Recording with Fraps - What type of hard drive?

[DeltrusDisc]

This post and chart were the best information I could find with regards to sequential writes with FRAPs. I've checked it against some of my older clips / info others have posted, and it seems to match very well. (My clips weren't full 1080p, so I can't confirm those figures.)

Well, that is an awesome chart! Thanks for posting that! I personally checked and I do indeed have RGB turned off, frankly, my videos look quite good as it is.

[Fascinate]

Dxtory works better than fraps, it costs money but for a good reason (i think its 40 dollars for a license).

[TJ]

Well, that is an awesome chart! Thanks for posting that! I personally checked and I do indeed have RGB turned off, frankly, my videos look quite good as it is.

RGB obliterates your fps, try recording with it and then without in the same situation and you'll see a big difference. Although if you have a top of the range pc and you can afford to do it then it's also worth it, since the colours do look better. You won't notice them at first but if you compare them side by side or one after another you'll see it.

[Deleted]

RGB obliterates your fps, try recording with it and then without in the same situation and you'll see a big difference. Although if you have a top of the range pc and you can afford to do it then it's also worth it, since the colours do look better. You won't notice them at first but if you compare them side by side or one after another you'll see it.

Indeed, basically Lossless-RGB is what it is, recording with 0 loss in color saturation, it looks EXACTLY as when you're playing the game, while lossy-rgb is abit desaturated.
It does come at the cost of performance.

SSD's are just not going to cut it in terms of capacity, unless you're a richman's child. However, recording to your bootdrive, mechanical or SSD, is a no-go. That drive is already getting a lot of drag. 7200 RPM drive of your preferred capacity, anything but USB2.0, and you're good to go.

[Deleted]

Instead of starting a new thread, I'll ask my questions here since I'm trying to increase my FPS whilst frappings. i've been trying to record 60fps full screen in GW2/WoW.
PC specs are; i7 2600k @stock speed, 8GB RAM, MSI 7870 OC, 120GB SSD (OS/Games), 500GB 5400RPM drive (for fraps).

I can only get 30-40fps whilst frappings, though I can play with a constant 60fps in WoW and near constant in GW2. What would you guys recommend would be a good thing to do/get to be able to record with the video going choppy due to fps loss.

If I try to record at 30fps full screen, it feels slow since I'm used to the 60fps. Should I stop trying to record at 60fps or buy a new HDD or would a capture card help more? :s

[TJ]

Instead of starting a new thread, I'll ask my questions here since I'm trying to increase my FPS whilst frappings. i've been trying to record 60fps full screen in GW2/WoW.
PC specs are; i7 2600k @stock speed, 8GB RAM, MSI 7870 OC, 120GB SSD (OS/Games), 500GB 5400RPM drive (for fraps).

I can only get 30-40fps whilst frappings, though I can play with a constant 60fps in WoW and near constant in GW2. What would you guys recommend would be a good thing to do/get to be able to record with the video going choppy due to fps loss.

If I try to record at 30fps full screen, it feels slow since I'm used to the 60fps. Should I stop trying to record at 60fps or buy a new HDD or would a capture card help more? :s

If it's fps loss then there isn't much you can do apart from try turn down the settings I guess, if it's general video lag whilst recording then you should buy a new HDD to record onto with a high write speed. These are my experiences though and what solved the problem for me, not sure if other people will say the same.

[mojo6912]

Instead of starting a new thread, I'll ask my questions here since I'm trying to increase my FPS whilst frappings. i've been trying to record 60fps full screen in GW2/WoW.
PC specs are; i7 2600k @stock speed, 8GB RAM, MSI 7870 OC, 120GB SSD (OS/Games), 500GB 5400RPM drive (for fraps).

I can only get 30-40fps whilst frappings, though I can play with a constant 60fps in WoW and near constant in GW2. What would you guys recommend would be a good thing to do/get to be able to record with the video going choppy due to fps loss.

If I try to record at 30fps full screen, it feels slow since I'm used to the 60fps. Should I stop trying to record at 60fps or buy a new HDD or would a capture card help more? :s

It is fraps locking your frames to 30 when you record. It is recommended to turn on vsync and tripple buffering and make sure "lock framerate" option in fraps is not checked. Although these settings fix the problem for some people it did not work for me. As soon as your fps dips below 60 (even if it hits 59) the framerate will lock at 30. You can try to turn the settings down on your game so that your average fps is well above 60 and will never dip below 60 even at the more graphically intensive times.

The reason you can't record at 60 fps is likely because the hard drive cannot write fast enough. Dxtory and some other capture programs do not lock the framerate like fraps does. Yet another reason I stopped using fraps.

So to sum up the reasons I don't like fraps too much anymore: 1. It DOES darken your footage unless you capture in lossless RGB(red green blue I think). If you don't notice it then you just don't have anything to compare it to (like a previous poster noted). 2. It can lock your framerate if you drop 1 frame below double what you are trying to record at. 3. It chops your video into seperate files every (about) 4 gigs. Dxtory does none of these.

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 09:40 AM ----------

Smart guy who actually doesn't pay 200eur just to record with fraps..

He is saying that Butler is smart for not going out and buying fast hard drives just so he can fraps.

You assume that people don't have spare hard drives and that his usb 2.0 drive was free?

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 09:45 AM ----------

This post and chart were the best information I could find with regards to sequential writes with FRAPs. I've checked it against some of my older clips / info others have posted, and it seems to match very well. (My clips weren't full 1080p, so I can't confirm those figures.)

That chart says to record in 1080 at 30 fps you need 60 MB/s. So now you see why I am bewildered by Butlers abilities =P. My guess is that fraps is actually recording at slightly lower than 30 fps for him. Just a guess though.

[llDemonll]

Fraps is going to drag down framerate regardless. You can't expect it to run as if it weren't there when it is recording. Like mojo6912 said, making sure 'Lock Framerate' is unchecked is key

[Deleted]

This is the settings I use and get between 30-40fps in GW2/WoW while frappings.



Would an upgrade to a faster HDD be the best option?

[n0cturnal]

This is the settings I use and get between 30-40fps in GW2 while frappings.

[.img]http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4575/frapsi.png[/img]

Would an upgrade to a faster HDD be the best option?

To capture 1920x1080 at 60FPS with lossless RGB you need at least 2 disks in Raid 0.

[mojo6912]

Uncheck lossless RGB and you can probably record at 60 fps. The video will be a little darker but you can brighten it back up during editing if you have editing software.

Looks like the new fraps has an option to not split up the video every 4 gigs. Nice.

[Deleted]

Uncheck lossless RGB and you can probably record at 60 fps. The video will be a little darker but you can brighten it back up during editing if you have editing software.

Looks like the new fraps has an option to not split up the video every 4 gigs. Nice.

I tried that and it dropped to sub 10fps.

If I switch it to 30fps 1920x1080, it doesn't go above 30fps even with framerate lock off.

[mojo6912]

I tried that and it dropped to sub 10fps.

Sorry I can't explain that. That is the opposite of what is supposed to happen. Lossless RGB capture should be WAY more resource intensive than with it off. I can't reliably record with lossless RGB to my WD caviar blacks x2 in raid 0 (very fast over 250 MB/s read/write, faster than any single HD that I have ever heard of).

Like I said a few posts up though, if you can keep your fps above 60 no matter what (by possibly turning the game graphics settings down) then you should be able to record 30fps without getting locked at 30. If the game gets to 59 fps even for a second it will lock at 30. In my experience, in order to keep the fps above 60 while recording the game will have to run at 100+fps while not recording.

[DeltrusDisc]

RGB obliterates your fps, try recording with it and then without in the same situation and you'll see a big difference. Although if you have a top of the range pc and you can afford to do it then it's also worth it, since the colours do look better. You won't notice them at first but if you compare them side by side or one after another you'll see it.

Well. i5-2500K@4.6GHz, GTX 560 Ti@950MHz core.

I do remember back when I first started recording some with Fraps, I used it at 60 fps............ yeah. holy crap. Boom goes the HDD space! XD

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 07:51 PM ----------

I tried that and it dropped to sub 10fps.

If I switch it to 30fps 1920x1080, it doesn't go above 30fps even with framerate lock off.

That's weird.

I'll play at 60 fps in a game, but record at 30 fps.

Try upgrading to at least a 7200RPM HDD, 1TB would be optimal.

[Warrax]

With unchecked lossless RGB, recording on another hard drive at 1080p/60fps should be smooth without any drops under 60 as long as the game itself runs at that frame rate.

[DeltrusDisc]

With unchecked lossless RGB, recording on another hard drive at 1080p/60fps should be smooth without any drops under 60 as long as the game itself runs at that frame rate.

Well, basically. As the chart that was linked above shows, 60 fps with lossless unchecked is equal in data-rate with 30 fps with lossless checked.

[Deleted]

Ok, maybe something isn't right here.. I turned the settings down on GW2 to medium which I can play at a solid 130fps minimum, I turn on fraps with the 1080p@30fps and still can't get above 30fps? I'm trying it now on a 7200RPM drive by the way.

Would a capture card possibly be a good solution since I don't think fraps shoiuld really be taking over 50% of my fps with my pc. :s

[mojo6912]

Maybe try a different capture program? Try Vsync on and off? Of course a capture card would be awesome but expensive.

[Ghâzh]

I don't know if it'd matter but are you using a legal version of fraps?

[Deleted]

If you are uploading to YouTube, you may as well just cap Fraps recording framerate to 30fps (or 29.97fps) as that is the max YouTube accepts and YouTube will transcode it down in fps if it is higher (YouTube max is NSTC '30fps' which is actually 29.97fps).