My Thoughts on Recording Software

This post is essentially my thoughts on different recording software and programs, just to give people advice if they ever want to record their screen for whatever reason.

First up is Fraps, the recording program I use, Fraps is the overall best non-professional recording program I've been able to find. There's really nothing better than Fraps save the hundred-dollar recording programs that companies use to make high definition in-game footage. That's the good stuff out of the way, now to the bad...
Even though Fraps is the all around best, it's still not perfect, it costs money, ($37 to be exact,) so if you don't want to spend the money, Fraps is out of the running. Also, you need to have a decent computer to play a game while using Fraps or else the game will lag, (Fraps is mainly made for recording games,) so if your computer can hardly handle the game itself, Fraps will only make it worse. Other than that Fraps is pretty good overall, easy to use, records in good quality, and, most importantly in my opinion, records smoothly.
MY OVERALL RATING: 9/10

Next is ZD Soft Screen Recorder, I only tried the demo version of this software, personally I don't like it, it's not as good as Fraps in my opinion because it causes games to lag when I use it, and I've got a pretty good computer. The recording ends up just a laggy as the game when I played it, and ZD screen recorder doesn't even have all the features Fraps does. But the thing that turned me off the most about ZD recorder is that it's not as good as Fraps, and yet it costs $39 for the full version compared to Fraps' $37 price, sure it's only a $2 difference, but who wants to pay more for a recording program that isn't as good? (Of course that's just my opinion, if you happen to like ZD Screen Recorder I'm not saying you shouldn't get it. If you want to give both ZD Recorder and Fraps a shot, both have free trial versions.)
MY OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10

Third is a program called Hypercam, Hypercam 3 costs 29.95 euro to register, but it does have a trial version that is essentially unlimited. It just puts a small watermark in the upper right corner of the recording saying that it's unregistered. Hypercam 3 is decent, but far from the best, as it's laggy on larger screens and doesn't have great video quality, also, the audio and video often de-sync when I use Hypercam. Not the best, but, if you don't mind the watermark, at least it's free!
MY OVERALL RATING: 7/10

Fourth up is CamStudio, CamStudio is completely free, but is flawed. It doesn't have the best framerate and, like Hypercam, doesn't work well with small screens. It is open source though, just in case you want to optimize it.
OVERALL RATING: 6/10

Fifth is a program called WebCam Max. Webcam Max is not meant to be a recording program as much as a virtual webcam device, but it has full recording capabilities. The problem with WebCam Max is the same problem that plagued HyperCam and CamStudio, bad framerate. On smaller screens, WebCam Max works decently, but on fullscreen it's terrible. However, the nice thing about WebCam Max is it's effects, WebCam Max is loaded with different interesting effects that you can add to your video to spice it up, (maybe even enough to get viewers to look past the crappy quality.) Now I understand that this program wasn't made for recording as much as video chats and streaming, but it seems to suck just as much when chatting or streaming too.
MY OVERALL RATING: 5.5/10

Finally, the sixth is the good old camera/webcam. The advantages of using one of these is that you don't have to pay anything assuming you already have one to use for other purposes, and that you don't need to deal with making sure that the program is recording, or that you have enough space left on your hard drive. Camera recording is very simple, the only problem is that the video quality can never measure up to that of a recording program. It's a good alternative to recording programs if you prefer that.
MY OVERALL RATING: 8/10