Recording Media Players and Games

Many different media players including Windows Media Player use the Microsoft ® DirectX ® technology. This technology completely disables screen recording. To capture DirectX surfaces (i.e. to record videos of media players) using My Screen Recorder, you have to disable hardware acceleration. Some game applications may not work when hardware acceleration is turned off. You can always re-enable acceleration after recording. 

If Windows Media Player is running, My Screen Recorder will automatically detect it and suggest turning off hardware acceleration.

To turn off hardware acceleration in Windows XP:

1. Right-click on the Desktop, and click Properties.
2. Select the Settings tab, and click Advanced.
3. Select the Troubleshooting tab and move the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.

To turn off hardware acceleration in Windows Vista:

1. Right-click on the Desktop and choose Personalize.
2. Click on Display Settings.
3. in the Display Settings window, click Advanced Settings.
4. Switch to the Troubleshoot tab.
5. Click Change Settings.  
6. Reduce hardware acceleration.                                                                                        

Media Players and games display very high motion graphics and can take up a lot of CPU resources which may produce blocky screen recordings. A high-end computer is required to handle both the graphics and the screen recording simultaneously.

You can smooth screen recording significantly by:

1. Increasing the frame rate to 30 so every frame in the graphic is correctly recorded. Sometimes even recording at maximum available frame rate will not give smooth recordings since capturing at such high frame rate requires a very large amount of CPU resources.
2. Decreasing the area of the screen to be recorded. If the software displays graphics in a window then use region recording to record only that portion of the software.
3. Decreasing screen resolution and color depth.

My Screen Recorder can be set to automatically disable hardware acceleration whenever you start recording.  Click on the link below for instructions.

Note that Windows Vista does not allow My Screen Recorder to disable hardware acceleration.  You may have to do so manually.  If the necessary options are not present for manual disabling, check with the maker of your PC for a video driver upgrade.

You may need to upgrade your computer's version of DirectX.  To download DirectX 8.0 or higher, use the following link: 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

Related Topics

• Disabling Hardware Acceleration