Video Capture Software For P C

[anaxcrosswords]

A few weeks ago I bought Fraps to record gaming video on my PC. It works very well, but creates ridiculously large AVI files (the only format available) even at 30fps. A video of about 2min 30sec accounted for nearly 6Gb of disk space and it was still around 55Mb when I converted to WMV. The actual disk usage isn't a problem as I can delete each one after uploading to YouTube, but at that size the upload takes well over an hour. I'd like to be able to upload videos of about 30 minutes.
Can anyone recommend more effective (ie economical) capture software? Free is ideal but I don't mind paying for something that works and is easy to use - there is a command-line thing called FFMPEG but it's too tricky for a non-geek like me. I just want something I can install then click a button to start recording.

[Buenchico]

Widely recommended: http://plays.tv/ (e.g. here http://www.pcworld.com/article/3040695/software/the-best-pc-game-video-capture-software-5-top-recording-tools-compared.html )

[anaxcrosswords]

Thanks Buenchico!
After reading the free software reviews I checked the comments and that led me to D3DGear, which looks OK and doesn't cost much.
Still surprised by file sizes even though it's much better than Fraps. One quote is 264Mb for 5 minutes (which in Fraps gives you a matter of seconds). It may be a case of "That's what you can expect" but on YouTube I've watched HD gameplay walkthroughs of 10 hours. How the blimey does anyone upload something that long?

[SlackAlice]

If you've got an Nvidia graphics card you could use 'Shadowplay' supplied with Geforce Experience.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience/shadowplay

[anaxcrosswords]

Thanks for that. Yeah, I have the Nvidia Geforce so that looks worth checking out. Will have to investigate both tomorrow - my latest video has another hour of upload. Grrr.