General video game play recording concepts and capture card help.

[kreg]

I have been doing tests with various applications and a couple of capture cards. Searching the web has taken me far, but it's time to sort some concepts with the community. My questions are an attempt to sort out my concepts and what I should consider for hardware and software encoding. I am focused on recording video game play.

How does one determine if a hardware encoder is available on a capture card? Do either of the two capture cards I am testing with have any hardware encoders?
StarTech PEXHDCAP60L (rebadged Micomsoft SC-512N1-L/DVI)
AverMedia C027.

Why are some applications able to record in x264, without me installing the x264 codec?

I have played with the usual OBS, Xsplit, AmarecTV. Also vendor supplied software such as Stream Catcher (from StarTech) and Aver MediaCenter 3D. Other than AmarecTV, they were all capable of recording game play and encoded video on the fly into x264 in an mkv or mp4 container (and other formats). It did not bury my CPU. As far as I know, my GPU was not used.

Why did AmarecTV not offer this, until I installed the K-Lite codec mega pack?

After installing the codec pack, AmerecTV offered x264. Why did choosing that bury my CPU? (1st gen Core i7). The other applications using x264 did not push my CPU beyond 30%

Does this mean applications such as OBS have their own version of the codec already compiled in?

Any general advise for recording and archiving gameplay? Record lossless and encode after? Encode on the fly and be happy?

Can multi channel audio be bit streamed and saved into the video?

Can GPU or encoder chip load be monitored the same as a CPU can be?

Thank you experts and fellow geeks.

[nicolesmith]

Can you give any details how can I record animal jam game sounds. I attached the link, please visit https://s3.amazonaws.com/animal-jam-play-wild/index.html.