaucus]

Okay, I'll give the lossless output a shot. I did however notice that WinUAE's response goes down dramatically while recording, even when I drop the Playback Rate to 20FPS and using no compression. I suppose my 1.5Ghz AthlonXP isn't fast enough to emulate AND to store the full-screen AVIs at the same time.  :-(

  - Mike