Recording Gameplay

This isn't a question about the maker itself, but I've been trying to create a video demo for a few days now; using a handful of 'free' screen recording applications that do seem to do the job well (most result in a very choppy video playback) I was wondering if anyone knows of any decent software they've used to get this task done.

Well, any of them work fine. There are free ones that don't have the "Handy Cam Free Version" or something at the the top left. For the RPG games, you may have to change the framerate, quality of video, etc. The slower your computer, the worse the quality and framerate can be.
Its actually a choice. If you want quality, you change the framerate down. If you want a good framerate, you turn the quality down. Play around with the settings of the recording program until it finally does exactly what you need it to do.

I don't think my system is the issue, but here's a problem i run into: I'm using a widescreen monitor and can't do the demo with the game in full screen (picture stretches). So I use windowed mode. There's the small window and large window modes.. Now when I run the game (not recording) it works at the preferred framerate/quality.. But when the recorder is on it gets very choppy (this choppy effect showed in the recording).. So this is the obstacle I need to overcome.

Turn the framerate up and the quality down.

Program I'm using is WM Capture; and it seems to have all the controls for quality/framerate.. So I  adjusted the properties and I still get the same effect, no matter which configuration I use. I did get it to a point where it's tolerable but the game play is much more smooth.

Try and make the width and height smaller. If you make the video take 320x240 and the make the game fullscreen, it will be alot better.

My recorder can't specify the resolution, it's actually dependant on the size of the window open; but when I run the game in small window mode (which is 320X240) same issue occurs

Use Fraps.  Gives real time FPS rates, captures screenies and records the gameplay only, ignoring all surrounding non-game computer crap.  Free, simple enough download, small size and easy to work.  Only issue is that the free version only gives a short time of recording (a minute or so, if memory serves) but you can work around that by jus' keeping recording it one after the other; although for a game demo it shouldnae be a problem; I don't imagine the indivual clips will be more than a few seconds anyways.