Bandicam Game Capture Software

For a long time I have been using OBS to record my gaming sessions (I do not stream) and whilst it does work it has never been perfect. Bandicam is a licensed recording software (free trial if unregistered) which I decided to try just to see how it was for my purposes and the results were so good that I decided to buy the software.

Bandicam Features

The usual, fullscreen capture of an application, specific area, webcam capture, HDMI capture device and hardware encoding using Intel / Nvidia built in hardware encoder from supported CPUs / GFX cards. Bandicam also comes with an onscreen FPS counter which changes from green to red when you start recording.

What I didn’t like with OBS

Performance impact: OBS when running causes the GPU to idle at 14-20% usage which is due to how OBS captures the screen. Choppy playback / stuttering gameplay: OBS requires a more consistent framerate to achieve smoother playback and somestimes causes the game to stutter when playing. Audio sync issue with Mpeg4 recordings when using Intel Quicksync. None of these issues are present with Bandicam and my gameplay whilst recording is smooth along with the actual recordings when played back.

Bandicam Battlefield 4 Test

The recording came out well and once upscaled to 1440p for Youtube it still remains quite decent. Overall I’m pleased with the performance of Bandicam and will be using it for all my game capture purposes. The only issue is sometimes Bandicam does not detect the game when starting / stopping multiple times and requires the Bandicam software to be closed and re-opened.