Game Videos with FRAPS advice please...

Hi, I just used FRAPS for the first time and made this video of my V1.01 BMax Game Framework in action to show off my new particle engine:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/aotmg/aotmg.wmv (1.1Mb)

I recorded at 30FPS and then used MS movie maker to export at Broadband (500kbps) speed, reducing the file from a 86MB .avi to a 1.1Mb .wmv.

What I wanted to know, if possible, was this:

1) How do I record the game in windowed mode? The hot keys only seem to work in full-screen mode...
2) It seems pretty jerky at 30FPs, is it worth recording in 60FPS? (I tried this and it seems better, but not perfect - any thoughts)
3) Is 500kbps too compressed for video to be downloaded rather than streamed? When I click the link above, it downloads on my PC, it doesn't stream. In fact is 500kbps OK for streaming these days is that too detailed? I guess for download, it's up to me to choose the compression I want.
4) Should I use wmv, or another format? If another format can MS movie maker do it or should I get an Virtual Dub (I have an old version) or similar?

Any help at all with regards to these questions will be much appreciated, thanks :-)

Works in windowed mode here, just tested it on Guild Wars here to double-check.


If it's jerky, I'm to assume your system was struggling to keep a steady frame-rate while recording during actual gameplay?

I'd say downloaded, my net speed can barely keep up with 450kbps on streaming media (both a fault of my fluctuating wireless net connection, and slow media servers), I'd stick to a max of 300kbps for streaming media.


If you're going to make it streamable, I'd look into finding a way of getting a .flv of your video and an embedded flash app to play it on your webpage, since everyone pretty much has Flash installed, it should work on the majority of systems without all the obscure codec finding crap.

Otherwise I mainly use XviD compression even though it aint as well used as other formats, but damn it does a good compression job.
(it requires codec installation if you dont have unfortunately)

Grey,

GameCam is the other one which John Blackledge kindly told me about a few weeks ago.

http://www.computergames.ro/site/p/downloads/o/download-details/dowid/3577/lng/en/gamecam_v1.2.html

I think wmv is very good, but I only have limited experience with the newer formats.


As for compression, depends what you are showing, if you want the quality of your 'game' or 'demo' to ooze forth then the higher the better. 150kbs is VCD MPEG1 so 500 should be pretty good, and wmv seems ok as a format.

Some of the QT formats are just amazing, as is Flash 8 's codec!

http://www.smartscreenuk.com/ni/

This is a low res Flash version, the higher one is awesome but not as quick to load.



IPete2.

Ok, thanks for the advice guys. I guess I need to keep fiddling.

IPete2: nice pond :-)

Could it be that you sometimes miss a frame or get some images doubletime?!

Thanks, Pete.
Yeah GameCam I found produced twice the fps of Fraps.

Not a direct answer to any of those questions but I get really good results by running the game at low res (640x480) in full screen but with FSAA switched on. The game is effectively run at a higher res and scaled down. Videos look really nice.

If your game is quite processor intensive and you don't care about recording sound, what I did in my code reduce the game's rendering and game speed by half or a quarter.

Then you can play your game in slow motion giving your PC and fraps ample time to do their work. Then afterwards say you played your code in 15fps, speed up your movie by 400%, export as 60fps (or whatever conversion speed you had going) then it will all be back to normal.

Oh yeah and don't get Fraps to encode on the fly, that makes it well slower, just record to uncompressed full size frames for best performance.

Yes. Capturing full size is the best option. After that I usually convert everything into an AVI using XviD or DivX codecs.

Barney

ah, thanks for thew tips. Yeah I told it to capture half size thinking it would be less work for the CPU. As for the slow motiont thing, I do actually have a slow motion mode where the game runs at 25% speed so that could be cool.

What does the video above seem like to you lot? Good/Bad/Medium?

thanks

hmm, part of the problem is that I have a nice smooth avi but Windows Movie Maker is makingit jerky because it's recording at 25FPS and my game is 60FPS. So I really need to be able to say record at 30FPS so there is a direct relation between game and video FPS otherwise I'll get those jerks.

Why don't you render out the game at the framerate you actually need?

hmm, now there's an idea, but it would only be indivisual bitmaps that I'd need to combine.

Also actually I want to get the best settings for taking videos of commercial games and other indie games for reviews on Binary joy too.

For the best in each case i think you need different solutions. The best for recording your own stuff is like i said and the best for recording all of the rest is to use a good grabber, reasonable settings and a fast machine. A third possibility would be to record the stuff to a digital camera so that you're independent of the machines power again.

Little example i did on da Mac with Quicktime: http://spielwiese.marune.de/_uni/_tmp/grab_each_frame.mov where i catched each frame. Although the framerate is pretty low (15fps just for testing) there are no hickups like in yours. Try to ignore my fast mouse movements... :O)

hmm I can't play your video in IE or when downloaded in Quicktime, it says I don't have the right compressor!

H.264...

um...

download the latest quicktime player..

yeah I figured haha, however, it didn't work in winamp either. I find quicktime player annoying as it keeps on putting QTTask in my startup tasks, same with Real player's ReadShed ...

Apple: Seamlessly on OSX, a drag on Windows...

Quicktime Alternative
Real Player alternative

HyperCam is another real-time capture program I've had success with. Grabs the sound and works with window or fullscreen too. Not the prettiest interface, but it does the job.

hmm some more things to try, thanx.

I know for a past game I developed I incorporated 'export to frames' functionality so my game would work well with FRAPS. with the option flipped on the delta timing in the game would basically ignore the 'lag' present from FRAPS. So the game could chug at slow motion but when you play it back, it was perfect.
Also included same functionality to take screenshots at 60fps and save it to a folder (to create true high-res animations), again compensating the delta timing so it comes out smooth.

All of it a bit extra work but was pretty cool in the end :). Would be an awesome feature for your framework to allow developers to later create content to advertise their games more easily ;).

The biggest bottleneck (besides CPU) when doing FRAPS is your harddrive speed. 10k rpm is usually recommended if you're going to be doing video capturing like that regularly, but the standard 7200rpm should be fine if its not a routine.

hmm, thanks Alex O. also with the framework tip. I have 7200rpm drives and I'm writing video to the first 25% of the drive so it's faster. Actually in the end I got a smooth capture but the downsampling of 60FPS to 25FPS in Windows Movie maker was making it look jerky cos I can't get moviemaker to do 30FPS and haven't tried other apps yet.

years ago I used a program called videomach to do all of my 'compiling' of my game videos captured in fraps or whatnot. Its shareware. Might have a license fee (like 20-30 USD) for commercial uses, but I found it really well suited for quickly converting videos from one format to another, and also compiling those screenshots into video format. It might have what you're looking for.

http://www.gromada.com/

You should use something like Virtual Dub to downsample, it's the best for the price :)

hmm thanks for the new info.