What is the best way to capture PC footage?
There are many applications which do this, some free, some not - FRAPS should certainly be able to cope if your CPU/GPU is powerful enough (and in fact this may be the limiting factor for whichever application you choose)

So your question title - "what is the best way" - is easy to answer: use a screen capture application, and ensure you have sufficient power to cope.

In the body of the question it looks like you are asking for recommendations on which application to use. This is not really an answerable question - it will vary depending on your exact needs, but many applications will do just fine, given the prerequisites mentioned above.

update - I have been using WeGame, and it works really well, and is lighter weight than FRAPS.