Xfire: BEST free game video recorder yet?

I love practical problem solving, and one of the most popular questions I get is:

What's the best free video recorder?

I need to be more specific: I don't know of a single catch-all, and even commercial video recorders are notorious for having deplorable weaknesses amidst their shining strengths. (All-'round packages are hard to find, it seems.) The GREAT news, if you need a movie recorder that's:

• FREE!
• For Windows
• For games (i.e., single-player, MMOs, and virtual worlds)

Then I recommend Xfire and WeGame. I've gushed about the latter and even did a video tutorial, but here's the rub: I suggested that my beloved Ravenelle get into videoblogging her Second Life. Alas, WeGame had all manner of problems on her Vista system where sound didn't capture properly. Even though we had sound setup correctly, it produced unpleasant bursts of digital static and didn't work.

That's when I did some googling, and found myself at Xfire, which supports 1,000+ games. What a massive gaming network! They claim to have 11.4+ million registered users, and their forums iz humong0r. I checked Xfire's Second Life area, and looks like there's about 3,000-4,500 daily user hours and 1,000 Residents playing per day. On the whole tho, relatively unknown amongst Residents.

TIME FOR ME TO SPREAD THE GOOD WORD.

Flashback: I first heard of Xfire a couple years ago, when some Resis used it to show off the hours they spent inworld via an embedded badge. I should also be clear that the Xfire client includes IM text + voice chat, and makes it easier to find your friends across different games.

BUT… THE REAL SLOPKNOCKER IS…

The Xfire client (DOWNLOAD HERE) also includes a fully-functional movie recorder! (Began as a beta in early '08.) Watch their quick video tutorial!

• Start Xfire.
• Go to Tools menu > Options > Video tab.
• Setup a video capture hotkey and other settings.
• Start your game.
• Begin recording!

OMG! I didn't set my expectations very high, and was very pleased to note that its quality is exceptional.

How exceptional? Watch the above movie featuring me at a bizarre rodeo, which was recorded at half-size mode — click through if you're on an RSS feed reader and don't see it. There are times when I let voice chat bleed through too, and the results are utterly LOLarious. View full screen to reveal more details.

Even when recording half-size, after uploading movies to their website, chat text is a touch fuzzy but legible. And that's after recording at 1920×1174! On YouTube, that'd get blurred and washed out, even when recording at lower resolutions — I've seen it (and cried) with my video tutorials. Full-size mode is, naturally, EVEN BETTAH. It appears Xfire uses their own codec, e.g.,:

Video: XFR1 960×586 25.00fps 56820Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: PCM 48000Hz mono 768Kbps [Audio 1]

(You can change framerate.)

Xfire appears very optimized, and I'm not surprised since this client is made to work with twitch shooters and other time-sensitive games. After recording several test Second Life clips, I observed how it leaves static elements (like the user interface) alone for greater clarity, while compression artifacts on uploaded videos are more noticeable in areas of motion — expected, and more intelligent than your average codec (which smushes everything nonselectively) . Comparatively, the visual quality appears to be better than WeGame, and audio-wise, I don't get the noticeable occasional pops/clicks I have with WeGame. I'm so relieved.

That previous paragraph gets my enthusiasm exploding for HOW EASY XFIRE MAKES IT TO SHARE VIDEOS ON THE WEB! Like WeGame (or is it the other way around?), after recording a clip with Xfire and a few clicks, you can upload your video to their site. Here's where another "significant smoother" comes in: encoding and uploading time is noticeably faster than WeGame. I'll need to run more tests, but on my system for some reason, WeGame is capped at 50-something KB/sec for uploads, while Xfire makes full use of my upload bandwidth @ 300+ KB/sec. sustained.

This matters in a BIG way. Why?

In the heat of the action, you'll want to share clips FASTER. And that's when I also noticed that after uploading, Xfire seems to present the video instantly, whereas WeGame has some processing time — the longer the video, the more of a delay, which can interrupt a quickblogger's (like me) flow.

Add up those chrono-overheads: encoding + uploading + final publication and Xfire comes ahead. Like I said, more testing to do, and I'd appreciate your relative experiences too.

THE POWER OF ALL THIS: bashing, even busting, the barriers to making movies. Whether it's machinima or vidtuts or video bug reports, showing things as-is is incredibly powerful. As tech ramps up and bandwidth continues to phatten (I can only hope), the truth of this becomes more evident.

If you're hesitant, I need to emphasize that both WeGame and Xfire save movie files to disk so you can edit them in another program, then upload the resulting, rendered output of that.

Xfire's auto-update is also painless: the client checks as it launches, downloads the newest version, then pops open the release notes in a web browser. They've been updating regularly since '04, so they're well-supported.

Things that should be better about Xfire:

• Oddly, there's NO easy embed code for videos (i.e., like every other video-sharing site), meaning you have to dig it out — I have instructions. I contacted Chris Kirmse, the original inventor, and he mentions the simple answer to forthcoming embedding is "yes".
• Doesn't support the Release Candidate or other viewers; games are auto-detected and while I see a manual setup, it doesn't look like I can cleanly add multiple versions of a single title. (I'll write to them about this.)
• No stereo sound. Should be an option.

One more thing: you may be wondering how this compares to pay-for solutions out there, notably FRAPS. To be frank, I'd try Xfire firsthand and see if it fulfills your needs. I also ask: what compelling features are in FRAPS which aren't in Xfire? The less-intrusive overlay which displays FPS in yellow digits in the upper-left may be one, as well as the recorded statistics. Xfire places its in the top-middle of the screen and I don't know if it can be moved. Ravenelle says FRAPS's indicator also lets her know it's on and ready to record (WeGame has a green dot in the upper-left which disappears when recording), so a similar feature would be useful in Xfire.

Aside from that, at least from my needs, it's not clear to me what distinct advantages FRAPS has. If you're concerned about having your time spent in a game tracked, Xfire does have privacy options so you can hide yourself. Furthermore, FRAPS (after initially noticing this in 2006) is still unable to capture special cursors like Second Life's click actions (which I'm so fond of), whereas Xfire does this fine.

All that being said, I'm still going to use Techsmith Camtasia to record my video tutorials, in part because it has cursor and click highlighting features which I find rather instructional. But for quick clips and fun one-offs, I'll keep firing up Xfire and sharing more adventures from my Second Life!

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