Virtualdub / VirtualDub2 is free, and allows you to record at 1fps if you want, and split the files after every xx minutes, and you can use add simple codecs like x264 to encode, or more lightweight codecs like xvid
VirtualDub2 :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdfiltermod/Download, unpack, launch VirtualDub64.exe
Capture menu > Start capture
Set to record screen using Device menu > Screen Capture
Set the region you want to capture using Video menu > Source... optionally choose acceleration mode DXGI if you're running Windows 8 or newer, for lower cpu usage
Set the size of the video by going to Video menu > Set custom format ... select Use custom size and enter there the resolution of your screen, from data format leave it to ARGB32
Select compressor otherwise the video will be saved uncompressed. Go to Video menu > Compression and select x264 - the 8bit version should be fine.
The software will add automatically conversion from ARGB32 to YV12 color format, used by x264, so some colors may look a tiny bit different, but otherwise it's fine.
Hit configure to configure x264,
Select preset ( ultrafast means lower cpu usage but more disk space used, very slow means more cpu usage, you should be fine with anything between ultrafast and medium, more complex is pointless for screen capture.
Select tuning to Still image (optional, makes text and sharp edges better)
At rate control , select Single Pass CRF is ok, but Single pass - Quantizer-Based CQP would be a bit better for screen captures.
Either way, drag the slider to higher quality, like somewhere around 4-6 would be nearly lossless (like 99% jpeg) , somewhere around 10-14 would be like 90-95% jpeg, still very readable and all that.
The video codec will detect and compress only changes between frames so if a large part of the screen has no changes, those won't use a lot of disk space.
And that's about it for video configuration
If you want to record audio as well, select stuff from the Audio menu. If you don't choose Audio > Enable audio capture (uncheck it)
From Capture menu , Capture > Stop conditions - if you want the capture to stop under some conditions (ex file size above some amount, free space below some threshold, more than xxx seconds have passed)
Check Capture > Auto Increment file name after every capture
From File > Set capture file to set the file name..
From the lower right corner of the application in the status bar, you can set the audio parameters (ex 48 kHz 16 bit stereo) if you want to record audio, and the video framerate, default should be 30.
So you're done, now you can just go Capture > Start and it will start recording. You can minimize the application and leave it recording in background.
- One minute of 1920 x 1200 screen capture at 10fps of this page as I typed the post , compressed with x264 at CRF 10 = 3 MB.