Tutorial:Making your own W3 movies

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[SIZE="1"]Posted by TP_Moonstar[/SIZE]

[COLOR="DarkRed"][U][SIZE="+1"]Making your own W3 movies[/SIZE][/U][/COLOR]

[spoiler][COLOR="Red"][SIZE=+1][U]Download links:[/U] [B][URL="http://w18.easy-share.com/1702331891.html"]mirror1[/URL], [URL="http://www.fraps.com/download.php"]link[/URL][/B][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[U][CENTER][SIZE="5"][b][U]FRAPS[/U][/b][/SIZE][/CENTER][/U]


Benchmarking Software - Show how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen. Perform custom benchmarks and measure the frame rate between any two points. Save the statistics out to disk and use them for your own reviews and applications.

Screen Capture Software - Take a screenshot with the press of a key! There's no need to paste into a paint program every time you want a new shot. Your screen captures are automatically named and timestamped.

Realtime Video Capture Software - Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favourite game? Come join the Machinima revolution! Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy! Fraps can capture audio and video up to 2560x1600 with custom frame rates from 10 to 100 frames per second!

[CENTER][b]General Questions[/b]

[img]http://www.fraps.com/images/general.gif[/img][/CENTER]


[B][CENTER]What do the options do?[/CENTER][/B]

Selecting "Start Fraps minimized" will hide the Fraps dialog screen when you launch the program. Fraps can still be accessed through the icon in the system tray.

Selecting "Fraps window always on top" will ensure the program window remains visible even when switching to another application. This option has no effect if Fraps has been minimized to the system tray.

If you'd like Fraps to be loaded when you turn on your machine enable the "Run Fraps when Windows starts" option.

Fraps also supports separate LCD screens on keyboards such as the Logitech® G15™. If you have a supported keyboard you will see the option to "Display status on keyboard LCD". Enabling this option will allow you to see FPS graphs and other identifiers on the keyboard while playing your games. If you have a G15 but do not see this option then you may need to install the latest G15 drivers available from Logitech's website.

[CENTER][b]FPS (Frames Per Second)[/b]

[img]http://www.fraps.com/images/fps.gif[/img]

[b]What do the options do?[/b][/CENTER]

The Overlay Display Hotkey lets you assign a button that will toggle the frame rate counter between the four corners and off. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.

The Benchmarking Hotkey lets you assign a button that can be used to determine the average frame rate between any two points in a game. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.

The overlay corner indicates the region of the screen that the framerate counter will be displayed in. Choose a corner that doesn't obstruct important information in the game's display. If you select Disabled the frame rate counter will not be displayed on screen.

Selecting "Only update overlay once a second" will only change the frame rate counter once a second.

Selecting "Save frame rate to file each second" will output the frame rate once a second to the file FRAPSSEC.TXT in your Fraps directory. This option is deprecated and has been removed in Fraps 2.7.0. Use the detailed FPS statistics option to get individual CSV files for each benchmark run.

The "Stop benchmark automatically" option allows you to specify a fixed duration for the benchmark. Once the number of seconds has elapsed the benchmark will automatically stop and the results will be written to disk.

Finally, detailed benchmark statistics can also be saved to disk. These are written in standard CSV files that can be imported directly into a spreadsheet. All files are automatically named/timestamped and saved in the benchmarks subdirectory. Currently there are 3 files written for each benchmark when this option is enabled:

   * FPS - Contains the frame rate value for each second of the benchmark
   * frametimes - Contains the time (in milliseconds) of every frame that was rendered in the benchmark
   * minmaxavg - Contains the total frame count, benchmark duration, minimum, maximum, and average frame rate values.

[b]What is the maximum framerate Fraps will show?[/b] Fraps will show a maximum framerate of 9999 fps on screen. If you need to know precise framerates above this you must use benchmarking and find out the value from FRAPSLOG.TXT, or from the detailed statistics (if you have this option enabled).

Why doesn’t Fraps show above 30fps, 60fps, 75 fps (or any other framerate) in my game?

This can be due to several reasons.

Many games have internal limits that prevent them rendering faster than a certain framerate. In some cases this can mean they are locked at a maximum framerate of only 30fps.

Another possibility is that you have Vsync enabled. Vsync is used to synchronise the output of your graphics card with the display of your monitor. When your graphics card has finished rendering the next frame it waits for the monitor to finish displaying the current one before switching to the new one. This means that the maximum framerate you can obtain will be equal to the refresh rate of your monitor (which is usually 60hz, 75hz, 85hz, or 100hz).

If you disable Vsync then your graphics card will continuously render without waiting for the last frame to be displayed in its entirety. With fast graphics cards this means that your monitor may switch to a new frame halfway down the screen. This effect is known as tearing as there appears to be a visible line separating two different halves. Due to this, you should generally leave Vsync enabled except when benchmarking.

[CENTER][b]Screen Capture Questions[/b]

[img]http://www.fraps.com/images/screenshots.gif[/img]

[b]What do the options do?[/b][/CENTER]

You can select the folder where Fraps will store all screenshots in. By default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps into, but you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the folder.

The Screen Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will take a screenshot of the game screen. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.

Screenshots can be saved in Windows Bitmap (BMP), JPEG (JPG), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), or Targa (TGA) format.

Selecting "Include frame rate overlay on screenshots" will include the Fraps frame rate counter on your screenshots. If the frame rate overlay is disabled, no counter will be saved on your screenshots.

[b]What is the maximum resolution supported by the screen capture?[/b]

Screenshots can be taken in games running at resolutions up to 2560x1600.

[CENTER][b]Video Capture Questions[/b]

[img]http://www.fraps.com/images/movies.gif[/img]

[b]What do the options do?[/b][/CENTER]

You can select the folder where Fraps will store all movies in. By default this folder is the same as the directory you installed Fraps into, but you can customise it to save anywhere on your disk. Click the Change button to select a new folder, or the View button to show the current contents of the folder.

The Video Capture Hotkey lets you assign a button that will record movies of the game. To change the Hotkey, click in the box and type a new key to be assigned this function. Clicking Disable will stop the Hotkey from having any effect.

Choosing Half-size will store the movie at half the resolution of the game screen. Full-size will store the movie at the same resolution as the game screen up to 1152x864.

You can choose the frame rate of the output movie from 25fps, 30fps, 50fps, 60fps, or a custom value up to 100fps. Higher values result in smoother playback but will increase the file size. Some video editing programs will treat movies recorded at 25fps as PAL, and those captured at 29.97/30fps as NTSC.

Selecting "Record Sound" will save the game audio along with the video. You can disable this option if you are planning to add your own sound to the video.

When you select "Detect best sound input" Fraps will determine the best input to record the game sound on. If you choose "Use Windows input" the default Windows recording input will be used. The Windows input may not capture all of the game sounds, so you should generally let Fraps detect the input unless you want to capture sound from an external source.

[b]How do I record a movie while running a game?[/b] First select the target framerate for the movie, which indicates how many frames will be included in the movie each second. You can currently choose from 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps.

In the game press the Video Capture Hotkey (F9) when you want to start recording. While recording the frame rate counter will turn red. When you want to end your movie, press the button again to stop recording. You will now find the movie saved in your default folder.

[b]Why do I get a source format error when I try to compress with DIVX?[/b] Divx6 places restrictions on the video resolution for many of its profiles and this may cause an error when handling large Fraps videos. In Virtualdub you can go to the Divx codec configuration screen and set it to use the "Unconstrained Profile". This will allow you to encode movies of any resolution and won't generate the source format error.

[b]How can I adjust the volume of the sound that is recorded?[/b] You must configure the volume through the "Sounds and Audio Devices" item in the Control Panel. Use the following steps:

   * Click on the Control Panel and select Sounds And Audio.
   * Click on the Audio tab.
   * Find the Sound Recording device and click Volume.
   * Adjust the volume for the Input that Fraps is recording from. This is usually named "What U Hear", "Record Master", or "Stereo Mixer".

If you can't see the correct Input on screen you may need to enable it by clicking on Properties in the menu and ensuring all Inputs have a check beside their name.

Where can I find the custom Fraps FPS1 codec?

The Fraps codec (FPS1) is put on the system when you install Fraps. If you've reinstalled Windows you will also need to reinstall Fraps in order to play back your movies.

Please keep in mind that if you want to give your raw footage to another person they will also need to have Fraps installed.

[I][center][SIZE=-1]All credits goes to [URL="http://www.eurobattle.net/member.php?u=703354"]phantom.[/URL] and [URL="http://www.eurobattle.net/member.php?u=893654"]smaree[/URL] and whoever helped in this guide.[/SIZE][/center][/I][/spoiler]

[SIZE="1"]Posted by TP_Moonstar[/SIZE]