Capture specially encoded videos?

Question

I've some videos (avi formatted) that can only be opened by its own software (a game which has special codecs, as far as I understand).

I want them to open in any video player. Is there a way to record these videos?

I tried a few destop recorders but they failed to capture the video (non-windowed regions stayed as black).

Answer 1

Have you tried GSpot to try and identify the codec? If it is publicly available then you should be able to grab the codec. A large number of codecs are available in some of the packages to be found at FileHippo.

Answer 2

I don't know how well it goes with played videos, but for games, there are specialized programs to record what is on screen.

• Xfire is originally an in-game messenger, but it can also record videos, and is free to use (this requires the game to be recognized by them, though, so it has to be quite known).
• Fraps is also able to record videos from games, but the free version will have watermarked and shorter videos. You can try with it, though, and see if it works.

(Disclaimer: the original question is not specific to videogames, but since it is about it, I provide answer more likely to work with them.)

Answer 3

CamStudio

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

EDIT2

WeGame.com
This is for uploading screencasts of video games, but they also provide a free Windows software for recording games on the computer. Just start the software, launch your game and hit record.

Taksi
Game recording software similar to FRAPS but is open source and free. Can capture game screenshots or video clips of running games but without audio, in full screen mode with hotkeys.

Game Cam
Free software for making movies of your favorite games on Windows. It will automatically search for games installed on your computer and will create an individual recording profile of every game. Game Cam can capture game screen shots, videos in AVI as well as audio.

EDIT1

This ACA Capture Pro article explains the problem and contains a solution:
How to re-record other video files playing on the screen

Sometime people want to record playing video with ACA Capture Pro other movies and games, that they see playing on the web or in Microsoft Media Player, RealMedia RealPlayer, Apple's Quick Time Player etc.. The problem they face is that often these players use video overlay for faster, smoother playback of the movie. A video overlay is invisible to Windows screen capture software like ACA Capture Pro, because it is handled by a special video hardware. ACA Capture Pro will then record only a solid color block (usually pink, blue or black, the so called "overlay key color"), which is all Windows sees at the place where the movie is played. But all is not lost, the overlay use for playback may be sometimes turned off, at least temporarily for recording.

The article offers the following solutions:

• Method 1: Disable "hardware acceleration" from your video player.
• Method 2: Disable "Hardware acceleration" from your display properties.