I`m having hard time with this issue.. I`m trying to record with FRAPS and my framerate goes to like 5fps/s when I`m recording. I`ve tried adjusting the settings in FRAPS, I`ve tried switching the output folder to my external hd, no help. Always such a lagfest that it`s impossible to record anything.

I've never had this problem with FRAPS. Could it be the machine. No offense if you have some ubber machine. Maybe post those specs too. I know FRAPS draws memory.

e6600 dual core overclocked to 3ghz
gtx 460 1gb
4gb ram
win 7

But the game is running smoothly before FRAPS comes in, what could cause it?

I prefer Bandicam. I don't know why you're lagging though. It could be your computer.

lower resolution to about 720p and limit framerate to 30fps.

It is not your specs that is wrong, but may be due to lack of a SSD. Fraps requires alot.

Yeah it just confuses me a bit because the game runs smooth until I start recording. Could screen capturing really eat so much resources?

-

SSD? Ummm.. Isn`t SSD a different type of HD or am I wrong?

My guess is that if you record while you're already having quite a hard time running the game itself (which you are with that rig), and you make your hard drive run both the game while recording you'll get a huge performance hit. I recently upgraded my entire system, and now I'm running Skyrim on an SSD while I record my FRAPS to my HDD, so my HDD only has to perform 1 task instead of 2. I can record on ultra with barely any performance decrease. If that's not it my guess goes to the CPU not being able to handle it though. Just saying that it's normal for someone with your rig, I used to have something similar and FRAPSing high quality footage was a nightmare.

An SSD is a storage device just like an HDD, but significantly faster , however they are smaller in size so not good for recording video. They're mainly to drastically improve loading times.

Yeah that`s most likely it I quess, altough I`m still surprised that screen capturing actually requires a good rig.
I didn`t expect recording not to work, it didn`t even cross my mind. Since the beginning of my hours in Skyrim I`ve been creating new save game files solely with the purpose of making a compilation video of all the beautiful places/sceneries I`ve come across, they would had kind of told the story of my character`s travels. Now when I tried to start making the video, it seems that all of those 150 planned save games were for nothing.. such a disappointment.

Ugh, that's a real bummer. Try recording on half-size instead of full size, and otherwise lowering the resolution a bit. I'm sure you can find a sweetspot where it still looks OK

Yep fraps only allows full-size or half-size, half-size is too small and full apparently doesn`t work. Total let-down if it`s really about the computing power which I find so hard to swallow. My system can run Skyrim on 1080p ultra+forced ao+tweaked ini with somewhat playable fps (in my opinion 25fps outdoors/35fps indoors is fully playable but some people would argue), but can`t record a fkn video omfg. Going to sleep now but tomorrow I`m going to google for different recording softwares in hope of a miracle save for my was-supposed-to-be-epic project.

Get a card like the intensity pro, stick it in a separate computer with a decent cpu and HD, and then you can record your gameplay without any slowdowns or lowered resolutions.

I don't suppose Skyrim has a "demo recorder" built-in? For those not familiar, the idea behind a demo recorder is that instead of trying to record every frame of screen graphics, it records data about what happened in-game, then later, you can "replay" the demo and have the game engine render the graphics to a file (in non-real-time if necessary) instead of on-screen. It's a technique some of the older FPS's used - I think it's supposed to be a smaller performance hit than trying to grab and record every high-resolution frame of graphics.

I don't think your cpu is strong enough to handle the game and fraps