Gamer's secret weapon for capturing video

Streaming video is one of the greatest facets of the web. Whether it’s a snippet from a favorite show (like True Blood), a fan-made music video, a how-to demonstration, a record of life’s big (or little) events or a film from a renowned (or soon to be renowned) screenwriter, video has become an integral part of most web experiences. Capturing online video for use or reuse, however can present a challenge to bloggers, traditional artists and those not on technology’s bleeding edge. Enter Bandicam.

Bandicam is the secret weapon video gamers have discovered for recording their in-game adventures. This high performance game recorder, video capture and desktop screen capture application doesn’t just record video, it records decent quality video into a file that is significantly smaller than files created by other video applications. This is an extremely important factor if you aren’t running the latest, greatest, fastest and largest computer hardware and software. It’s also essential for online game recording.

The original version of Bandicam was released two years ago, quickly taking the Asian market by storm.  Released globally in 2011, it has become extremely popular among gamers around the world in less than 3 months. Don’t believe it? Just check out the game-play videos making the rounds on YouTube. It has become essential software for online gamers because, although the functions are similar to those of other video capture software, Bandicam is focused and uniquely designed to meet online game user’s needs.

It may be an essential tool for those who role play outside traditional video game and MMORPGs as well. Maker of fan-vids, podcasters and amateur film-editors will also want to check it out. Bandicam records or captures videos from a myriad of places including YouTube, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Skype, video chats and more.

For the technically savvy, Bandicam provides FPS management and video-recording of games and streaming videos. The quality and the small size of the recorded files are key features of Bandicam. It uses DirectX?OpenGL capturing technology to get high quality recoding files, and data compressing technology to make the files small. By minimizing CPU usage during the conversion of streaming video, Bandicam reduces lag time, allowing you to play and record without those annoying stalls.

Still of Jessica from True Blood: Invitation to the Set (S2)

Bandicam also allows users to snap stills from within videos at incredibly high quality, something that may potentially be of greater interest to role players on Twitter because of the wonder avi options it opens up. This image of Jess was taken from the True Blood: Invitation to the Set video on iTunes. It opened seamlessly up in a graphics program (GIMP) and could easily be manipulated.

It isn’t just close-ups that offer incredible quality images either. Bandicam brings the same features to more detailed panoramas like the one of Jason Stackhouse belong. That image was taken from the True Blood: Season 4 “Waiting Sucks” (Jason) video on YouTube.

Still of Jason from the True Blood Waiting Sucks Teaser (S4)

The complete video, directly from YouTube is include here for comparison purposes.

Best of all, at $39  for a single site license, Bandicam is within the budgets of most gamers and role-players. Compared to comparable software like Camtasia ($299) it’s an absolute steal. Bandicam doesn’t offer the video editing capabilities of Camtasia but there are wonderful video editing applications available whose only down fall is the inability for capture high quality video. Like Camtasia, Bandicam allows users to capture high quality desk screen video, with or without a visible cursor, making it easier to show, not just tell friends and fellow role players how to do something. Just like Bandicam did in this video showing how easy the software is to use.

Those who may have more professional ambitions will be pleased to discover Bandicam is developed by Bandisoft, a multimedia company well-known in the online game developer community. Bandisoft provides a business-to-business game capture library, video library and data-compression solutions to many online game companies including NCsoft, Nexon, Tencent, Dragonfly, Eyedentity Games and Maiet Entertainment.

Is Bandicam a must have for role players? No. But. If you want to experiment with video and need a means of capturing great quality video or images online, it is one tool you should really consider.