A bundle of recording problems...

[Skeptick]

The shitty truth about FRAPS is that no other video capture program can give out videos with such quality like this one... I'd have to say the second worst problem with this program is that the output size for files is tremendous! Not that I'm too concerned seeing as I have a 500GB hd that's nearly halfway empty still. Anyways, apart from the ridiculous file size most of my games seem to come out perfectly synced with none-to-minimal lag whatsoever. Most games seem to work in DirectX/OpenGL modes but it seems I've encountered some problems with a few of my standalone emulators and more commonly the console-based emulators.

FRAPS works with 2 of the 3 Rockstar games I own. It records BULLY SE like a gem as well as GTA3 with RealGTA mod but San Andreas (V1.0) seems to crash every time I start recording, whether I'm using mods or not. Halo is another game I seem to be having trouble with recording in fullscreen. Don't know if I can window these games either. Everything else I've recorded in the recent has worked for me; MW2, Combat Arms, World of Tanks, Amnesia.

Besides that, most of the console-based emulators work with FRAPS apart from one particular PSX emulator I was looking into because it has a much slicker layout for it's cheat system than the other programs. I think I read it somewhere that PCSXR doesn't use DirectX/OpenGL... but it's still capable of going fullscreen? So I'm not really understanding if it's running my display through some different codec when I use that emulator. Also note that ePSXe can be recorded in fullscreen with FRAPS just fine.

After all that shit, I downloaded some recording plugins (both audio/video) which were native to those kinds of programs. Only problem is that the program which runs off those .DLL's saves my recordings in .REC format. The output quality is excellent but the video & audio has to be caught by two seperate driver-based programs because the GPU aka video driver is unable to capture sound even though it comes with that optional function. I didn't really have a problem with capturing the two apart from each other, but now I'm presented with figuring out how to convert .REC to .AVI

Please note that these .REC's are not in the Topfield PVR format so programs which convert those types of recordings won't work. I need something that can change regular .REC's into .AVI format, with an audio type that ISN'T H.264! Not sure if these recordings are encrypted either, I could watch them so I figured they weren't. Was trying to search for something that could convert, decrypt & re-encrypt all in one bundle (if such a program exists). Alas, I've become seriously irritated and rather lethargic in my quest to record what games I choose and wish to record properly.

...and a program which can be used to merge .WAV's to .AVI's or I suppose I'll have to convert which I'd rather avoid because the files have already been formatted into a perfectly rendered state by the recorder +lag correction if needed.

[DoctorStrongbad]

At 11/23/14 07:40 PM, Monster-64 wrote: Fraps should be one of those programs to be used by people who have 1 or more terabyte hard drives. Otherwise, I'd stick to bandicam. I mean, from my experience, the quality is barely noticeable.

Fraps can be a giant pain in the ass.

[Skeptick]

At 11/23/14 11:25 PM, Monster-64 wrote: Fraps should be one of those programs to be used by people who have 1 or more terabyte hard drives. Otherwise, I'd stick to bandicam. I mean, from my experience, the quality is barely noticeable.

lol I actually have a 4TB external for storage just in case my computer gets loaded as well :p Plus I've tried Bandicam; it works great for desktop recording but always leaves me with this slight visual lag when recording games/videos, could never find a proper video setting to make it work either, gave up after several tries.

At 11/23/14 11:08 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote:

Fraps can be a giant pain in the ass.

Mainly because it consumes a ton of your system's resources which always causes lag. It works great if you're playing a game that doesn't use up too much of your CPU as well (i.e. self-emulated games & low-medium sized console emulations).

The plugins also have a great deal to do with the video quality as it's very hard to find ones that can give your emulator maximized HD quality + pixel correction and enable you to use FRAPS at the same time as the game would overload & crash.

At 11/23/14 07:40 PM, Monster-64 wrote:

Thankfully I have no immediate plans to start a youtube channel, because I'm sure for some users, it's a giant pain in the ass. Hell, all people complain about nowadays are things like resolution, and not the actual quality of the material the vid is presenting. I will admit, though, that I hate it when my vids are at a 480p and everything's stll all fuzzy and pixelated.

Probably because you're recording with a pixel ratio under 1280x720 and not using the 16:9 aspect ratio. If these settings are properly applied then your recording should fill the screen with there being none-to-minimal black bars on the screen, which could probably be further corrected if you increased your pixel ratio to something higher, like 1600x900

Alot of the time, these settings have to be applied on whatever emulators you're using as well, whether it's a console game your emulating or a standalone emulator that you installed from a PC game disc you bought. Just look for the video settings through the in-game options if you're playing a standalone game but console emulations will have to be corrected in the video plugin settings while no games are running. If you do all that you should be able to get 720p.

See? Optional 720p & no visual lag, unless your computer isn't processing it correctly.

In that case, your computer sucks so much that you can't even watch YouTube videos.

Then again, both YouTube & Google suck major ass now.

One more thing, if you're using Bandicam and have all of those video settings properly applied, yet it still won't scale the video to the screen, or give you 720p, then it means that the video software doesn't really work with what you're recording. I know for sure that FRAPS works with nearly any game as long as it's running fullscreen in recognized formats or scaled mode.

I've used nearly everything I could find; Action! Screen Recorder, Bandicam, Camstudio, Camtasia & several more i can't recall. Registered them as well, but none of them work as well as FRAPS whether I had it regged or not.

[Cyberdevil]

The shitty truth is true indeed, I tried a bundle of different programs before finally having to accept that FRAPS was the only one that really did it like I wanted. Re-encoding the video files after recording isn't that much trouble either, so it's easy to chop off some of that ridicilous file size. Most programs that end up with smaller files encode while recording and thus put much more strain on the computer, either lagging game or recording. At least that's how it was for me. Course FRAPS doesn't save entirely RAW video or space would run out in minutes, but it seems to be doing a much better job at it.

As for your problems, only part I can answer is the question on how to window GTA SA. Easiest way is probably adding a shortcut to the game exe, and adding '-small_screen -windowed' after the target, like so: "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\GTA San Andreas\gta_sa.exe" -small_screen -windowed

Plenty of mods/tools that accomplish the same task, too, or ALT + ENTER if that works on your system. Though, I suppose all this only works if you're running Windows...