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It turned out that capturing video from the screen is a hard task on the Mac. I have a small game running in the simulator and want to make a screencast of the gameplay for youtube. Since it's a fast-paced scroller game, video must be recorded at 60 fps to look good.

I know the actual video on youtube for example is just 24 to 30 fps, but each such slow frame is blended with another.

When capturing the simulator at a lower frame rate than 60 fps the result is jagged a lot since every frame is razor sharp with no blending.

I tried a couple of Mac screen recorders but none of them were able to capture 60fps video from the simulator, and the frames in the resulting video looked like if the app took plenty of screenshots and stiffed them together into a video container.

But since there are great demo videos on youtube showing fast-paced gameplay of iOS apps without just recording the screen with a video camera, I wonder what kind of application they use to get a smooth screen capture.

Hopefully someone who already went through this problem can point out some solutions.

Proud Member
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3 Answers3

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I've had good results screen recording from the simulator using SnapZ Pro X from Ambrosia software:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

One problem that you're likely to have is that the simulator only simulates iOS's OpenGL graphics in software, so unless you have a really powerful Mac, it's likely that the simulator won't be able to run your game at 60fps anyway.

It's possible that the videos you've seen used the HDMI video out on the iPhone to mirror the screen from the device into a video capture card on the computer. That would likely perform much better because the Mac wouldn't have to both generate and record the graphics simultaneously.

Nick Lockwood
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I remember watching a video of the Aquaria guys talking about how they recorded their gameplay videos. Essentially the game recorded the input from the controller/keyboard while the game was played normally. Then they could play back the game they had just played but one frame at a time, with each frame being rendered out to a file as it went. Then all those frames are composited together and bam, a full 60fps video with perfectly rendered graphics. Bit overkill but it's a nice solution.

Gavin Clifton
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A program that is able to record at 60 fps is Screenflick.

darklon
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