DOSBox Game Recording

[ikrananka]

I'm looking for some help with how best to record an old DOS game that I am running in DOSBox. The game itself has a resolution of 640x480, however there are introductory videos played at the beginning of the game and also cut scene videos played at intervals through the game which are in a much lower resolution, 320x200, which is also a slightly different aspect ratio to the main gameplay of 640x480.

I have tried the full range of available DOSBox render engines, but have found that "opengl" not only provides the nicest looking cut scene videos, but also allows for me to try Bandicam's "Game Recording Mode". The problem with using this mode is:

• 1. When each video clip finishes playing Bandicam appears to think that the source has terminated. Recording stops, but then restarts when the next clip starts playing (which is immediately after the first). This means that I end up with multiple video files but these are truncated and not the entire sequence I was trying to record.
  2. While the cut scene videos are recorded in the correct aspect ratio, the main game is not and is stretched.

I have been experimenting with recording the DOSBox session in a window, and t seems to work okay, but this means I have to play the game in a much smaller window which destroys the immersion of the gameplay. Note that the game runs in full screen on my monitor filling the screen. I really just want to get the recorded videos matching what I see on screen.

I have tried the DOSBox built-in recording function but this fails in this game and is unable to record the cut scene videos. Plus the recorded quality is not as good as what I see on screen.

Any suggestion would be most welcome.

[FoxTwo]

The only thing I can think of is to tell Bandicam to record in desktop mode (rectangle). Specify it to be "fullscreen" then when you play your DOSbox game you can record. It basically records everything on your monitor.

[ikrananka]

Thank you - your answer made me focus on using the desktop recording mode and I eventually found a working setup. I had to change my desktop resolution to a 4:3 aspect ratio so that the "fullscreen" recording captured just the game. I also changed the render engine in DOSBox to "ddraw" with no scaler set ("overlay" also worked well). This resulted in me being able to play and record the game in fullscreen while capturing the cut scene videos and gameplay exactly as they were seen on my monitor.

[ikrananka]

Spoke too soon!!! I still have one issue. When I record the video cut scenes with Bandicam, the sound occasionally crackles. If I stop recording and play the cut scene then the sound is perfect. It definitely only occurs when Bandicam is recording.

Can anyone help?

[Bandicam Company]

Hello ikrananka,

Regarding your sound issue, please refer to the following solutions.

1. Please uninstall and install your sound card driver.
2. Please try the solutions on the linked page.
https://www.bandicam.com/faqs/robot-ech ... one-noise/

Thank you.

[ikrananka]

After further investigation I found that the crackling was also apparent when recording DOSBox audio regardless of the recording software, e.g. Audacity, with the sole exception being audio recording using the actual DOSBox application itself. I also started to get crackling when playing back MIDI music using the games interface. This led me to searching the internet for terms related to this and found the solution.

In case others have a similar issue, I solved it by adjusting one of the DOSBox "Mixer" settings. I increased the "Prebuffer" setting from 10 to 50 and the stuttering/crackling stopped completely during recording and also during MIDI playback..

[Bandicam Company]

Hello ikrananka,

Thank you for your feedback.
We're glad to hear that you've found the solution.


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[Updated]
Some people solved the problem by replacing the original ddraw.dll with https://github.com/rdoeffinger/xwa_ddraw_d3d11