GDC08: Xfire's video capture beta

We missed this story last month, but our intrepid on-the-ground crew at GDC has found it out for us: Xfire, the PC chat client/game launcher/social networking tool, has introduced a beta video capture module into their application. Taking a cue from sites and services like WeGame, they are using their own video codec (xfcodec, which unfortunately won't work with a few video applications yet), and letting you record video on the fly during any Xfire-enabled game. We're told that a future version will enable you to upload your videos directly to your Xfire profile.

As you can see above, despite YouTube's horrible compression, the video itself doesn't look too bad. And James Woodcock, who took this video, says that while the audio still has a few issues, the video quality before compression is "exceptional." Not everybody is thrilled -- the client can sometimes cause lag and drop frames -- but Xfire says they want to hear about any issues you have. Anyone tried it yet?