Hey, I was wondering if there was a good, preferably free or inexpensive program out there to record game footage to upload to the internet. I tried FRAPS but it used up like 1 gig space within a minute and more than halved my framerate. I see plenty of HD videos running on Youtube with no loss in framerate, and apparently relatively small file size, so if anyone knows the programs and procedures to go about this I would greatly appreciate it if you could share it with me. Thanks. 

Fraps is really the best way to record PC game footage. The reason the file that Fraps outputs is so large is because it puts out raw AVI files which gives you pretty much 1:1 quality. YouTube videos that have high framerates are recordings of games on high-powered computers as it's impossible to record gameplay footage without a loss in performance. If you want to save on your framerate, drop some of the settings in Fraps like lowering the recording framerate and resolution. 

Recording video game footage will severely impact performance and eat away GBs no matter what program you use. The only performance-loss free option is to have a piece of hardware (IE; Another computer) do the recording but that's a no go for 99% of people.

I think a lot of people (casual game filmers) just use FRAPs.  Probably knock down their resolution and have beasty CPUs in some cases.  That's what I use anyways, doesn't actually hurt the framerate THAT much usually...  Sure FRAPs creates massive files, but real time compression would absolutely kill framerates.  In a few more CPU gens it should be practical though.
 
When I recorded Giant Bomb's Quake TNT I had over 38GB in uncompressed video.  Depending on what compression levels I used I could knock a 4GB file down to 200MB (for near-invisible compression), or much smaller if I didn't really care about the clip.  I use Super and VirtualDub (with codec installs separate in the case of VirtualDub).
 
Real, professional video game recorders use expensive video capture hardware.  Beyond spending hundreds if not thousands for good HD video capture, these things can be an INCREDIBLE pain to work with.  I'm not even willing to buy a $100 SD capture for my consoles just yet.

I would also like to know this infomation. I don't wanna pay $35 or whatever for FRAPS!

" Fraps is really the best way to record PC game footage. The reason the file that Fraps outputs is so large is because it puts out raw AVI files which gives you pretty much 1:1 quality. YouTube videos that have high framerates are recordings of games on high-powered computers as it's impossible to record gameplay footage without a loss in performance. If you want to save on your framerate, drop some of the settings in Fraps like lowering the recording framerate and resolution.  "

Another problem that I have with FRAPS is it only appears to record 30 seconds. If I want to record a whole match in BFBC2 for example, I think I would need something else. Is there any way to get by that in FRAPS, or is there another software I can use?

Have you tried setting the affinity for FRAPS to one cpu core, and the affinity for the game to the remaining cores only?
 
edit: also are you recording to a different physical drive than the one the game is running from?

" I would also like to know this infomation. I don't wanna pay $35 or whatever for FRAPS! "

" @Geno said:

Another problem that I have with FRAPS is it only appears to record 30 seconds. If I want to record a whole match in BFBC2 for example, I think I would need something else. Is there any way to get by that in FRAPS, or is there another software I can use?

You need the full version of FRAPs.  Along with the ability to record longer than 30 seconds, it'll give you 1/2 resolution filming and framerate choices. "

@Geno: you can use EZVID free screen recorder & video editor for YouTube. the output is not really big of a file size and totally free and very easy to use.. mine, i used it a lot as it's really a great alternative. i tried fraps before but aside from big file size, it is not free. you need to pay to use all its functions.. so better have some alternative options.

FRAPS, it's always FRAPS.

I use Bandicam for this type of stuff though, where I need to capture part of a screen.

EDIT

I just realised that this thread is nearly two years old, and that I've been enticed to reply by a spambot. I stand by my words, however.