Video capturing, Unity and laptops Thread

Hey, we're making a multiplayer game, it's not heavily demanding on performance but we've had some trouble recording footage. I've found I am able to record and stream Hearthstone (that is also made in Unity) using fraps, but fps go down when I try it on my game. Is it related to the fact that I'm trying to do it on a laptop?
What software do you use for capturing footage? Any tips?

Our game is Rumpus, you can find it here:

Indiedb.com

My recommendation, OBS (Open Broadcast Software). It's free and effective.

It has modes for recording game footage. You might have to tweak the setting a bit to get the results you want.

As for performance. Being on a laptop isn't a problem per say, but there are going to be certain bottlenecks that you're more likely to run into on a laptop. It's going to hard to get into specifics here, but generally speaking video recording is very CPU intensive, as it has to compress the video. There are other bottlenecks that can cause problems, but CPU is the most common.

Generally speaking, you're going to have to make a trade off between video quality, file size, and performance. Since you want performance to run the game, and you don't want the video to look like a grainy mess, you're probably going to end up with a large file. That problem can be fixed by compressing the video after the fact.

I have been using xSplit. It is a bit heavy as is, but I was able to record Unity with it just fine. Thing is, it is paid but there is a free version you can use. Only the broadcaster version would work with Unity as the game recording version wouldn't pick up Unity (if I recall correctly).

Like SabreXT mentioned, it is dependent on the laptop specs. But I would try to close all process down from the Task Manager except for Unity and the recording program before you start recording that way you might gain more performance.

You could try jing, it is free and it is what camtasia use ut recording on a laptop might be the issue.