Guide: how to create a high quality recording of your game with a small file size

[Deleted]

Guide: how to create a high quality recording of your game with a small file size

Hello everyone,

Lately, I’ve seen many people asking for help creating videos from in game footage. The complaints usually boil down to either a) the file is too big or b) the quality isn’t high enough.

In this guide, I will give you a solution to both problem A and B. I will show you how to properly configure FRAPS, and how to turn the uncompressed data into a compressed mp4 file that has superb quality, but drastically decreases filesize. I won’t go into video editing, or adding sound.

Here is a 3-minute video of some Tribes Ascend gameplay I made using this guide:

Note: Youtube can do some strange things to videos. I suggest you try out the guide yourself

What will you need?

A great computer
I will not lie to you: recording a game with FRAPS has a large effect on your computer’s performance. Remember that for FRAPS to record a video at 30fps, your GPU and CPU have to copy 30 frames per second to your hard drive. These pictures are at 100% of your monitor’s resolution.

A separate hard drive
You should always record your footage to a separate drive. This means a drive that is idle when you’re not using it for recording. A separate partition is not the same. When you are writing in sequence (which happens when you write a load of big files while recording) your drive will lag when it has to perform other operations. This is of major importance for image quality. Make sure you change the folder to save your movies to a folder on a separate drive.

The right tools
FRAPS: the tool we will be using to record the footage
x264vfw: the codec that will compress your avi to mp4 - download here
MeGUI: the graphical interface with which we can adjust settings - download here
AviSynth: the script system that we will use together with MeGUI - download here

Imgur images album: https://imgur.com/a/zTRbi

FRAPS
Let’s take a look at FRAPS’ settings.


Important stuff:
FPS: 30 is a good number. 60 would make for a better picture quality, but it would also double filesize and rendering times. Some people advise 29.97, but personally I’ve never seen an increase or decrease in quality. I prefer a round number.
Full-size should be enabled unless you play at very high resolutions (2560 or more) in which case half-size is still 720p, which you might find enough. Note though that this would probably cause a minor quality loss.
Lock framerate should generally not be checked.
Force lossless RGB for better image quality.

You’ve got your FRAPS configured, and you are ready to start recording! What now?
First: make sure you play your game at the right settings. You should always be at 60+ fps prior to recording. If you are not getting that, try lowering the graphical settings of whatever you are recording.

Next: press F9 and record for about a minute.

Now you’ve got a .avi file that is roughly 2.5 gigabytes @ 1080p. This is pure raw lossless video quality! It looks awesome! Why not use this? In theory, you could. The problem however is that many websites will not allow you to put files of this size online. In order to reduce the filesize we need to compress the image.

AviSynth
In this guide we will be using MeGUI as our graphical interface. To use it, please install the x264vfw codec and AviSynth first (links above).

Rename your .avi file to video.avi.
Next, create a new .txt file in the same folder and call it video.avs. Please notice that the extension should be .avs, not .txt. If you don’t know what I am talking about, save it like this:

Make sure to save it as the all files type.

Note: we are using two different kinds of files here. The big video files have the extension .avI, and the scripts that MeGUI uses have the .avS extension.

Open your video.avs with notepad and put in the following:

part1 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi")
part1
bilinearresize(1920,1080)
FadeIO(25)
ConvertToYV12()

What does this do?
The bilinearresize value is the resolution of the outgoing image. In this case, it is in 1080p. If you want to change it to 720p, replace (1920,1080) with (1280,720).
FadeIO(25) will give your video a short fade in and fade out effect. This is not necessary but I add it in every video anyway. This works for audio too. You can change the number for longer or shorter effects.

Multiple files
If you have more than one file, add lines like this:

part1 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi")
part2 = Avisource ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video2.avi")
part1+part2

As of Fraps version 3.5.x the .avi files created by Fraps are no longer split at 4 gigabytes, rendering the above part of the guide obsolete.

Next up, MeGUI!

MeGUI
Fire up MeGUI. If it asks for updates, let it update. It will probably give you the error that it can’t download the Nero AAC codec. Follow the instructions and download/install this.

In the main window of MeGUI at the line that says “Encoder settings”, choose the x264 “scratchpad”, then click config. If the codec doesn’t show up, you might want to restart your PC.

Use the following settings:


Note: You can change the bitrate to increase file size and quality. Going lower than 4500 is not recommended.

Next, in MeGUI, click the button that is on the far right at the “AviSynth Script” line. Find the script you recently created and load it. If you get any errors, double check your script. A new window should now pop up, showing your video footage. Switch back to MeGUI and in the “Video Output” line, choose a path to save the video. Make sure “File format” is set to MP4, and then click the “Queue” button.

Now, go to the Queue tab and at the bottom press Start. Watch the progress bar fill up! Depending on the speed of your PC, the time needed can vary.
When MeGUI is done, your video should be roughly 45 megabytes at 6000 bitrate.

Congratulations, you have succesfully compressed your video!

[Tsimp]

Awesome post! This should be stickied. Any chance you could post one for video editing as well? Because I am completely terrible at video editing. I have no idea what programs I can use really. (That aren't $800.)

[inux94]

Great guide Acha The only problem I've had with fraps is, it splits recordings into many different files >

[Cilraaz]

Per user request, this has been added to the sticky index.

[Enhshamanlol]

You can use msi afterburner to record too!, that what i use for my videos.
Not alot of people know that
btw my video look like shit since my pc is shit.

[Deleted]

Great guide Acha The only problem I've had with fraps is, it splits recordings into many different files >

Take a good look at the part about AviSynth, it should fix your problem!

[Deleted]

I could've SWORN it's called MeGUI, but great guide anyway

[Deleted]

I could've SWORN it's called MeGUI, but great guide anyway

Thanks, never noticed that , might as well be thorough. Fixed!

[plazsma]

Could someone explain the part about renaming your file. Also when I try to open my file in notepad it says it is too large and it is only like a 1.5 min video

[Deleted]

Could someone explain the part about renaming your file. Also when I try to open my file in notepad it says it is too large and it is only like a 1.5 min video

The extensions are quite similar, so your mistake is understandable. You should have two files in your folder:

1. Video.avi
2. Video.avs

File number two is supposed to be a video.txt file that you save with a different extension. You do not have to change the extension of file number one. The error you're getting about the file "being too big" is caused by trying to open the first file (a video) with notepad, for which it is not intended.

[plazsma]

What do you use virtualdub for?

[Deleted]

What do you use virtualdub for?

It used to install some dll's that were necessary to properly encode the video stream. I just tried and apparently everything works without VirtualDubMod as well. That makes the guide somewhat simpler

[Deleted]

Well, I tried recording with FRAPS, but it STILL locks my FPS to 30 (lock FPS is turned off).
Am I doing something wrong or is this normal?

[glo]

Would be a lot easier just to use Handbrake. No codec installations, and it lets you select VBRs among a lot of other in-depth options. <.<

[Deleted]

Well, I tried recording with FRAPS, but it STILL locks my FPS to 30 (lock FPS is turned off).
Am I doing something wrong or is this normal?

Fraps will lock your FPS to multiples of 30. This means that if you get ~55 FPS, it will lock to 30 while recording. There isn't a fix for this.

[Deleted]

Why Fraps, really? IMO Afterburner is far better tool for recording. It's much less taxing, has great quality codecs and best of all it's completely free.

If you want to try recording, try Afterburner before buying Fraps. Seriously.

[Deleted]

Why Fraps, really? IMO Afterburner is far better tool for recording. It's much less taxing, has great quality codecs and best of all it's completely free.

If you want to try recording, try Afterburner before buying Fraps. Seriously.

And it compresses whilst recording, so you won't have to do more steps in this guide. However, I'm pretty sure FRAPS has some advantages over afterburner too, since a lot of people use it and are very happy with it.

Fraps will lock your FPS to multiples of 30. This means that if you get ~55 FPS, it will lock to 30 while recording. There isn't a fix for this.

Oh well, guess I'll stay with afterburner for now then, though I'm pretty sure I had 60 FPS at all times (except if the minor fps drops count, 59.1 FPS and such)

[protput]

What am I doing wrong? ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi") what do I enter here?

[Obsession]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/YcT1rl.jpg[IMG]

What am I doing wrong? ("YOUR\FILE\PATH\video.avi") what do I enter here?

That is the file location. It looks like you probably have it right, but you're missing a p in part1 on the first line.

[mostplanet3]

That is the file location. It looks like you probably have it right, but you're missing a p in part1 on the first line.

Well that's weird I'm getting the exact same error (except on the last line of the error pop-up it said 'line2' at the bottom.. but I've typed in everything correctly checked like 15 times... in fact i copied and pasted the code in the tutorial.. but changed the file destination of course, but still getting the same error. Please help. Kinda in hurry :s Thanks