From 2016s2 release-notes   
Video Capture

A new video capture system has been added to the Sim based on the D3DGear capture engine.
By default, the hotkey "Ctrl-Alt-Shift-V" will toggle video capture on and off.
Video is saved to the [documents]/iRacing/videos/ folder.

By default video is captured at 720p and 30 fps using the WMV video container.
You can change the default video quality and format by editing the [Video] section of the "app.ini" file.

Unfortunately, the Windows 8 and Windows 10 Metro Player cannot load video for Windows codecs, so the video captured by this tool will need to be played in Windows Media Player or a third party video player.

Windows Media Player (WMP) cannot handle the AVI2 (OpenML) file format.
This format allows AVI files to grow beyond the 2 GB file limit.
You will need to use a third party player such as Video LAN Player (VLC) or MPC-HC.

A new screen capture system has also been added along with the video capture feature.
By default, hitting "Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S" will save a screenshot of the sim to [documents]/iRacing/screenshots/ folder.

Due to a limitation of our control handling code we cannot trigger a screenshot or toggle video capture when a dialog is opened.
This effectively makes it impossible to take a screenshot of the garage or settings dialogs.
However, you can get around this limitation by starting to capture video before you enter the Garage or other options screens and then stopping the video capture once you exit that screen. We are looking into ways to work around this limitation.

You can disable the loading of our video capture module by setting "videoCaptureEnabled=0" under the [Video] section in the "app.ini" file.


2016 season 3 release notes:
Video Capture
- Timestamp will no longer appear on screen captures.
- A new video capture library has been added.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing some members from utilizing this feature.

2016 season 2 patch 1 release notes:
- Video Capture will now be defaulted to disabled.
- Video Capture can now be enabled and disabled via a Settings option.
- Users are now able to select "Fullscreen" when capturing video.
- A new video capture library has been added to fix an issue with DX11 and XSplit.
 

Posts by iRacing staff (David T)
in thread "Video Capture - How to use, tips , and tricks"

12.03.2016:
The defaults for video capture are designed to not kill your hard drive. This is really a beginner feature, we figured anyone who is already computer savvy can work out how to use Fraps or OBS, so everything is setup for a beginner by default. You can edit the app.ini file and make the following changes:

[Video]
screenshotFileFormat=0              ; Screenshot file format, 0 = png, 1 = jpg, 2 = bmp
videoCaptureEnabled=1              ; Set to 0 to disable loading of video capture module
videoCaptureMic=0                      ; Set to 1 to capture audio from your microphone
videoFileFormat=1                       ; Video encoder container, 1 = wmv, 2 = avi2, 3 = avi
videoFramerate=1                       ; Video framerate, 0 = 60 fps, 1 = 30 fps
videoImgSize=2                           ; Video max dimensions, 0 = auto, 1=1920x1080, 2=1280x720, 3=854x480

 
If you set videoImageSize to 0 then we will capture your full screen at full resolution, no black bars. That has the potential to create very large files!

Also, the default video container, wmv, is not very efficient, but it is supported by the build in windows media player. You can switch to the AVI2 format to reduce your file size and cpu load, but you will need a third party player to view the video.

I put in code today that will let you disable our video capture from within the settings dialog. That should make it simple to bypass our video capture if you want to use your own. That should go out in the next maintenance release, or the one after the next.

Finally, if you are having troubles getting this to work with DX11 and you are on windows 7 then try installing the latest windows 7 platform update https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36805 We are working on a more permanent solution to this issue right now, but that should get you going. This message was edited 2 time(s). Last update was at 3/12/2016 8:23 a.m.

12.03.2016:
If there is a strong interest in triple screen video capture at a reduced resolution then I can look into it, however anything I do is going to look odd compared to just capturing at the full resolution and then downscaling/clipping the video later.

I can't currently capture only the center monitor, although we would like to support that at some point in the future. However you can switch out the app.ini when creating videos, or run iRacing in a window when doing video capture, and set your window to whatever resolution you want.

13.03.2016:
Q: different storage directory?  A:
We don't have that option, but you can use a symlink to move your whole iracing directory to a hard drive.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/
It looks like windows can also move the whole documents folder to another hard drive.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm

I don't think it matters when you do it. just FYI, in the current version, alt-enter does not always go back to the original screen and or mode. We added some changes and fixed this in development, alt-enter should work better next season than it does now (we disabled DX11/DXGI's automatic handling of alt-enter and now handle alt-enter ourselves -- but it is currently still in testing at this point)..

In development right now we took over the handling for alt-enter and now do it ourselves, and it functions much better.
We also detect if the sim drops out of full-screen and will adjust it back to its "windowed" settings automatically. So I think some of this will be improved soon.

From 2016s3 release-notes
– Fixed the Sim's UI to correctly toggle between fullscreen and windowed cursor modes when the Sim toggles between fullscreen and windowed modes.

From 2016s2 patch 2 release-notes
– The Alt+Tab functionality of the Sim has been adjusted due to several issues that could occur, such as crashing during exiting or notifications causing the screen to go completely black. The new changes work as follows:
- - The Sim may be toggled between Full-Screen Mode and Windowed Mode by pressing Alt+Enter.
- - When running in Full-Screen Mode, Alt+Tab toggles the Sim into Windowed Mode.
- - When running in Windowed Mode, Alt+Tab switches the active app focus as normal.
- - The Sim will not automatically toggle back into Full-Screen Mode when regaining active app focus. Be sure to use Alt+Enter to toggle back into Full-Screen Mode from Windowed Mode.
- - The Sim may automatically switch from Full-Screen Mode to Windowed Mode for several reasons including certain program notifications, or DXGI detecting another window suddenly overlapping the Sim window. A registry setting, "HKCU/Software/Microsoft/DXGI/DisableFullscreenWatchdog", may modify some of this DXGI behavior. Experiment at your own risk!
- - If you experience problems with Full-Screen Mode, a highly recommended alternative is to use Windowed Mode with a full-screen sized borderless window. This may be configured during the auto-configuration or using the Graphics Options screen inside the Sim.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here.

The full-screen and windowed check boxes are for controlling how you want the sim to be launched -- and that's all they are for. If you want the sim to launch full-screen, set it up for full screen mode. If you want the sim to launch windowed, set it up for windowed mode. Editing them while running doesn't really do anything much until next launch, it's much better to only set those things via the auto-config anyways.

DX9 uses the default alt-tab behavior for DX9 and earlier versions of DirectX. The new (current) behavior is the default behavior for DX11, DX11 is different than DX9 and is layered on DXGI, and DXGI is why it is different - that's how it works! We didn't design alt-tab and how it works with full-screen DX11 applications, microsoft did.

We attempted in the previous build to extend it slightly, to make it look more like DX9 - but it was very broken on some PCs. Our extensions to the default behavior were to auto-toggle back to full-screen sometimes, and to auto-minify sometimes. But that didn't work out as released. So we had to undo those changes (at least temporarily) to avoid serious problems for some PCs. Just because the previous version worked acceptably on some (your) PCs, doesn't mean it worked for everyone. The removal of our extensions to do the auto-toggle to full-screen and to auto-minify was necessary for some customers to run the sim in full screen mode at all.

We are still looking at how to improve the default behavior of DXGI without causing issues - to make it easier to understand what it happening and make it easier to operate.


Here is some advice.

1) If you are having issues, don't use full screen at all. Use the auto-config and configure a full screen sized borderless window and use that. That's how many DX11 apps work these days due to these issues. It's called "fake full screen mode" and it usually works great with DX11.

2) If you want to run full screen, use the auto-config, configure for the full-screen mode you want, and don't mess with the settings in sim for graphics mode. If you ever drops out of full screen while you are driving, you should be able to tell, because the window should suddenly have a border and caption on it (and be grateful the auto-minify didn't kick in on you!). Some reasons it might drop out of full screen is if you alt-tab (it has to give up the screen in that case, that hows it works) of if DXGI detects an overlapping window on it, or possibly due to certain types of notifications on some operating systems. All three of these things happen outside of our control.

3) If you want to run windowed, then run windowed (or borderless windowed) and never toggle into full screen and you won't get confused about if it is currently in a window or not.


This message was edited 1 time(s). Last update was at 4/15/2016 11:26 p.m.

(Ed: noted elsewhere, set reduceFramerateWhenFocusLost to 0 in app.ini for possible improvement)