Fraps

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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I have an itch to start recording some game footage both when playing single player and when playing online with mates as we use Mumble and there are frequent moments which I wish were being recorded, either people saying or doing stupid things and I have a few questions if someone could be soo kind as to answer.

If using Fraps to capture gameplay/audio, is this more CPU or GPU intensive assuming the encoding will be done afterwards?

Also, I understand my 5770 VGA card has the ability to encode video on the fly, can Fraps be set to use the VGA Card to encode on the fly and if so, how does it affect gaming performance? If it cant do it on the fly, can the VGA card do it afterwards?

Any does/don't s to bear in mind when capturing?

My Specs are:

AMD 720BE X3 @ stock 2.8Ghz
Radeon 5770 1GB
4GB RAM

Thanks for any replys.
 
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Captured files in fraps take up a lot of GBs. They are easilly converted using Windows Movie Maker though, and then you delete them after.

It took me a while to figure out how to set the movie conversion in windows media player to the same aspect ratio as the input video though, so most of my recorded gameplay has black bars around it :(

I have a load of random recordings on youtube. I want to record a full run of Magicka, but cant be bothered to yet, and there are already plenty of people doing it so I cant be asked.

Your CPU will probably take a very very long time with the conversions though, it takes me long enough on my 4 Ghz I7. I think theres a way to do it using the cuda cores on my GPUs, but I have no idea how.
 
Thanks Bhav.

I am aware the AVI's will take up a lot of space. Even with a better CPU, is there any way to encode on the fly?

Just had a look and found the Video converter in the Catalyst control center, my word it is quick. Converted a 228MB AVI to an MP4 in less than 10 seconds.
 
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When you record with fraps it will drop your fps slightly and I can only assume that it will be cpu intensive as i can't think how it would use the gpu!? It should only cause a drop of 2-3 frames though. There is loads of info on using it across on the net just do a google search. Also I think it comes with a .PDF manual when you download it so there will be some handy info there to.
 
Ok.. the The VGA card just converted a 1GB .avi to an MP4 in just under 50 seconds, would it be any faster with a beefier CPU?

It is knocking more than a few FPS off, closer to 15, although that was capturing at full screen resolution which I suppose is not needed.

Maybe a CPU upgrade with more cores?
 
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24fps should be half that and i don't need to keep it on the drive forever jsut to save it raping the hdd.

an hour or so would be plenty.
 
Gimpymoo said:
Ok.. the The VGA card just converted a 1GB .avi to an MP4 in just under 50 seconds, would it be any faster with a beefier CPU?
Click to expand...

Thats really fast, much faster than on the I7 CPUs.

To get the same on Nvidia cards, you have to pay for a third party app :(
 
Tefal said:
24fps should be half that and i don't need to keep it on the drive forever jsut to save it raping the hdd.

an hour or so would be plenty.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but in fraps, when recording, the gameplay drops to whatever you are recording at. So, you'll be playing at 24fps as well.

Playclaw doesn't have that problem, and in my experience causes less lag. There are a minority of games that it doesn't work well, with though, so it's not a perfect solution.
 
Tefal said:
are you recording at full ress or half etc?

Cause full will fill a hd really quick.
Click to expand...

Even on a decent system if you're a good FPS player you'll notice some lag/sluggishness with fraps recording (even at low res/fr). It wasn't quite unplayable but it was bad enough that I didn't really feel 'safe' when playing BFBC2 :p
 
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