Hi all,

First off, let me say this is **NOT** a "complaint" - merely an observation and perhaps the devs may put this issue on a "to-do" list somewhere. However it is by no means "urgent".

In general, Bandicam performs very well, and it is my video recorder of choice in my games.

However lately I have noticed that Bandicam seem to cause lag in Skyrim, meaning the screen seems to "skip ahead a few frames" and the only reason Skyrim is perhaps different from other games, is that I have heaps of "HD mods" in it, meaning the textures are 2048x2048, 4096x4096 etc instead of the "usual" 1024x1024 for "high" setting. That means when recording is turned on, the game itself is "skipping frames".

Naturally the captured video reflects this same skipping as well since the game itself skipped frames.

Emphasis here is that it is NOT the captured video skipping frames, it's Bandicam itself appears to cause the lag in the game.

When the game skips frames, the FPS counter still shows the usual figures - 45 to 60 when it is happening. I am recording at 30fps at 80q. I did try to switch it to CBR with 30Mbps (the average that Bandicam seems to use), but still does not help

I then switched to a competing product, FRAPS, and recorded the same sequence again, and the game did not lag nor skip frames.

So in the meantime, I'll use a competitor's product for Skyrim and use Bandicam for all my other games.

Hi FoxTwo,

We think you checked the "Set FPS limit" option (No. 5)


Please uncheck the option and try again.

Hi,

No, my FPS Limit is OFF (number 5 in your picture). I don't even turn on Vertical Sync in my games so that they won't be limited by 60 frames per sec from the monitor. I did look at the Bandicam FAQ and guides, and tried lowering quality to 50q too.. same problem exists even so.

I also did turn OFF and ON the option that says Skip Recording When Frames Not Updated. It had no effect on this issue.

A youtube link here can show you what I mean -> http://youtu.be/gUDFFoMJ_pM

Also I may have used the word "lag" incorrectly... the game does not lag (as in, does not "freeze" or slow down) but the frames just skipped. It's normally not too distracting but during combat it can be a lot of frames skipped, and the enemy will appear to "warp" to a new location suddenly. That is the difference between dying/reload or winning

Also, the video shown is already after I had removed the HD mods, so my textures are now at 1024x1024. The frame skipping was worse previously.

So I don't think it's a CPU load problem... probably a GPU/DirectX related issue with Bandicam.

As I said, not a big problem. Not urgent, but something you may want to investigate when you get all the critical fixes out of the way.

Bandicam records and compresses the video at the same time.
So, if the recording target is bigger than 1080p, the frame can be skipped because of the CPU/GPU load problem. We will try to optimize it.

If you use 'Motion JPEG and PCM' codec, you can slightly reduce the problem.

Thank you for your time and YouTube video.

If I may chime in, Bandicam compresses on-the-fly much more than FRAPS (which is why the file sizes are so much smaller). If your system is not able to handle the higher compression while playing, you can use less taxing codecs (all available within Bandicam), such as MJPEG (as Bandi said) or even YUV or RGB (but the filesizes will be just as big as FRAPS and bigger).

Another codec that worked well in my own testing was the UT video codec (YUV422), just do a web search for "ut video codec". It is slightly more compressed than the FRAPS1 codec, but not as laggy and uses multicores well. I have recently done some testing with x264/AVC also, with 'fast decode' and other optimizations on and found it performed great. It has more capabilities (being MPEG-4 part10) than MPEG-1,etc. but is not as great for editing as something like MJPEG.

Good luck - maybe come back to let us know what worked!

Hi guys,

Thank you for the suggestions. I will try them out with Bandicam and see if they help

EDIT: - Motion JPeg still has noticeable frame skipping for me, for some reason. Hence I have explored using x264 vfw and the UT Video codec. I have good experience with x264 using ultrafast profile and fast decode enabled (hex motion estimation, range 16 pixels). Will try different CQP values later to see which I prefer.

UT Video codec 420 works but 422 doesn't, and the filesizes does seem to be the same as FRAPS so it is another option handy to have around.

Thanks again for the suggestions. I think I will alternate between the UT codec and the x264 to see which gives better performance in further sessions.