Great thread. Searched awhile back for advice, and didn't really find anything besides the Fraps/MovieMaker combo. I spent $ buying Fraps and have been pleased with it, but it is an HD hog and had to stop recording 'cause I ran outta HD space. Also, an external USB HD caused a LOT of lag when recording with Fraps, so had to abandon that idea.
With my interest piqued, here's quick research I did about Afterburner & Vegas.
Afterburner is a video card performance booster app that includes the
Predator video capture app.
Predator appears to be "Free on any MSI graphics card" per the site. Will have to check my card's brand now, if not MSI, then it won't be free I guess.
Sony Vegas seems to cost money. The site had an error so I couldn't really find the details.
Other sites had downloads available so perhaps there's a 'free' trial or non-Pro version available to use? Not sure for now.