Level 2 Recording Software
- Thread starter Steve Tvardek
- Start date
QuantDeveloper captures and playbacks market depth and Level2. You can use market depth in strategy development / simulations, etc.
PS. Note that there are two flavours of Level2/MarketDepth events that different data providers send via their APIs. One is about "true" market depth / level2 quotes (Genesis, MBT), i.e. every "raw" MM quote at every depth level. Others send level2 / market depth position changes in the (accumulated) order book (IB), i.e. "bid in the order book at position #3 changed to XXX with size YYY". We support both scenarios but you should be aware of it when you use MD/Level2 in your strategy development or trading sumulations.
Cheers,
Anton
PS. Note that there are two flavours of Level2/MarketDepth events that different data providers send via their APIs. One is about "true" market depth / level2 quotes (Genesis, MBT), i.e. every "raw" MM quote at every depth level. Others send level2 / market depth position changes in the (accumulated) order book (IB), i.e. "bid in the order book at position #3 changed to XXX with size YYY". We support both scenarios but you should be aware of it when you use MD/Level2 in your strategy development or trading sumulations.
Cheers,
Anton
So it doesnt matter what you want to record with this software, its capable of recording whatever you choose? How many days worth of data will it save before some needs to be deleted?
Basically, you can expand the"Record Fixed Region" pointer to record across all of your monitors. You can't run more than one instance of the program at a time and you can't record multiple small regions at once (selecting a region... skipping a region and recording another region). The trouble here is that you are really stressing your CPU, RAM and harddrive because it is a heck of a lot of data unless you cut back on the quality (fewer colors, slower frames per second, etc).
I think you misunderstood the size of the file. For me, it is approximately 400 MB per session not 4 MB per session. You can tweak this by changing some settings but it generates large video files. When you play them back, they are as clear as the original.
I think 4 monitors is a bit of a stretch but it can be done using a high powered machine and a lower color/frames per second setting.
No... it simply records whatever is on your screen and you have the option of adding audio to the video feed so you can talk about your trades or thoughts as the day goes by (I can't emphasize how useful this is for training).
The data doesn't have to be deleted. Its value is in archiving it really. It costs about $60 to get a high end DVD recorder and DVD-R discs are only about $0.30 each for 4.7GB. If you record a full 1280x1024 screen with sound at 30 fps with 32-bit color depth, you will be running at about 100 MB per second. This is not wise. What you can do is turn your color depth down to 256 colors (some video cards will not go below 16-bit colors which is equivalent to 65,536 colors), turn your frame speed to 15 fps and still keep the 1280x1024 if you really want the full screen. This will give you a file size of about 141.5 MB per hour. This means that you can fit about 4 days of trading at 8 hrs in a DVD-R or 3 full days of trading with audio.
This may be waaaayyy of topic, but I have attached a simple spreadsheet that computes your files sizes based on the resolution you are recording, the color depth and frame rate. It is a good way to figure out what you will need. I have hidden the columns you don't need for input or results, but you can unhide them and see how it is computed. It is fairly simple. Remember that you don't have to record the full screen, you can simply record the parts that you are interested in. The smaller the recorded area, the smaller the files and the more you can archive.
I hope this helps address your concerns if you are trying to capture a session on video rather than capture DOM data and replay.
The DOM capture simply replays the market from a file instead of real time. Several programs can do this. This is how demo account work with pre-recorded market data.
I prefer the video capture because you can see exactly what happened, where you got long or short, what worked, what didn't and the audio is priceless as you talk through your trades as if you will give it to your boss for review. This will keep you more honest.
Quote from FuturesTrader71:
No... it simply records whatever is on your screen and you have the option of adding audio to the video feed so you can talk about your trades or thoughts as the day goes by (I can't emphasize how useful this is for training)....
I prefer the video capture because you can see exactly what happened, where you got long or short, what worked, what didn't and the audio is priceless as you talk through your trades as if you will give it to your boss for review. This will keep you more honest.
Thank you for this info FT, I am thinking about implementing this. My only question is how much CPU power do you need to run Camtasia and not have any affect on other applications used for trading? My current trading computer is a P4 2.8 with 512M of Memory, i don't think it would be able to hande it.
Ace.. It depends on what else you have running on the machine. camtasia on my machine typically consumes about 30 MB of RAM and about 10% of CPU cycles. I'm running a 3.2GHz machine.
You can find out how it will be for you by following these steps tomorrow:
1. Start up your normal trading apps as if it were a typical day.
2. Right click on the Taskbar at the bottom of your WinXP (assuming) screen and select Task Manager.
3. Minimize the Task Manager for a bit and let it run.
4. Go back to it after a couple of minutes and look at the Performance Tab.
5. Look at the CPU Usage History chart and see if your CPU ever clocks at 100%. Where in the vertical range does it linger? Lower half? Upper half?
6. Look under Physical Memory (K) and see how much is left under Available.
This will give you an idea of how your current setup is being taxed. In most cases, you won't notice the difference under your current configuration. At most, you will have to buy more RAM. Currently, you can get 512MB for around $25 online.
I hope that answers your questions.
Absolutely. The files are saved as standard AVI files. These can be replayed using Camtasia's own player or Windows Media Player. They can also be burned on to DVD and watched on a DVD player. They can also formatted for webcasting with audio like Brandonf does on his journal here: http://www.position4profit.com/videos/rgld.html
You can also integrate video with a presentation using Powerpoint as a training feature. This is also very useful for that purpose. For most members here, the usefulness really is in the ability to go back to a certain setup in the day and find out what really happened to make it work or fail. You can watch your actions on the screen as they happen and see where your cursor was or what preceded your entry. Great stuff.