Screen Capture/Recording Software

Hi all...

I've been bored lately and looking into the concept of recording myself playing games and uploading them to youtube. I have no experience with video editing or anything like that however. I want to make some compilation videos of cool frags/kills in FPS games like Quake/Unreal Tournament/Serious Sam/etc.

I tried out FRAPS, but it tells me I have to register it.. i'll do this if there are no other decent free screen capturing software out there. I recorded at around 60 FPS and it was randomly jerky and random chops at times, for no reason. I was playing Quake (the original) with the darkplaces engine and all the graphics cranked. Without FRAPS i get like 200-500 fps..

Some people tell me you can make money off of youtube, so maybe i'll give it a shot. Would anyone be kind enough to let me know of some good software for screen capturing and video editing? Are there any special techniques I need to utilize to make my videos look not like compressed garbage when I upload them to youtube? Thanks in advance..!

 

I have done a few videos with Fraps have not tried any thing else. Cant post them now I am at work and they have youtube blocked Here is some good info on video capture

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=89873&highlight=screen+capture