fraps A Guide to FRAPS

[JimboUK]

http://www.fraps.com/

Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:

Benchmarking Software - Show how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen. Perform custom benchmarks and measure the frame rate between any two points. Save the statistics out to disk and use them for your own reviews and applications.

Screen Capture Software - Take a screenshot with the press of a key! There's no need to paste into a paint program every time you want a new shot. Your screen captures are automatically named and timestamped.

Realtime Video Capture Software - Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favourite game? Come join the Machinima revolution! Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy! Fraps can capture audio and video up to 2560x1600 with custom frame rates from 10 to 120 frames per second! (Taken from FRAPS website)

FRAPS comes in two flavours, paid and free. I will go through the paid version here, the free version is still excellent but does have a few limitations (max 30 second video, although you can still do multiple clips and join them, screenshots are only Bitmaps)

The General Screen...

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/images/234717-1284277488.png

Everything here is pretty self explanatory, apart from Monitor Aero Desktop (DWM), checking this will enable fraps features on your desktop.

The FPS Screen...

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/images/234717-1284277589.png

The Benchmarking Hotkey lets you to record to file your framerates over a set time and save the results to file, most people have no real need for this.

The Overlay Display Hotkey will switch on or off and move the on screen framerate display. Some people might find this annoying if they're not interested in their framerate, it can be disabled but it you plan on capturing video then I suggest you leave it on, it's also used to show when you're recording (it will turn red).

What the overlay looks like....

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/images/234717-1284277759.png

The Movies Screen........

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/images/234717-1284277824.png

A word of warning. Recording with FRAPS creates very large video files and can have a huge in game performance hit. If you're struggling to get a decent framerate in a game then recording with FRAPS may turn that game into a slideshow. Those with little free hard drive space may soon find they have none.

Recording in game footage is simple. Start FRAPS, start the game, press your chosen record key to start recording, press it again to stop. Make sure you pick a key that isn't used for something else in game.

I'll go through the various settings....

1) Folder to Save Movies in.
Where you save can make a difference to performance. If possible try to use a separate physical drive for recording (not partition), avoid if possible recording to the same drive as the game.

2) Video Capture Settings.
This can also effect performance and will make a difference to the size of the video file. If you can use full screen then do so, half screen will improve performance and give you a smaller file but it's best to get as much detail as possible recorded before you edit your movie. The framerate setting will also have an impact on performance and file size. Don't set this higher than the framerate your getting in game while FRAPS is recording, no point in recording 60FPS video of a game running at 30FPS, it's a waste.

3) Sound.
Pretty self explanatory, if it works leave it alone. Recording commentary from a mic can be done here but it's far better to add that in editing.

4) Other.
Don't sync audio and video, will improve performance but can lead to sync issues.
Hide mouse cursor in video, up to you what you do with this.
Force lossless RGB capture, should give higher quality results at a further cost to performance, I don't bother with this.

Screenshots......

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8387/fraps4.png

Pretty much self explanatory. The free version only allows BMP capture, you can of course covert these with just about any image software. I prefer PNG, good quality and smaller than BMPs.

[LHammonds]

Thanks for the tutorial. Kudos given!

[Paxan_1]

Codec's used by Fraps:

 

All the numbers are for videos recorded in 1280 x 1024.

 

Audio: PCM Audio, 192000Hz 6144 kb/s tot (2 chnls)

Video: FPS1 (Fraps Codec), ~220000kbps to 230000kbps (25MByte to 30MByte per second)

 

because of this videos recorded with Fraps are very big and limited in size. Fraps will start a new file after ~ 2,20 min to 2,30 min (3.90GB). So if you want to record a video for 5 minutes Fraps will create two or three files.

[Netwit2008]

One tip for recording videos which is mentioned above- I used to get confused on when I'd started the video, thus when I'd look at the playback, I would have stopped the video when I thought I started it and vice versa. I felt pretty dumb, lol What helped was the overlay explained above. I put mine in the lower right hand corner, then chose to not tick the "include framerate on screenshots."

 

So while I could see the frame rate even during editing the playback, it would not show up on the movie itself. The great thing is that when you push your assigned hotkey for capturing video, the framerate counter will turn red to indicate you are indeed recording. When you push the hotkey to turn off recording, it turns yellow again. That stopped me from missing my video shot and taping myself going through the menus and what not instead :wallbash:

 

I learned the hard way about the resulting video file sizes being ginormous. I believe there is now also a section on video editing. I used Windows Movie Maker to add music, special effects etc. Then I used Any Video Converter to convert the files to a format that would yield a smaller overall file size. There are others out there, but certain ones leave a big watermark in the middle of the screen. AVC is one of the free versions that doesn't.

 

Video making can become quite addicting once you get the hang of it. :smile: I ended up liking it so much I paid the $37 for the full version of FRAPS. But it was worth every penny.

 

To Jim_Uk, great tutorial by the way! :thumbsup:

[JimboUK]

It's worth mentioning that Firefox now uses hardware acceleration and FRAPS picks up on this and runs, having the framerate displayed in your browser isn't really an issue and nothing to worry about. Hitting the key used for recording video is a different matter, if you do that you'll start recording your web browsing and run out of drive space at an alarming rate. I had my video recording set to a key on the number pad and made a lovely video of my internet banking as the recording started when I entered my account number via the number pad, hardly ideal. It might be an idea to set the record button to some key you never use for anything, maybe the right CTRL or something.

[gormonk]

ahh the joys of windows live movie maker and fraps...... as vid record of browser.... you can restart fraps once you close it XD

[JimboUK]

ahh the joys of windows live movie maker and fraps...... as vid record of browser.... you can restart fraps once you close it XD

 

I know but I forget to restart it before I start the game. :unsure:

[lostone1993]

I have a question, has anyone had i guess an error like this. I start up minecraft then fraps once ingame i press f9 to start recording all goes as planed then when i press f9 to stop recording my screen goes black and i have to restart got any ideas?

il try another program and report back if it does the same

EDIT:

Tried with a few different program only minecraft does this, anyone know a good way of recording the geck I am trying to do a video tutorial and fraps like to focus on render window

Edited September 29, 2011 by lostone1993

[RubikNight]

I think you really need a decent rig (my subpar gaming laptop can't do it) to record Skyrim or MMO heavy games without massive lag. At least in my experience here (youtube.com/AcheNone) I suffer a lot of lag and lose a lot of the recording I want.