So, question. What's the best way to record stuff in Dosbox - using the program's built in video capture stuff, or using something external?

I want to record some stuff from a game for a video but dunno what the best way to do that is.

I want to try that, so people can see me getting my ass kicked in pirates.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=23069

built in or fraps.

YMMV, just try a few.
Some people love Fraps, some love DXTory, D3DGear, MSI Afterburner, etc etc etc.
I tried a lets play a long time ago with a friend of mine and the built-in recorder was horrible whilst Fraps worked fine.
Tried the same thing at home, both were terrible and I used another application (can't remember the name).
A hardware solution should be pretty good though, but pricey.

... that thread is almost five years old. There must be -other- options available by now.

Also, I thought Fraps only captures full screen stuff.

But fraps is still updated (atleast last since 2013), it's still good and the built in function could also suffice.
I am sure there would be other options as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJTtCyjThOM&index=2&list=PL-UtQHeTchKGjhYmE4Sw-aGDPMPm8FjcA

It may depend what exactly you want to capture. Since I wanted to capture also the Roland MT-32 music (played with Munt), CamStudio freeware did the trick for me. I tried built-in DOSBox capture as well, but I don't think it recorded the MT-32 music at all, and I think I wasn't happy with the video quality either (I don't quite recall what quality issue I had with it, maybe the video was a bit fuzzy for some reason, maybe I had some wrong setting).

It was a bit tricky do to though also with CamStudio. In the end I made it so that the DOSBox game was running in window (not fullscreen), and I defined with a frame pixel-perfectly that CamStudio would capture only inside the window, cutting the window borders out. That way I didn't have to crop the videos afterwards, cutting the borders out afterwards. This way I could avoid having to re-encode the videos a second time (before putting them to Youtube), as I presume that could lower the quality.

Those videos are a bit jerky (low framerate) as my point was to record mostly the music, not so much the gameplay.

I didn't try FRAPS as I preferred to try an unrestricted freeware solution for this one time use.

http://camstudio.org/

Fraps recording really nice but without any video codec, it's mean huge file size. (fraps will splitting your records about 4gb parts or 3 don't remember)
I'm using XSplit for record everything also it has nice streaming features. (like streaming your game on skype )
there is some tutorials and informations about xsplit
personal licence is 15$ for 3 month by the way.

The built-in capturing is extremely faithful to the original material. I think it actually captures the game in the native resolution without any filters applied, no matter how you play it - it may mean more editing but it also means that you have more control and well, simply more faithful material in the game's native resolution. Another thing is that (unless I'm mistaken) DOSBox' own capturing won't capture General MIDI / MT-32 music because that one is rendered by the operating system's MIDI synthesizer (or a custom one you may be using) rather than DOSBox itself (note that Soundblaster and Gravis Ultrasound are emulated by DOSBox itself so that should be included in the recording, same's true for emulated CD Audio I believe).

Fraps will capture DOSBox' actual video output, so if you set DOSBox to stretch the game to 1080p you will end up with 1080p video. You may consider this both an upside or a downside. I considered it rather good because it saves me a lot of effort during editing although it also means more stress on the HDD during editing. Another thing is that Fraps will capture your system's audio output so you will also get the MIDI music in your audio recording. Nope, it will even capture the visualization in WinAmp. FRAPS will capture both Direct3D and OpenGL output, no matter whether it's fullscreen or windowed. I think the only thing you won't be able to capture are DirectDraw applications, basically most old 2D Windows games.

I've tried a bunch of different recording tools for games over the years, the only one that has satisfied me so far is Fraps. I haven't tried Action, though, which is supposedly pretty much as good and cheaper for personal use.

1: I tried capturing with Dosbox and it refused to record the midi. It also screwed up the PCM audio - I kept getting lagged sound effects once in a while. I thought it would be the game, but nope... and it's not my CPU or hard drive either.

2: I kept getting weird issues with Fraps in the post, most notably the video's colors and brightness kept getting messed up, looking darker than the original output. So I'm trying to avoid them.

I ended up looking at Open Broadcaster Software and... it works pretty well. I'm still figuring it out, but you can't beat free, or 9 MB a minute. ;).