Fraps

[Xtreeze]

I have now decided to try and make a PvP movie in World of Warcraft, I decided to use Fraps to record it with.
Now lets get to the problem, the files are just insanely big, and I wonder if there's any way to make them take lesser space?

The other problem is that every 1:04 minute when I record another file gets created in my Fraps/Movie folder, so when I record for about 10 minutes I'll have 10 different files. Would really love to get some help

[Fuzzykins]

I have now decided to try and make a PvP movie in World of Warcraft, I decided to use Fraps to record it with.
Now lets get to the problem, the files are just insanely big, and I wonder if there's any way to make them take lesser space?

The other problem is that every 1:04 minute when I record another file gets created in my Fraps/Movie folder, so when I record for about 10 minutes I'll have 10 different files. Would really love to get some help

1.) Are you using the trial version of fraps?
2.) Compress your movies using windows movie maker. Just edit it like you normally would, add all your music and distracting effects. (To keep people from noticing backpedaling, of course.) then click Save Movie near the top right corner.

[Xtreeze]

1.) Are you using the trial version of fraps?
2.) Compress your movies using windows movie maker. Just edit it like you normally would, add all your music and distracting effects. (To keep people from noticing backpedaling, of course.) then click Save Movie near the top right corner.

1) No I'm not using the trial version.
2) Ok, thanks

---------- Post added 2011-03-13 at 10:34 AM ----------

But why do the files end up so big? 2,4 GB for 1 minutes video is kind of weird

[nwo]

1) No I'm not using the trial version.
2) Ok, thanks

---------- Post added 2011-03-13 at 10:34 AM ----------

But why do the files end up so big? 2,4 GB for 1 minutes video is kind of weird

Because it is raw footage, meaning that it is not encoded/compressed.

[vesseblah]

But why do the files end up so big? 2,4 GB for 1 minutes video is kind of weird

Uncompressed video takes a lot of space. it's 1920*1080*3*60*fps , or 10.43GB per minute of raw data for 30fps FullHD video. Fraps compresses it lossless to about 1/3 of original size, to about 3GB/minute. Popular movie sites such as youtube uses lossy compression which drops the filesizes to around 1/100 or 1/200 of the original, as does commercially released DVD and BluRay movies.

What you need to do is compress that raw video with some lossy codec such as x264 into 1/100 of the original for uploading. Fraps can't do it for two reasons. One is money (software patents in video compression) and one is hardware requirements. Doing h264 compression realtime is still very demanding for current computers. You can do it with $1K desktop available today, but it would lag any gaming to crawl which means that the CPU power needs to double before it's doable in practice.


Fun fact: 48000khz 16bit audio data which is the norm with integrated soundcards of today's motherboards produce only 48000*2*2*60 = 0.01GB per minute. Video takes thousand times the bandwidth of audio (or just 300x after compression when saving to disc), therefore disabling audio capture of fraps for performance reasons is pure bullshit.

[Xtreeze]

So, how do I compress the video?

[coldfiredragon]

But why do the files end up so big? 2,4 GB for 1 minutes video is kind of weird

Raw uncompressed video is huge. Its why there are so many competing formats for compression, DivX, H264, VP8, WMV etc.

What you want to do is get a good editor, I am partial to Corel's Video Studio Pro series http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...1#tabview=tab0

Then you can import the clips, cut and edit apply transitions and save the output to a file or upload to YouTube.

PS: If you want some more info on Video Compression Wikipedia has a good article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression

[Doddilus]

Capture your video at half size, that will reduce the size of the raw footage.
No one is going to watch it full screen anyways.

[vesseblah]

So, how do I compress the video?

VirtualDub with x264vfw codec (can find both with google) is one free alternative (if you look at the Fraps' official website FAQ you see it recommended there, RTFM), Windows Live Movie Maker is another alternative.

No one is going to watch it full screen anyways.

Blanket statements like this are somewhere between retarded and just plain wrong. I always set youtube up to 1080p quality if possible because I don't like watching those stamp-sized pixels of the useless shit of lower resolutions. And if direct download is available, that's always preferred from WCM instead of streaming.

[bigfoot1291]

Capture your video at half size, that will reduce the size of the raw footage.
No one is going to watch it full screen anyways.

While I do agree with the capture it at half size, what the fuck are you talking about no one is going to watch full screen? Whenever I'm watching something gameplay related, I nearly *always* watch full screen in the highest res available.

[Hustle8]

While I do agree with the capture it at half size, what the fuck are you talking about no one is going to watch full screen? Whenever I'm watching something gameplay related, I nearly *always* watch full screen in the highest res available.

Clearly because just that guy watches nothing in full screen, EVERYONE does that also.

[ayako]

Clearly because just that guy watches nothing in full screen, EVERYONE does that also.

I do as well.

You'll capture in full resolution then size it down when you transcode it to a distributing formula. Reason its not encoded as you watch is because of the CPU overhead.