FRAPS issue

[Dashiell]

I have fraps running ingame since yesterday.

I have a problem with it though. fraps itself works like a charm. but the clips are all in AVI format. even on 25 fps and half size the clips become very large in size. too large to post on photobucket etc.

youtube might work but I get an error from youtube saying that the avi isn`t compatible or something.

so, is there a way to make the recorded clips from fraps smaller? or to convert them to mpeg or something?

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[Teknikal]

There plenty of video compressors x264 xvid divx the trouble with fraps is it doesn't compress the files.

I mostly use x264 for my own stuff it makes very nice files sizewise and quality but xvid/divx would prob be a lot easier to start with and still save you a ton of space.

For simplicity's sake I'd suggest using pocketdivxencoder as it's free and gives nice results even though it's designed for portables it still has a pc option. http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/EN_index.htm

If you want to try x264 though about the easiest way would be program called ripbot264 but even then you will need to install things like ffdshow avisynth and others.

There are a ton of options though wmv real quicktime.

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[carlabrams]

For that matter, I just use the basic Windows Movie Maker that comes with (gasp) Windows - edit out the garbage, and when I save the file, it's in a small enough of a size that I'm good to go for uploading.

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Sentient Machine Alliance

[Dashiell]

thanks for the suggestions. I`m fiddling with movie maker now.

let`s see if I can get it to work properly.

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[darthbeck]

For that matter, I just use the basic Windows Movie Maker that comes with (gasp) Windows - edit out the garbage, and when I save the file, it's in a small enough of a size that I'm good to go for uploading.

i do this too.

what i want to know is how to make it so that fraps does not mess up the frame rate of freelancer

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<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>

[Dashiell]

i do this too.

what i want to know is how to make it so that fraps does not mess up the frame rate of freelancer

can`t be changed I believe. just the downside to having fraps running.

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[looqas]

personally I use VirtualDub. It's free and pretty handy in compressing and editing (cutting) the videos. I bet you have seen the vids I've made and posted.

the codec I use to encode the Fraps produced raw avis is FourCC mpg43 codec. It gives a pretty good quality and compresses it nicely.

The windows moviemaker is ok too. What I don't like about it is that all the good quality option are under the DVD selections which will force the fps to 25. For me it's a no-go because of that. I record the vids with 50 fps, so using Windows MovieMaker would make me lose half the frames. But if you do your recording at 25fps then Moviemaker is a good choice, althought lacking in choosing a codec department.

Fraps (as well as every screen capture software) will place a high stress on the system when recording. The reason why FRAPS produces such huge files is that it does not compress the videos in anyway, thus trying to minimize the slowing of the computer. But it places a huge burden on the HDD, since it needs to store huge amounts of data. The video card (and the whole computer in general) has to show to the player the picture as well as capture it, so I think you can figure out why running any video capturing program makes your fps take a serious hit.

Personally I'd like FRAPS to introduce a simple encoding to reduce the mammoth file sizes. Most people have dual cores to do take on the extra load it would generate.

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Flying under radar.

[13CentKiller]

The frame rate is chewed up because your video card and CPU has to do almost double the load. Process the frames, and record them after processing.

If you have a decent video card. And by decent I mean 256MB+ video card with a decent clock speed and a decent processor (2.5GHz duel core+) you shouldn't notice a difference.

I get 120 FPS in Battlefield 2. I can record at 60FPS, the max that FRAPS allows. I can record at 60FPS in Freelancer too. But if you run FRAPS without recording, and the frame rate is already very low, expect to record at a lower frame rate.

Disable any fancy stuff you may have in your ATI Catalyst or Nvidia N-View panel. (Anti-aliasing, atmospheric filtration, bloom and stuff like that.) This will decrease the load on your CPU and video card. You will notice an improvement in the frame rate of FL without recording, and you will ultimately record at a higher rate too.

As for compressors. I use DivX with Adobe After Effects. I make the footage 1290 x 720, add a bloom effect and aspect ratio, then upload to YouTube in HD. I can slim each file from about 6GB to 12MB.

If you plan on processing the footage with Windows Movie Maker, I suggest you don't compress it first. You will get a crappy frame rate when adding effects on and editing in general. It is always good to process the raw footage first to minimize quality loss.

FRAPS does not introduce any kind of built in compressor the the reasons I explained. Quality loss, and frame rate. Uncompressed footage is ideal for editing in composers like Ae or Sony Vegas. Anything compressed by default would lag up a storm. This is why I hated GameCam.

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"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."